Answer:

Introduction:

The food processing industry encompasses a wide range of activities, including the processing, preservation, packaging, and distribution of food products. India being an agricultural country offers ideal conditions for development of emerging food processing industry. Easy availability of raw materials, changing lifestyles in urban and rural areas and favourable fiscal policies are giving a push to this sunrise sector.

Body:

But small processing unit in India are suffering from many challenges such as:

• Infrastructure: Small processing units cannot invest heavily in infrastructural support such as grading, packaging, cold storage, warehousing, logistics, supply chains etc. They rely on the common facilities in these activities and this degrades the quality of the product.
• Manpower: Skill shortage is hampering the competitiveness of this sector. There are few institutes which provide adequate training to the labour force in this sector. This also restricts innovation and research in this sector.
• Seasonality and perishability: Most of the agricultural products such as fruits, vegetables, fisheries, etc are highly perishable and the small units do not have adequate cold storage facilities. This increases the vulnerability of the entrepreneurs to wastage of commodities. The supply of raw materials is also seasonal in nature.
• Credit: Although the industry has been included in the priority sector lending, there are inherent risks involved in small enterprises which is why they do not get easy access to credit.
• Lack of branding and marketing: Most of the small units do not flourish because they do not have adequate branding and marketing. And the larger players leverage their wealth to gain a bigger share of the consumer market.

Food processing industry plays an important role in uplifting the socio-economic status of poor farmers through following ways:

• Provides avenues to sell: By providing a vital link between the agriculture and manufacturing sectors, it reduces the wastage of agricultural raw materials and increases shelf life of food products. This helps farmers to sell more in the long run.
• Better income: It links farmers to the agricultural market and provides them better income especially for horticultural products.
• Alternative employment source: It provides employment opportunities in sectors such as packaging, sampling, logistics and other non-farm activities. Thus, it helps farmers to shift from farming to non-farming activities and have better lifestyles.
• Crop-diversification: Food processing will require different types of inputs thus creating an incentive for the farmer to grow and diversify crops. This would generate greater income than from a single crop.
• Export potential: Smooth functioning of forward and backward linkages can enhance the export capacity of Indian trade in international market and improve the socio-economic condition of the farmers.

Conclusion:

India must leverage all the available resources to emerge as a leader in food processing sector. It has come out with SAMPADA scheme, Mega Food Park Schemes, Value Addition Centres, Irradiation facilities etc. to promote this sector. However more needs to be done to enable small farmers to benefit from these initiatives. Addressing the problems faced by the small processing units will help them gain scale and enhance the lifestyle of the people associated with farming activities.