9.3. Challenges that still remain despite Government Initiatives

The challenges for the food processing sector are diverse and demanding, and need to be addressed on several fronts to derive maximum market benefits. A combination of uncontrollable and controllable factors has affected the growth of the sector and has acted as a hindrance in achieving its potential.

The uncontrollable factors which are difficult to address and hence have to be discounted for while accounting for the inadequate growth of the sector. It include fragmentation of land holdings which has resulted in lack of scale and has made investments in automation unviable; regional climatic variations which impact the production; and the constraints in land availability due to competing pressure from urbanization, constructions and industrialization.

Controllable factors which can be addressed by intervention of Government and private enterprises. It includes issues of quality and quantity of raw produce, low labor productivity with slow adoption of technology. On the Infrastructure front, we have supply chain and wastage related problems and low levels of value addition etc. The other issues of concern, holding this sector back are impaired access to credit; inconsistency in state and central polices, which requires both the Center and the State to work as one single cohesive unit.