Can agriculture achieve 4 per cent growth, unless food processing industry achieves a 6 per cent growth?
Growth cannot be attained without growth in food processing. There is a big mismatch between harvest and post-harvest production. The government needs to remove this big gap and that task is mine — to convince the Planning Commission, the finance ministry and the Cabinet so that they remove this mismatch. The food processing units are mostly in the unorganised sector. How do you plan to bring them to mainstream? We have put in place 30 supply chains linking farm produce to Mega Food Parks, which will be a destination to invest. We are looking at creating a complete supply and cold chain. This will, in turn, bring in a lot of foreign investments. As long as the link between the investors and farmers is not established, it will continue to be a problem. The ministry had sought to promote entrepreneurs, but the response has been slow. What more do you need? What we need is on the lines of the IT (information technology) industry. They are catering to the urban youth and have a tax holiday
