Transforming Indian Agriculture: Farming to Agri-Business
Author : Dr. Monimala Devi
Abstract :
India with its rich agricultural heritage and diverse climate holds immense potential in the food processing sector for ensuring food security, reducing wastages, enhancing farmers’ incomes and providing immense employment opportunity. Food Processing involves transforming raw material products into consumable food items, adding value and extension of shelf life. Smart food processing aimed at reducing the cost of staple food preparation while creating the nutritional foundation for healthy lives. India needs critical transformation in agricultural sector to absorb more people, enhance skill formation, increase and stabilize farmers’ income, to help export promotion, etc. Thus this sector promises to offer immense export potentialities having significant opportunities for growth and economic diversifications. The Government of India diligently works towards establishing a strong, transparent, predictable and risk-based regulatory framework for ensuring safe food for consumers. However, chronic climate change and its impacts affect the agricultural output at large. Climate change has made agriculture in India an uncertain and risky proposition. Therefore, India must adopt a holistic approach that makes crops resilient to climate change. Discussions and research on the impacts of climate change provide some valuable suggestions. This year Union Budget allots Rs. 4000 crore for such research and development. Now, the issue of climate change and its impact is no more a problem of agriculture sector and farmers only but the problem of the whole nation. Economists, political thinkers, social scientists should join hands to resist the impact of climate change as well as the challenges faced by the newly ‘geared up’ food processing units.
Keywords :
Food Processing, Agri-business, transformation, economic diversification, climate change, resilient variety
