Growth and Performance of Food Processing Industry in India

The food processing industry connects farmers to consumers through process of value addition to agricultural produce by enhancing their shelf life and quality. Based on the quality of inputs and value addition process, the products are marketed at domestic and international markets, thus contributing to GDP of the country. This industry is of significant importance to India since large population depends on farming for income generation, specifically rural areas. This paper is an attempt to analyse the growth of food processing industry in terms of employment and value addition. The research further probes into industry performance based on efficiency change and Total Factor Productivity Change over past ten years,that is, from 2008 to 2018.The Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model which is non-parametric in nature is adopted to compute the efficiencies. The results indicate that there is increase in number of processing units while employment opportunity has shrunk. The empirical evidence suggests that the industry performed better during 2008-2013 compared to recent years. The value addition in food processing industry has tremendously amplified over years. In addition, the technical efficiency of food processing industry has increased while TFP change for overall industry shows decline.