HyderabadAt the maiden Food Conclave 2023 held here on Saturday, Telangana has bagged projects worth ₹7,218 crore in various food processing, aquaculture, edible oil and meat processing industries.
Addressing the valedictory of the conclave, Telangana IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao said the fresh investment proposals have the potential to generate 58,458 jobs.
Telangana bags investments worth ₹7,218 crore at Food Conclave 2023
Video: KV Kurmanath
“We are also working on the supply chain linkages where we will connect the industry to the farmers of the State by effectively deploying the agriculture extension system,” he said.
“We are creating farmer producer organisations (FPOs) to provide plug-and-play supply chains for the food processing Industry. We have set a target to build Special Food Processing Zones on an aggregate area of 10,000 acres in the State,” he said.
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Ramesh Chand, a Member of NITI Ayog, has called for efforts to promote corporate investments in agriculture production. “The share of corporate investments is just 0.3 per cent in production agriculture. Their investments may be there in areas like warehousing but in production agriculture is low.
“We need to increase this. In order to facilitate this, we need to have discussions with policymakers, academia and farmers,” he said.
Addressing the inaugural of the maiden Food Conclave 2023 here on Saturday, he said 11 out of the 17 SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) are directly or indirectly tied to agriculture. “If we don’t fix the problems in agriculture, we can’t achieve the goals,” he said.
About 100 top leaders from agri, food processing industry and policy makers are speaking at the conference which is focusing on the five revolutions of – Green (agriculture), Yellow (edible oils), Blue (aquaculture), Pink (meat and poultry) and White (dairy), discussing the opportunities in these areas.
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Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary (IT and Industries), Government of Telangana, said a strong food processing policy would help in doubling the farmers’ incomes. “We offer the best value proposition for the industry to set up their investments in food processing industries,” he said.
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He said the State government would make the Food Conclave an annual event.
Telangana Agriculture Minister S Niranjan Reddy said the cultivated area in the State went up to 2.20 crore acres now from 1.31 crore acres in 2014-15, the year when the State was formed. The food grain production went up to 2.70 crore tonnes from 68 lakh tonnes during the period.
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“The area under cotton went up by 44 per cent over the area of 41 lakh acres at the time of the formation of the State,” he said.