Govt focussing on growth of food processing to boost farmers' income: Tomar

Agriculture and Food Processing Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Tuesday said the government is focusing on growth of the food processing sector as it has potential to boost farmers' income.

The prosperity of agriculture and farmers is must for achieving the objective of Aatmanirbhar Bharat, Tomar said in an official statement.

Inaugurating the student's residential complex and pilot food processing plants in IIFPT, he said the central government has identified food processing as a priority sector for the government and as one of the focus sectors in the Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiative.

He said the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) is focussing on boosting the food processing industry so that the agriculture sector attains an exponential growth and majorly contributes towards doubling the farmers' income.

Tomar laid the foundation stone for new infrastructure proposed to be created in the newly procured land through video conferencing.

He inaugurated the students' residential complex and pilot food processing plants established at the institute.

Rameswar Teli, Minister of State for Food Processing Industries; Pushpa Subrahmanyam, secretary of MoFPI; and Shri Minhaj Alam, joint secretary of MoFPI; were also present at the inaugural ceremony.

Tomar said the government has identified certain key areas for improvement, which include the gaps in supply chain infrastructure, inadequate link between production and processing, seasonality of operations and low capacity utilisation.

Some of the other area are inadequate focus on quality and safety standards, lack of product development and innovation and, supply chain institutional gaps.

To address these concerns, he said several new schemes have been launched.