What a $3.3 Trillion Dollar Industry can do to your food chain, and why local economies are so important.

Industrial Food Processing — American experience and lessons for India

Abstract -

Innovations are born out of a necessity. So by definition, they are mostly good in intentions or at worst — part of the numerous experiments, trying to find the best way to solve a specific problem often with limited visibility of future.

What defines if they were good or bad or had shades of grey, is the hindsight — what kind of economic incentives it planted?

How society responded to them? And the whole domino effect it created, which has the power to change destiny of society we live in or are going to live with in future.

A technology or innovation is never bad; seeking appropriate profit from an innovation is a healthy practice. But problem starts when we detach morality, forget local values and traditions, trade long term sustainability and externalize the cost on environment, public health to seek private and abnormal profit.

We will take a couple of innovation extraordinaire and see why they started, impact on current society with scope for course correction. This paper looks at the evolution of food processing industry in the developed world with a focus on the USA, and the form it’s taking now in a developing nation like India.

We will elaborate on community health, cultural and environmental impacts in both the countries, the course corrections happening and what should be done in the future. The paper argues that policy and regulatory level support to maximize profits for food processing industry may produce catastrophic results based on our food habits, population density, strained natural resources, dismal preventive healthcare infrastructure and practices.

To read more … https://ballotboxindia.com/ap/food-processing-india/5182041549/

Thought about pasting the whole article here, but then it felt like polluting the internet with duplicates.

The research report is published on BallotboxIndia and we are constantly tracking the food processing industry and its evolution. Feel free to click connect to track it or join the efforts in your own district.

I’m of course a foodie and is on a mission to save my own Indian Okra(Bhindi), Tinda (kind of a squash), Kaddu(Pumkin, Try native Indian one), Ghiya(Indian Squash), Tori(another Indian Squash) etc. which are under assault right now. To understand the urgency I would recommend you to visit an Indian village deeper with small farms and do a taste.