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.

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.

This textbook highlights the engineering fundamentals and processing aspects of agricultural produce and covers important aspects of agro-processing and food engineering in one place. The chapters cover material handling, drying, size reduction process, mixing and forming, cleaning and separation, storage, and processing of cereals, pulses, oilseeds, fruit and vegetables, and their products. The book’s contents are systematically designed to provide a balanced overview of agro-processing techniques from the basic concepts to the case study, handling of the materials, and different unit operations. The systematic and simple elaboration of scientific aspects will make it unique and help to develop skills in the field. Many illustrations in form of diagrams/charts/pictures provide a clear understanding. Solved numerical problems, which are given in the chapters, will provide students clarity in conceptualizing the basics. The book covers the syllabus related to agro-processing and food engineering at the undergraduate and postgraduate level in various universities, agricultural universities, allied institutes, and colleges across the globe. It will be extremely beneficial to students as it covers the most important and relevant topics, which are hardly covered in any other single compilation and published textbooks. It would be a good textbook for universities, agricultural universities, institutes, and colleges running courses in agriculture, horticulture, postharvest technology, process and food engineering, food engineering, food engineering and technology, food technology, food science, and food and nutrition.

The book deals with value addition and processing of agro-food crops. Each agro-food crop is discussed from the point of its production, processing, value addition, packaging and storage. Main food crops of special importance in the food processing sector like cereals, millets and pulses, minor forest products, fruits and vegetables and milk and milk based products are considered at length. The book gives a comprehensive account of food processing and value addition with regards to encourage for setting up small food processing industries in their local area using local agro food crops base. Indigenous food preparations based on fermented cereals and pulse, milk and other crops based products have been discussed. Various food laws and regulation by the Government to control food quality and standards are highlighted. Agro food based, food processing industry, in small or cottage scale level in their local region with available resource projects are alsodiscussed in details. An outstanding text for students, researchers and entrepreneurs in food processing with little or no previous instruction in food science and technology, food science is also a valuable reference for professionals in food processing, as well as for those working in fields that serves, regulates or otherwise interfaces with the food processing industry.

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.