An umbrella body needed to boost food sector: Badal

With the food sector being governed by multiple ministries — agriculture, food processing, and consumer affairs — a situation of ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’ seems to be emerging.

Acknowledging that policy regulations governing the sector are scattered between various ministries, Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, said: “There is a need for an overarching body such as NITI Aayog or something like the National Highways Authority of India, which can develop a roadmap and a long-term plan for growth of the sector. Create an authority which will help synergise the schemes of all the ministries.”

Talking to BusinessLine , she said: “We need to holistically look at various issues such as growing more variety of crops that can be processed, compressing our supply chains, reducing wastage, develop infrastructure to increase processing of farm produce and this is where a body like the National Food Grid Development Authority will help.”

Her Ministry is proposing to introduce a Bill for creating a National Food Grid Development Authority that will be tasked with developing a long-term strategy to bolster the growth of the food processing sector, increase farm income, establish backward and forward linkages, minimise agri-wastage and expand and upscale food processing in the country.

Elaborating on the concept, she said, “We are working towards developing a food grid for seamless movement of food products, from production to consumption, to minimise wastage.”

A step towards this is the SAMPADA scheme, which recently got the Cabinet nod. SAMPADA (Scheme for Agro-Marine Processing and Development of Agro-Processing Clusters) is an umbrella scheme which will incorporate ongoing schemes such as the mega food parks and integrated cold chain besides the news schemes which will focus on infrastructure for agro-processing clusters and creation of backward and forward linkages, among others.

“Under SAMPADA, we will use technology to map various fruit and vegetable clusters and then look at their requirements for infrastructure and storage. We will focus on developing infrastructure that helps link the farmgate to the retail outlets,” Badal added. The Ministry has also released the draft Food Processing Policy, which has been put in the public domain to seek views from stakeholders..

On FDI in food retail, Badal said international retailers have shown a lot of interest. This is despite restrictions in the policy with retailers not being allowed to sell non-food items.

She said there is “already a 40 per cent increase in investments compared to last year. The Ministry has recommended tweaks in food retail to allow some percentage of non-food items to be sold in addition to food items made and processed in India.

“Once these decisions are finalised, I believe we will see a quantum rise in investments from international companies. It will have a positive impact on the incomes of farmers.”

Badal added, “Besides manufacturing in India to cater to the domestic market, international companies are also very keen on sourcing from India and making India an export hub.”

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