The sprawling 56-acre campus of Jharkhand Mega Food Park limited was on Monday unveiled as three additional parks—Bokaro, Hazaribagh and Sahibganj—are also on the cards to boost food processing industry, take the advantage of the high crop yield, especially of vegetables in Jharkhand and to make the benefits of good harvest percolate down to the farmers sitting at the bottom of the supply chain.
The park was unveiled by Union Minister for Industry and Food Processing Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Chief Minister Raghubar Das and Union Minister of State for Industry and Food Processing Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti at Getalsud village in Angara block of Ranchi. Das assured that the interests of those who forfeited land will not be overlooked.
“I am announcing three more food parks. One park would be set up at Bokaro, other one in Hazaribagh which is currently in progress and the third one will be set up in Sahibganj for which land has been acquired,” Das said, adding “agriculture will be our Government’s priority in future”.
The fully developed mega infrastructure would cost `114.76-crore of which `50-crore has been funded by the Centre whereas the remaining would be contributed by promoters of the facility. Thirty-five industries will set up facilities on the campus built on the land given by Ranchi Industrial Area Development Authority in 2009. Around five companies have signed agreement to set up units in the JMPl facility.
The campus houses warehouses, cold storage, processing units and would get electricity, continuous water supply besides other features related to security.
Badal stressed on reducing crop wastage to feed swelling population of the country and also to make best use of crop production by encouraging food processing industry in the country.
The food park situated on 56-acre of land will operate on hub and spoke model-the park being the hub where crops would be brought from six primary processing units (PPU)-lohardaga, Gola, Hazaribagh, Belchampa, Domchach and Patratu. The six PPUs will collect fruits and vegetable from farms and would route it to the central unit situated on the outskirts of the capital for further processing.
“Crop wastage in the country if it is put in value would be somewhere Rs 72,000-crore. It is vital to prevent such colossal wastage and adopt a zero tolerance approach towards wastage to feed the burgeoning population,” said Badal.
The Union Minister while unveiling the mega food park underscored the need to leverage high crop yield and promote processing industry by setting up infrastructure in all parts of the country. The Minister rued dearth of adequate infrastructure against the surplus of crop that ends up in waste and insisted on developing a supply chain from farm to food plate to everyone’s benefit in the chain. The processing plant would help is preserving perishable food items
“It is a painful fact that we are among the highest producers of crop yet our processing policy is just around 10 per cent. Our high crop production presents opportunity and challenge at the same time. Opportunity is the high crop production and challenge is to set up additional infrastructure so that surplus crop is routed to the market through processing infrastructure,” expressed Badal.
Meanwhile, Acharya Balkrishna of Patanjali Ayurved limited proposed to setup processing plants for tomato, peas and cauliflower inside the JMPl campus and also proposed to setup a cattle feed unit of 500 tonne capacity in Jharkhand.