FOOD PROCESSING

MEGA FOOD PARKS

Recently, Avantee mega Food Park in Dewas (Madhya radish) was inaugurated. This is the first food park of central India.

Introduced in 2008, the scheme aims at providing modern food processing infrastructure along the integrated value chain from farm to market with a clusterbased approach.
It operates in “hub and spoke model” comprising Collection Centres (CCs) and Primary Processing Centres (PPCs) as spokes and a Central Processing Centre (CPC) as hub.

It includes creation of infrastructure for primary processing and storage near the farm in the form of PPCs and CCs and common facilities and enabling infrastructure like roads, electricity, water etc. at CPC.
These PPCs and CCs act as aggregation and storage points to feed raw material to the processing units located in CPC.

These are demand-driven projects and facilitate food processing units to meet environmental, safety and social standards.
MoFPI does not establish MFPs on its own but assist Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) registered under the Companies Act and State Government/State Government entities/Cooperatives to establish MFPs.

Financial assistance is provided as grantin-aid @ 50% of eligible project cost in general areas and @ 75% in NE Region and difficult areas [Hilly States and Integrated Tribal Development Project (ITDP) areas] subject to a maximum of Rs. 50 crore per project o Government has so far approved 42 Mega Food Parks. However, only 18 MFPs have been operationalized.
Modern processing and preservation capacity of 23.02 Lakh MT & 63 PPCs with farm level infrastructure of 2.45 Lakh MT have been created so far in operational parks.

OTHER AGRICULTURAL NEWS

PM distributes Krishi Karman Awards

Krishi Karman Awards were instituted by Ministry of Agriculture in year 2010-11 with an objective to encourage and motivate the States to enhance production and productivity of crops.

3 for the states with highest foodgrains production in 3 identified categories –large, medium and small producers.
5 rewards one each for the highest production under rice, wheat, pulses, coarse cereals and oilseeds.
Oilseeds was added under individual crops category since year 2013-14

1 st ever National Agrochemical congress

It is being organized by Society of Pesticide Science India.
It was formed as a National Society with its Headquarters at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi.

Agriculture Export Policy

Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Nagaland, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Punjab and Karnataka have finalized the State Action Plan and other States are at different stages of finalization of the action plan for AEP.
State Action Plan includes all essential components like production clusters, capacity building, infrastructure and logistics and R & D and budget requirements for the implementation of AEP.
AEP aims to raise farmers income by doubling agricultural exports from present ~US$ 30+ Billion to ~US$ 60+ Billion by 2022. Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA).It is an apex statutory body under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, responsible for the export promotion of agricultural products.

Small Farmers’ AgriBusiness Consortium (SFAC)

It is an Autonomous Society promoted by Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Govt. of India"
It’s role is to aggressively promote agribusiness project development in their respective States.

Management:

The Society is governed by Board of Management which is chaired, ex- officio, by Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare as the President and the Secretary, Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare, Government of India, is the ex-officio Vice-President.

Information Network for Animal Productivity & Health (INAPH Project)

It has been developed by the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB).

It is an IT application that facilitates the capturing of real time reliable data on Breeding, Nutrition and Health Services of all indigenous, nondescript, crossbred as well as exotic milch animals delivered at farmer’s doorstep.

The objective is to enable proper identification of animals and traceability of their products.

International Conference on Agricultural Statistics

It is a series of conferences that was started in 1998 based on comprehensive need for agricultural data all across the world.
It is conducted every three years based on overarching need for agricultural data worldwide.
The 2019 conference was held in New Delhi and was organized by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare.
Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, FAO, Asian Development Bank, World Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were partners of this conference.
The theme of the conference is “Statistics for Transformation of Agriculture to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” .

Farmers Science Congress

• It was inaugurated for the first time in history of the Indian Science Congress.

• Experts from the different agriculture sector discussed on three themes; Farmers innovation on integrated agriculture and entrepreneurship for doubling farmers income; Climate change, biodiversity, conservation, ecosystem services & farmers empowerment; and Agrarian distress and rural bio-entrepreneurship.

UN Decade of Family Farming

• Recently, the United Nations’ Decade of Family Farming (2019-2028), was launched by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

• As per the FAO, “Family farming is a means of organizing agricultural, forestry, fisheries, pastoral and aquaculture production which is managed and operated by a family and predominantly reliant on family labour.”

SUTRA PIC India Programme

• It stands for Scientific Utilisation Through Research Augmentation-Prime Products from Indigenous Cows .

• It is inter-Ministerial funding program to research on ‘indigenous’ cows.

• It has been planned with the support of Ministry of Science & Technology along with Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, Ministry of Ayush, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy etc.

• It has various themes including: uniqueness of Indigenous Cows, prime products from Indigenous Cows for: Medicine and Health, Agricultural Applications, Food and Nutrition, and prime products from indigenous cows-based utility items.