• Investment World
• eWorld
• Brand Line
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest
• The New Manager

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources
• In Focus
• In Depth

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• The Hindu ePaper
• Business Line
• Business Line ePaper
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

Our Bureau

`Food processing, value-addition long-term solution for growth'

Advertisement

Coimbatore Feb.13 State agricultural universities in addition to their core domain of crop protection and farm practices should move forward to establish courses and schools in food technology, according to Mr Jatindra Nath Swain, Special Secretary and Commissioner (drought prone area project), Government of Tamil Nadu.

Inaugurating the annual regional meet of the Indian Agricultural Universities Association at the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University here on Tuesday, he said most agricultural commodities often face inelastic demand, both against price and income. The higher production in any year would thus inevitably bring the prices down, ruining the farmers.

Value-addition

Export markets give only short-term relief especially for primary produce. The long-term solution for the country's agriculture growth would be through food processing and value-addition, he said. He pointed out that a shift towards this would also effectively counter the value losses suffered by the farming sector from lack of diversification and post-harvest losses in foodgrains, cereals, fruits and vegetables that finally get debited to the farmers' accounts.

Stating that a few irritants still remain in the policy framework, which come in the way of infusing newer technology and scale of operations, Mr Swain said the Centre has already decided to amend the fragmented Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee Act by circulating a model draft among the States.

A unified food law is also under consideration, and an updated storage and warehousing regulation is also shortly due, which would pave way for large-scale investment in modern warehousing, Mr Swain added.

Setting the tone for the two-day meet, which is being attended by the vice-chancellors and senior scientists from 40 agri universities across the country, Dr M.P. Yadav, President of the IAUA, said with agriculture production remaining stagnant since 1990, value-addition has become a watchword in terms of consumption, storage and exports.

The Vice-Chancellor of TNAU, Dr C. Ramasamy, in his address said while farmers face the challenges of meeting the targeted 220 million tonnes of foodgrains production within the next two years or so, agricultural universities have stiff tasks on hand that include reallocating resources by the agri universities for competing academic/research tasks, qualitative improvement in teaching in new areas such as nano-technology and creating linkage between lab and farmers fields.

More Stories on : Agricultural Institutions | Education | Foods & Food Processing | Tamil Nadu

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Spat over Rubber Board fiat to commodity bourses

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line