Secondary Agriculture in India: Institutional Innovations for Agricultural Development

Despite tremendous growth in agriculture, its share in national GDP has declined during the past 10 years (from 31% to 14% at present). The secondary agriculture can reverse this trend and can add two- to three-fold value to the primary agriculture. The impetus for development of secondary agriculture has been firstly due to consumers’ demand for value-added goods. The changing consumption pattern has also led to higher contribution of food processing industry to GDP with growth rate of 10.6 than of agriculture with 4.71. The export of processed food has also increased from US$ 16,312 million in 2008–09 to US$ 36,212 million in 2012–13. This sector has provided employment to about 8.53 million people in India along with a wide range of contributions to revenue, from 3 per cent to 34 per cent from the alcoholic beverages to foodgrain milling industry, respectively. In ready-to-eat foods, noodles have shown a major contribution of 88.32 per cent and least contribution has been of coffee, only 11.85 per cent. The government has appreciated the need for value addition in the agricultural sector and has identified it as one of the thrust areas. By 2015, government has a vision to increase the level of food processing from 8 to 20 per cent, and value addition from 20 to 35 per cent. To bring this vision into reality, there is a need to strengthen infrastructure for the food processing sector.