Cooperatives To Increase Food Storage Capacity Across Country
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Cooperatives to increase food storage capacity across country

The National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) has initiated efforts to increase storage capacity in the cooperative sector and thereby encourage the development of cold storage infrastructure all across the country.

Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, , has asked the relevant departments to launch special efforts to attain this objective. Besides, NCDC's board meeting also apparently emphasized on development of cold storage facility all through the country.

The decision was taken in the view of large-scale loss of food grains and vegetables in the godowns all across the country.

Pawar has assured full government support in setting up cold storages all across India. Setting up of storage facilities in rural areas will help improve the rural economy and support livelihood at the same time reduce wastage and enhance food accessibility.

NCDC aids in the promotion and development of cooperative in agriculture and rural oriented activities.

Presently, India’s food cold storage facilities can merely put up 21.7m tons of produce compared with a requirement for more than 31m tons.

Surprisingly, more than 30% of produce is lost due to pitiable post-harvesting facilities and shortfall of cold chain infrastructure. Certainly, India has nearly 21.7 million tons of facility, however, this is not adequate and needs over 10 million tons more of such capacities.

For that matter, export related infrastructure for agri produce is also insufficient especially at seaports and airports.

In India, cold storage facilities are mostly utilized for single commodity like potato, apple, grapes, orange, pomegranate and flowers etc. which result in poor capacity utilization.
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