Food processing potential of Northeast

The favourable agro-climatic condition makes India's Northeast region a natural organic hub of a variety of high-value fruits and vegetables. Mega and mini food parks provide a vital market link to the growers, generate employment but the region has not yet optimally harnessed the potential. Of the 22 mega food parks operational in the country, only three are located in the region, one each in Assam, Mizoram, and Tripura. The Mega Food Park Scheme of the Ministry of Food Processing facilitates the establishment of food processing units equipped with a robust supply chain. The supply chain includes collection centres and primary processing centres to which farmers groups, self-help groups or individual farmers can supply their products for cleaning, grading, sorting, ripening, pulping, sorting, pre-cooling, packing, and temporary storage. The central processing centre of the mega food park is equipped with quality cold storage, testing laboratory, cleaning, grading, sorting, and packing facilities, dry warehouses, specialized storage facilities including controlled atmosphere chambers, pressure ventilators, sterilisation units etc. from where traders can supply fresh products for domestic retail markets and food entrepreneurs can make value-added products and supply it to exporters or for domestic sales. Around 25-30 food processing units in a Mega Food Park with a collective investment of Rs.250 crore is estimated to lead to an annual turnover of about Rs.450-500 crore and the creation of direct/indirect employment of about 5,000 persons benefitting about 25,000 farmers which demonstrate the role it plays in providing the market linkage to the growers besides employment and livelihood generation. North-eastern states enjoy the advantage of getting a capital grant under the scheme at the rate of 75% of eligible project cost, i.e., total project cost excluding the cost of land, pre-operative expenses, and margin money for working capital. Before implementation of the Horticulture Mission for North East and Himalayan States (HMNEH), Assam had 3.83 lakh hectare (9.83%) under horticulture crop against the total gross cropped area of 38.96 lakh Ha which increased to 6.4 lakh Ha (15.67%) in 2014-15 following implementation of HMNEH. The production was also more than double from 33.95 lakh MT to 71.15 lakh MT while productivity increased by 25%. Other states in the region also recorded a huge jump in the area, production and productivity of horticultural crops benefitting from the mission. HMNEH scheme was subsequently subsumed under Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH), a centrally sponsored scheme under which, the Central government contributes 90% of total outlay in the case of the northeast and Himalayan states and 60% for all other states. An impact evaluation of the National Horticulture Mission (NHM) and HMNEH carried out by Global AgriSystem Private Limited and published last year revealed that the area under fruit crop declined by 6.38% even though the area under vegetables increased by 10.91% during assessment years from 2014 to 2019. The region could utilise 67% of the total allocation Rs 1648 crore during the period as compared to all India average of 80% utilisation which says a lot about the low capacity of the states in the region to utilise funds in time. The region, however, achieved the highest increase in per capita income (75%) under MIDH, followed by the followed by Northern Hilly States (67%) and west zone (58%) which only proves the importance of MIDH for growers in North-eastern states. The evaluation found that NHM assisted a targeted number of 60,816 infrastructural facilities in the country under evaluation for improving post-harvest management of horticultural produce which is important for reducing post-harvest loss. Two States -Karnataka and Maharashtra could plan and utilise 15354 units out of the total 34720 units accomplished, accounting for more than 40% of the achievement. As most horticultural crops are perishable, the northeast region needs to plan better for post-harvest management for the growers to sustain the enhanced income from area expansion. The Ministry of Food Processing has set a target of processing 25% of total agricultural-horticultural produce in the country while less than 10% of total production is currently processed. Apart from the huge potential to tap the export market, rising domestic demand for fresh and quality processed food fuelled by health consciousness and lifestyle changes has created huge potential for value-added fruits and vegetables. North-eastern states can tap this potential by focusing on post-harvest technologies and food parks, Development of the cold chain from farms to food parks and cluster of processing units to provide better and assured market linkage to growers in the region. Improved cross border connectivity has also opened up huge opportunities for exporting fresh and processed horticultural products from the region. There is no dearth of the fund while a favourable funding pattern of 90:10 under MIDH takes away much of the financial burden on the states in the region. What the region lacks is a strong vision to harness its potential for capturing the domestic and export markets.