To bring down wastage and stem the rise in food inflation, the Government is planning to create a National Food Grid on the lines of the power grid. The proposed grid will ensure that all types of food are available in every part of the country all through the year.
“As the first step, we are preparing a National Food Map, covering all food products, raw and processed, livestock, fisheries, poultry, etc.,” Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal told BusinessLine here on Tuesday.
She said the map was being made after collecting data from various sources, such as agri universities. “We are collecting whatever data is available, what is grown where and I am also going to appeal to my colleagues in Parliament to write to me about surplus food, and infrastructure required,” she added.
The map proposes to divide products and districts/clusters into two categories — critical and non-critical — with a focus on promoting agro-based industries and helping farmers who, at times, have to resort to distress sales or dump their produce.
Admitting that creating storage infrastructure, especially for perishable products, was a challenge, the Ministry is also planning to set up a National Cold Chain Grid and will push for it to be declared a “priority sector infra project”.
The proposed cold chain grid will link key fruit and vegetable hubs in the country to ‘critical’ districts identified in the food map, says a Food Ministry approach paper.
“Onions are produced in Maharashtra and their prices are rising in Delhi. There should be a way to get these across without prices soaring,” said Badal.
The cold chain grid will take care of sorting, grading, post-harvesting, storage and specialised transport to connect each district, in accordance with its criticality, as specified in the Food Map.
“Till the infrastructure is in place, we plan to use refrigerated trucks to check wastage at the harvest and transport levels,” Badal added.
The food processing sector has got one of the biggest boosts in this year’s Budget, with the Finance Minister earmarking ₹2,000 crore for it. Badal said she had also requested the Finance Ministry to include the food-processing sector in the farm loan category.
“This will help the processor to get credit at 7 per cent, just like farmers,” she said. The Finance Ministry has set a disbursal target of ₹8-lakh crore for farm loans in 2014-15.