Use of Geothermal Energy For Food Processing Indian Status

PRESENT STATUS OF FOOD INDUSTRY

One of India's proudest accomplishments has been achieving self-sufficiency in food production and that the country produces a wide variety of agricultural products at prices that are at or below world values in most cases- states the office of the agricultural affairs of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The country's food industry's sales turnover at the end of the year 2000 was at US$ 31 billion. India's food processing industry covers fruit and vegetables (onions, garlic, tomatoes, potatoes, peas; pineapples, bananas, apples, papaya, grapes and oranges); meat and poultry; milk and milk products, alcoholic beverages, fisheries (prawns, shrimps, tuna, cuttlefish), plantation, grain processing and other consumer product groups like confectionery, chocolates and cocoa products, soya-based products, mineral water, high protein foods and other products.

 

According to the official statistics of the Ministry of Food Processing (MFP,2001), India exported processed vegetables and fruits worth US$ 2 billion in 1999-2000. India's food exports is about US$ 6 billion whereas the world total is about US$ 440 billion. Thus, India is one of the world's major food producers but accounts for less than 1.5 percent of international food trade. Foreign investment, in food processing sector, after the economic liberalization stood at US$ 2 billion. In recent years, processed food demand has grown considerably--especially from the middle-east countries. In the case of fisheries sector (prawns, shrimps, tuna, cuttlefish, squids, octopus, mackerels, lobsters and cat fish), there is a growing demand for canned and processed fish from India. India's 8,041 km of coastline, 28,000 km of rivers and millions of hectares of reservoirs and brackish water have large marine product base and variety of fish that can be processed. During the last few years, India invested to the tune of US$ 0.7 billion in this sector with a foreign investment of the order of US$ 0.2 billion. The fish production potential in the exclusive economic zone is 4 million tonnes while the actual production is 3 million tonnes. This excludes the inland production which is of the order of 3 million tonnes.

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