Speaking at an industry event, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti also admitted that a minute fraction of the food produced in the country is processed.
"Though my ministry is doing a good job to uplift the food processing industry, there is still lot to be done,” Jyoti told an agri-business and dairies summit in Gujarat.
“As per a recent report, only 2% food produced in India goes for processing. At the same time, food worth Rs 92,000 crore is wasted every year.”
To reduce wastage, Jyoti claimed her ministry was actively working towards “an effective cold chain system” to increase cold storage and refrigerated transportation.
She acknowledged India only had half the cold chain infrastructure it needed to prevent wastage—a longstanding issue that only seems to be getting worse.
Jyoti also claimed that she had an affinity with the plight of farmers affected by a crumbling supply chain, and knew the solution, which would involve smallholders.
"Since I also belong to a village, I have seen that small farmers could not add value to their produces, such as vegetable, which they are forced to sell at a cheaper rate due to lack of proper storage facility.
"I believe we should build small cold storages at village level so that farmers can store their produce, and sell whenever they get a suitable price for,” she said.
One of the food processing ministry’s top priorities now is to establish more food parks, partly to generate new employment in the industry.
"At present, around 1.7m people are employment by the industry, which has the capacity to generate even more employment,” she said, singling out Gujarat, which has “huge potential” but too few few food processing plants.