INDIAN FOOD PROCESSING INDUSTRY

The Food Processing industry sector in India is one of the largest in terms of production, consumption, export and growth prospects. The government has accorded it a high priority, with a number of fiscal reliefs and incentives, to encourage commercialization and value addition to agricultural produce, for minimizing pre/post harvest wastage, generating employment and export growth. India's food processing sector covers a wide range of products including fruit and vegetables, meat and poultry, milk and milk products, alcoholic beverages, fisheries, plantation, grain processing and other consumer product groups like confectionary, chocolates and cocoa products, soya-based products, mineral water, high protein foods, etc.

Sectoral Overview
India has arable land of 184 million hectares and produces annually 90 million tonnes of milk (highest in the world), 150 million tonnes of fruits and vegetables (second largest), 485 million livestock (largest), 204 million tonnes food grain (third largest), 6.3 million tonnes fish (third largest), 489 million poultry and 45,200 million eggs. India's agricultural production base is huge. However, processing level is very low i.e. around 2 per cent in fruits and vegetables, 26 per cent for marine, 6 per cent for poultry and 20 per cent for buffalo meat. The share of india's export of processed food in global trade is only 1.5 per cent. Hence, there is immense potential for investment in this sector. To facilitate the prompt growth of food processing industry, the Government has implemented the scheme for infrastructure development comprising a food park scheme, establishing packaging centres, integrated cold chain facility, value added centres, irradiation facilities and modernized abattoir.