Food processing ministry to set up collection, distribution centres in 12th Plan

The Hindu Businessline Bangalore, Dec. 1: 

The Union Ministry of Food Processing in the XII Five Year Plan plans to give emphasis on improving supply chain by creating large primary collection and distribution centres throughout the country involving private sector.

Addressing the ‘Bounteous Karnataka' global agri-business and food processing summit 2011 in Bangalore, Mr Rakesh Kacker, Secretary to the Ministry of Food Processing Industries, said, “During the XI Five Year Plan, we gave emphasis on creating infrastructure, now the time has come to improve supply chain efficiencies, it is here we plan to create collection and distribution centres.”

“To achieve this, we plan to make Karnataka a model State for the State has food parks, cold chains and modern abettors,” he added.

The central government is also planning to involve State governments to implement some food processing projects which benefit both the farmers and consumers.

“For effective implementation and monitoring of projects, we plan to involve State governments, here Karnataka can take advantage,” he mentioned.

Dr S. Ayyappan, Director General (ICAR) & Secretary (DARE) in his address said “For the XII Five Year Plan, we plan to focus on human resources development and already discussions are underway to make ‘Students Ready' by involving agriculture universities and ‘Farmers First', where in students as part of the course have to spend 25 per cent of their time with farmers”.

“This is being done to help farmers for they need experts to guide and equip them with timely farm technology or knowledge,” he added.

“About 10 incubators related to agriculture are planned in the country to give major push to farm level innovation. In Karnataka, University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore and Dharwad are being included. This is expected to give a push in developing low cost farm technologies in the State,” he added.

As skill building exercise, ICAR is planning to use ICT to create Virtual Krishi Vigyan Kendra (VKVK) network in the country. The VKVK platform expects to connect all KVKs with farmers through internet and mobile technology.