Food Processing Industry in India

Abstract

Mahatma Gandhi envisaged a self-sustaining village economy in which he implicitly included food processing or agro based industry as a means of achieving it.Food processing combines raw food ingredients to produce marketable food products that can be easily prepared and served by the consumer.A strong and dynamic food processing sector plays a vital role in reduction in the wastage of perishable agricultural produce, enhancing shelf life of food products,ensuring value addition to agricultural produce, diversification &commercialization of agriculture, generation of employment, enhancing income of farmers and creating surplus for the export of agro & processed foods.The main aim of this paper is to elaborate the concept of food processing and also to examine their importance in economy of India. Additionally, this paper contains the discussion about important location factors for food processing industries in India along with other upstream and downstream linkages. This research work also attempts to throw some light on conception of Mega Food Parks in India and the bottlenecks faced by food processing entrepreneurs in the Industry. And In the end, this study also entails some possible suggestions for further growth and development of this sector in Indian Economy.