Union Minister for Food Processing Industries, Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Sunday said that with a view to give an impetus to the growth of food processing sector, the ‘mega food park’ projects being setup in the States are providing better prices to the farmers besides adding value to agricultural produce and creating huge opportunities for entrepreneurship and employment for the youth of the country.
The Union Minister while speaking at village Panwa, (Khargone) in Madhya Pradesh after inaugurating first mega food park in the State said that second mega food park in Dewas (MP) had also been sanctioned by her Ministry, which would be ready in the next two years.
Harsimrat informed that this food park has been set up at a cost of `127.70 crore in an area of 53.78 acres having facilities of 3000 MT cold storage, 9,000 MT dry warehouse and other processing facilities for fruits and vegetables. The Minister expressed that this food park project would create modern infrastructure for arresting post-harvest losses of horticultural and non-horticultural produce and provide an impetus to the growth of food processing sector in Madhya Pradesh. Besides this, it would provide direct and indirect employment to about 6000 people and benefit about 25,000-30,000 farmers in its catchment area, said she.
“We have identified creation of modern infrastructure for food processing as a focus area and encouraging private investment by implementing the mega food park scheme in the country to give a major boost to the sector along the value chain from the farm to the market with strong forward and backward linkages through a cluster based approach,” she added.