Day 48 – Q 1.Examine the bottlenecks in the supply chain of food processing industry of India. Also suggest ways to address them.
1. Examine the bottlenecks in the supply chain of food processing industry of India. Also suggest ways to address them.
भारत के खाद्य प्रसंस्करण उद्योग की आपूर्ति श्रृंखला की बाधाओं को उजागर करें। उन्हें संबोधित करने के तरीके भी सुझाएं।
INTRODUCTION
Food processing industry in India is a sunrise industry, due to improving technology, reducing wastages, high levels of production and a huge market with increased consumption levels. Food processing in India consists of 9% of the GDP in manufacturing and 11% of GDP in agriculture sectors.
BODY
In spite of various positives like huge market and ample opportunities of development of food processing industry in India, it is still under developed or not gained development up to its full potential due to the many challenges faced by the industry.
The Challenges in food processing industries can be categorized as follows-
- Farmers having poor knowledge of market needs.
- Lack of credit facilities to farmers.
- Lack of cold storage chain and cold transportation.
- Lack in availability quality of raw material.
- Difficulties in accessing finance for industries.
- Issues related to the lack of basic resources like electricity, inadequate supply of water etc.
- Poor collection facilities at various levels.
- Lack of road linkages in certain areas, leading to transportation bottlenecks
- Lack of skills technology, to process and packaging.
India is one of the largest producers of fruits, vegetables, fishery and milk, also there is a huge market due to high population and high levels of consumption, which could be addressed in the following ways-
- Improving credit access to farmers, by Jan Dhan Accounts, via issuing Kisan Credit Cards.
- Need to attract private investment, by monitoring and adjusting the FDI limits.
- Establishing more integrated processing hubs like the Food Parks.
- Providing information to the farmers about the market needs, through mediums like Kisan TVs.
- Providing skill development and vocational training for the food processing industry.
- Providing separate skills for cleaning, processing and packaging.
- Making Changes to the APMC Act.
- Increasing budget to the food processing sector, used to operationalize all 42 mega food parks
However, recently Government has increased the FDI limit in food processing industry, apart from this increasing research and development through initiatives like FARMERS FIRST, encouraging Mega food parks, increasing connectivity through Sagarmala, Bharatmala etc.
CONCLUSION
Hence, it is possible for the food processing industry to achieve its full benefit only if the forward and backward linkages are effectively managed. A more cautious approach, increased intent, effective planning, supervision and execution would lead to the reducing the bottlenecks and make Indian food processing self-sufficient also augmenting the brand of Indian cuisine worldwide.
BEST ANSWER: Ankita Munshi
