A strong and dynamic food processing sector plays a vital role in reduction in the wastage of perishable agricultural produce, enhancing shelf life of food products,ensuring value addition to agricultural produce, diversification &commercialization of agriculture, generation of employment, enhancing income of farmers and creating surplus for the export of agro & processed foods. In the era of economic liberalization, all segments including; private,public and co-operative sectors have defined roles to play and the Ministry promotes their active participation.

The Ministry of Food Processing Industries has a clear goal of attaining these objectives by facilitating and acting as a catalyst to attract quality investments from within India and abroad into this sector with the aim of making food processing a national initiative.With this overall objective, the Ministry aims to:

• Enhance farmer’s income by better utilization and value addition of agricultural produce
• Minimize wastage at all stages in the food processing chain by the development of infrastructure for storage, transportation and processing of agro-food produce;
• Introduce of modern technology into the food processing industries from both domestic and external sources;
• Encourage R&D in food processing for product and process development and improved packaging;
• Provide policy support, and support for creation of Infrastructure, capacity expansion/ Upgradation and other supportive measures form the growth of this sectors;
• Promote export of processed food products.

Information and photos taken from the site: www.mofpi.gov.in