PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry hosted a National Conference on Agri, Food & Chain 2022 on 21st July at PHD House, New Delhi. The theme of the conference was “Need for Diversification in Agriculture and Role of Food Processing & Cold Chain Industry in Doubling the Farmers Income.”
Several eminent personalities from the agri industry attended today's conference. They held discussion on various topics regarding Doubling the Farmers Income. The conference was divided into 3 Technical Sessions:
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Technical Session 1: Need for Diversification in Agriculture for Doubling the Farmers Income
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Technical Session 2: Role of Food Processing Industries in Doubling the Farmers Income
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Technical Session 3: Sustainable & Efficient Cold Chain Ecosystem
Speakers present at the conference
Technical Session 1:
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Arun Raste, MD, NCDEX (Keynote Speaker)
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Anil Jain, Executive Director, Crystal Crop (Moderator)
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Dinesh Chauhan, Vice President, Dehaat
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Raju Kapoor, Director, Cooperate Affairs, FMC Corporation
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Amarendra Pani, Joint Director, (I/C), AIU
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Namrata Khanna, Director, Indian Honey Alliance
Technical Session 2:
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Shashi K Singh, Executive Director, PwC (Moderator)
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H P Singh, Chairman, Confederation of Horticulture Association of India
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Ashutosh Upadhyay, Professor and Dean Academic, NIFTEM
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Shilpa Agarwal, Director, Scientific & Regulatory Affairs, Ind Food & Beverage Association
Technical Session 3:
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Anand Chandra, ED & Co-Founder, Arya.ag (Moderator)
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Aditya Narayan Singh, Additional Director, Ozone Cell, Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change
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Rahul Kapoor, Asst Director, Carrier
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Sunil Pareek, Associate prof & Head, Dept of Agriculture & Environment Sciences, NIFTEM
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Sanjay Hans, Team Lead, Panasonic Cold Chain
The conference started with N K Agarwal, Chair of Agri Committee, sharing his insights on the theme of the workshop. He shared how diversification pattern from field crop to horticulture can help in increasing the production of food processing industry.
Anita Praveen, IAS, Secretary, Ministry of Food Processing Industry, Government of India was the chief guest and spoke about Agriculture Infrastructure Funds. She said, “The agriculture infrastructure fund has availability of Rs 1 lakh crore.”
Ministry of Food Processing, Government of India, is running various scheme for good financial standing of the sector, like, PM Kisan Sampada scheme and PLI which are the major fund allocators in agri-business industry to make the sector creditworthy.
According to Pradeep Multani, “If Post harvest losses are saved then farmers income can be doubled.” He spoke on the enormous potential for value addition in the Indian food industry, particularly in the food processing sector, which is poised for significant growth and would increase its contribution to global food trade every year. The sixth-largest food and grocery market in the world is in India, where 70% of sales are made through retail. According to Mr. Multani, food processing is India's fifth-largest sector and accounts for around 9.5 percent of GVA and 13 % of manufacturing employment.
Arun Raste, who was the keynote speaker, said, “Avoidance of wastage and increasing the productivity will help in doubling the farmers income.” According to him, approximately 30% of Horticulture Crops are wasted and the wastage of food crops are around 10%.
He also shared an example of Shreeja Mahila Milk Producer Company Ltd, and said that this dairy corporate society gets 75% of the final product price. So, to double the farmers income, productivity must be doubled too. Avoiding wastage and increasing productivity must be the top most priority.
Anil Jain, who was the moderator of the conference, said, “When farmers increase their productivity, it will increase their income too.”
Raju Kapoor said, “We need to protect crops to protect the livelihood of farmers and save the economy of the country. 90% of our fresh water is going to agriculture. The water will not be there to sustain agriculture. East India is completely short of rainfall while West India is facing floods. Climate change plays an important role.”
A large number of people participated in the conference both in person and virtually.
