New Delhi, May 13 (IANS) The government is setting up 30 mega food parks, complete with cold chains, to enable integration of the agriculture sector from farm gate to the retail outlet to prevent large scale waste, Food Processing Industries Minister Subodh Kant Sahai said Tuesday. “The ministry will soon announce the setting up of 30 mega food parks in all the states so that cold chain facilities are available in catchment areas comprising not more than three to four districts”, Sahai said.

He was at the Fruit and Vegetable Summit organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in association with the Ministry of Agriculture.

“Produce worth Rs 500 billion gets wasted every year in the absence of a proper value chain for food processing,”

“The ministry has made food processing a tax-less industry to encourage the industry to invest in this sector. While the industrial growth rate was stagnating, food processing industry was growing at 13 percent,” Sahai said and added that the challenge was to reach these benefits to the farmers”, minister added.

“To making the sector competitive in global and domestic markets, CII has set up an Agri Council and a special joint task force with the government and the industry to work out a strategy paper listing key imperatives such as scalability, integrated value chains, price competitiveness and cluster approach for farming”,said Rakesh Bharti Mittal, chairman CII National Council on Agriculture and vice chairman Bharti Enterprises.