AP CM at World Food India 2017

Along with food security, farmers’ welfare is also important, said Hon’ble Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Shri Chandrababu Naidu. He also said that Andhra Pradesh is creating an ecosystem for agriculture and food processing to prosper in the state during a special Andhra Pradesh session organised as part of World Food India (WFI)-2017 today in New Delhi.

The Chief Minister participated in the session after attending the inaugural session of WFI with Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. A three day event ‘World Food India-2017’ is being organized by the Ministry of Food Processing Industries, Government of India in association with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) from 3-5 November 2017. The event is hosting over 7000 stakeholders in food processing sector from across 60 countries.

Andhra Pradesh being one of the partner states for the global event held a special session today to showcase the potential and advantages of Food Processing sector in AP to the global community. The session was attended by potential investors and global delegates working in the food processing sector in big number.

The Chief Minister while speaking in the  State session said, ‘Along with food security, farmer’s welfare is also important as farmer has to sustain his economic activity which is agriculture. We are providing the inputs, best quality seeds, abundant fertilisers, water and others to promote agriculture in the state. We have achieved 100% soil testing to inform the farmer about the crop. Now, we are going for drones to do soil testing. We are supplying micro nutrients free of cost.’

He said, ‘Twenty years ago, I promoted Information Technology in a big way and as a result Hyderabad became hub for knowledge economy. Today, I am promoting agriculture and food processing to create an ecosystem in the state to benefit farmer. For the last three years, Andhra Pradesh has been focussing primarily on agriculture and food processing mainly on increasing productivity and reducing cost of production.’

He said that the primary focus has been in horticulture, aquaculture and livestock. He expressed confidence that a day will come where everyone in the country will eat fruits produced in AP as we are targeting for 1 crore acres of horticulture.

Chief Minister said, “We are leveraging all technologies, best practices and knowledge available across the globe to benefit the farmer. We are using geo-tagging and smartphone applications to diagnose crop health in real-time. We are closely working with World Economic Forum on new agricultural vision. We are also creating Farmer Producer Organisations and organise 1 million farmers in the state.”

“To overcome water problem in the state, we did the exercise of digging 6 lakh farm ponds in a record period of 2 years for rainwater harvesting. We linked Godavari and Krishna rivers to irrigate lakhs of acres in Krishna delta area”, he said.  “We are also going for micro irrigation to use water effectively. Our target is to achieve micro irrigation for 1 million acres a year and eventually bring 1 Crore acres of agricultural land under micro-irrigation”, he added.

“Andhra Pradesh offers the best infrastructure including ports, airports to support the agro processing sector in the state. AP also offers the best Food Processing policy which supports establishing of mega and integrated food parks”, Chief Minister said.

The Chief Minister extended the support and cooperation by inviting investors present there to invest in the state. He also said that the state wants to grow at 15% for the next 15 to 20 years.

Shri Girija Shankar, Secretary to Government of Andhra Pradesh for Food Processing gave a presentation on investment opportunities in food processing in AP. Hon’ble Minister for Industries and Commerce, Food Processing Shri N. Amaranatha Reddy; Hon’ble Minister for Agriculture, Shri Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy; Hon’ble Minister for Marketing & Warehousing, Animal Husbandry, Dairy Development, Fisheries and Cooperatives, Shri Adi Narayana Reddy from the Andhra Pradesh Cabinet were also present at the event.

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