This book provides different facets of India's agro and food processing industry in both organised and unorganised segments. It brings forth the topical issues having potential to accelerate the pace of growth in its employment, investment and productivity and strive for improving the global competitiveness. Using advanced quantitative techniques, it brings new evidences on inter-sectoral (agriculture-industry-services) employment and production linkages, contractual arrangements through Farmer Producer Companies, and subcontracting in the processed food sector. It also throws light on India's comparative advantage in export of primary and processed food products. With rising per capita income, urbanisation, and changing food habits of people, India is increasingly striving to improve productivity and competitiveness in agriculture and manufacturing. A concerted policy focus to accelerate private investment in food processing, largely viewed as a sunrise industry, is expected to contribute to large scale job creation and external trade not only in the manufacturing but also in the agricultural sector. Keeping this in mind, considerable insights are featured in the book at the industry and firm levels due to a significant bearing of technological, tariffs and non-tariff barriers and labour regulations on their trade intensity, employment and efficiency. Containing perspectives from the top agriculture and industry economists in the country, the book will be very useful to researchers, academicians, trade analysts and policy makers.

Seminar paper from the year 2021 in the subject Economics - Industrial Economics, grade: A+, , course: B.A. LL.B. (Hons.), language: English, abstract: This paper addresses the question of: What were the factors that changed the trend of production and productivity on food processing sector in India and how will they take it to further higher growth in the modern times? Food Processing stands as a sunrise sector in the Indian economy and steers the growth for the industry's development. The Food Processing sector comprises a large number of stakeholders like milk and dairy products; vegetables and fruits; egg, meat and poultry; fisheries, beverages, horticulture, chocolate and cocoa products, grains, mineral water, plantation, confectionery etc. India has a strong agriculture base, and it plays a consequential role in the expansion of this sector, as it contributes for about one–fourth of the Indian economy and employs two-third of the population. It is not only a potential source for navigation of the rural economy but also leads to the collaboration of consumers, industries and agriculture. In times when India develops itself from food scares to a food surplus country, prospects for processed foods are mammoth. India's food ecosystem and the food habits of Indians bids enormous prospects for stimulating growth with favourable fiscal policies, large-scale investments and attractive monetary incentives in the food retail sector. Food processing transforms raw edible material into food and then food to its other forms. It improves shelf life and enhances the value of the agricultural products or animal products and enables them to be marketable.

This book presents a wealth of perspectives on studying the manufacturing end of food processing industries, with a special focus on regions with a low industrial base and multiple missing markets, institutional finance being the most prominent example. Positioning food processing within the industrial ecosystem, which includes entrepreneurs, policymakers, business consultants and associations, the study first considers three different trajectories: for developed economies, for national territories like India, and for sub-national regions like Bihar. In turn, it shows how these trajectories intertwine in two dimensions: the region and the sub-sector. Successfully completing food-processing projects in any of these trajectories requires the identification and development of appropriate product networks that link basic processed items with advanced ones through a chain of value addition. Moreover, the supply-side narrative presented here identifies two types of costs: physical and non-physical costs of operation. For trajectories with skewed firm sizes (“missing middle”) and missing markets, which can be found in Bihar, the latter costs matter just as much as the former in terms of entrepreneurship. While efficiency in operations is studied for selected sub-sectors in Bihar’s food processing to assess the main sources of inefficiency in minimizing the physical costs of operations, non-physical costs are studied using the construct of region-based counterfactual thinking (rCFT) and its relationship with the perception of risk for entrepreneurs. rCFT offers a new concept for understanding the mindset of the entrepreneur, in which the regional identity plays a significant role. The empirical content is based on a primary survey of food processing in Bihar. Additional policy questions, such as the choice between spatial collocation of food parks or cluster-based development of unique sub-sectors, are explored through an analysis of the policy network that supports entrepreneurship. Issues arising from the government’s policy choices, particularly vertically targeted industrial policies, can influence industrial outcomes and are particularly relevant for regions like Bihar. While policy evaluation for Bihar’s processed food industry yields insights on policy targeting for decision-makers in the government, examples of parallel narratives from global experiences in comparable regions shed new light on industrial development in processed food, which should be of interest to business practitioners, academic researchers and policymakers alike.

Contributed articles.

This book provides different facets of agro and food processing industry in both organised and unorganised segments and brings forth the topical ones, each having potential to accelerate the pace of growth in employment, productivity and exports-imports in a free trade regime. Using computable general equilibrium model, input output tables and advanced econometric tools, it brings new evidences on the inter-sectoral (agriculture-industry-services) linkages, and inferences to be competitive in both primary and processed food exports. India is increasingly striving to improve productivity and competitiveness in agriculture and manufacturing sectors. Taking advantage of the growing per capita income, urbanisation, changing food habits of the people and exports, a concerted policy focus has been to boost private investment in food processing, largely viewed as a sunrise industry. Higher investments and productivity growth in it are expected to contribute to large scale job creation and external trade not only in the manufacturing but also in the agricultural sector. Keeping this in mind, considerable insights are featured in the book at the industry and firm levels due to a significant bearing of technological, tariffs and non-tariff barriers on their trade intensity, productivity and efficiency. Containing perspectives from the top agro-economists in the country, the book will be very useful to researchers, trade analysts, academicians and policy makers.

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2017 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, Pforzheim University, language: English, abstract: This paper will focus on India and its food processing industry, which is an underdeveloped sector but has ambitious growth targets strongly supported by the government. Humans have been using different techniques to convert raw plant and animal materials into processed food products for several centuries now. Sun-drying and the preservation of meat or fish with salt are the oldest known methods while nowadays, food processing involves chopping, freezing, fermenting, pasteurizing, adding food additives like antioxidants or emulsifiers and many more sophisticated procedures. Like most industries, food processing – “the linkage between farm and fork” – has undergone tremendous technological changes. Thanks to the enhancement of machines and the development of new techniques, shelf life could be notably extended and we are able to benefit from a rich selection of diverse food products in supermarkets. However, due to the strong dependence on modern and often expensive machinery, this industry is a lot more advanced in high-income countries than in low- and middle-income countries.