Biz@India - February 2020 - Gulfood Special

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Challenges For Indian Food Industry:Sustainability, Higher Value & Biodiversity With countries around the world facing the wrath of climate change every passing day, there is one sector experiencing a looming existential threat and that is the agriculture sector. Be it because of deluge or draught the rising incidents of climate change are disrupting and destroying farming not just more frequently but with much more punch. In this issue of Biz@India we see even though India has transformed from being very deficient in its food production to the biggest producer of several products, yet the country is far from being sustainable. With accelerating degradation of arable land, increasing farm output is nearly an impossible task, if the farmers continue with their current methods of growing crops- with very large and often poisonous doses of chemicals to preserve the fresh vegetables, fruits and grains for a much longer duration. However, with rising awareness at the farms but also more importantly at the level of consumers, there has been a move, over the last few years, towards sustainable farming. Worried consumers are now increasingly looking for organic food products, while farmers, facing economic crisis and a severe shortage of water, are adopting sustainable methods. One good news is that solar powered storage facilities are coming to the rescue of farmers who lose every year most of their crops due to lack in large-scale climate-proof storage capacity. With the rise in use of solar power, some companies have developed storage rooms and cubicles, powered by solar energy, increasing the shelf life of the harvest nearly 10 times and boosting farmers’ incomes. We also talk about the illegal cultivation of GMOs and how the government is divided in its opinion on the question of GMO cultivation.