Potato - Global Solution for Food Security
India International Potato Expo 2010 was started with National Anthem and a welcome address by the President ICC, Mr Jayanta Roy explaining four focused issues i.e. Potato remunerative prices for potato farmers, Promotion of National Potato Promotion Group, strengthening of domestic market and consumption promotion, availability of cheaper and easy export credit and development of post-harvest infrastructure logistics
Tweet -- India International Potato Expo 2010 was started with National Anthem and a welcome address by the President ICC, Mr Jayanta Roy explaining four focused issues i.e. Potato remunerative prices for potato farmers, Promotion of National Potato Promotion Group, strengthening of domestic market and consumption promotion, availability of cheaper and easy export credit and development of post-harvest
infrastructure logistics.
Dr Sanjeev Chopra, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture talking on behalf of the Ministry Of Agriculture, explained the great significance of potato in rural economy ,National economy as well as in food security and
made an appeal to all value chain partners to come together to strengthen this very important crop which can play a major role in future as far as the food safety and hunger issues are concerned. He assured that Ministry of Agriculture will make all the possible efforts through NHM and NHB to strengthen Potato sector of our country.
Dr Swapan Kumar Dutta, DDG,ICAR, addressing the conference on behalf of Indian Council Of Agriculture Research, the apex research organization of the country for agriculture research & development, said that Potato is a wonderful and third most important crop which is being grown in 150 countries and came to India only 00 years before but made a remarkable growth as far as the research & development is concerned and established it's presence internationally. He also informed that special varieties which will have quality and more proteins in Potatoes increasing their food value are likely to be released after trials and the varieties which can be grown in summers will also be soon released after the successful trials. He also said that now, India is a member of the consortium of Potato Genome Sequencing which will enable our scientists to have access to better tools for development of new and specialized varieties of Potatoes.
Mr Bijay Kumar, Managing Director of National Horticulture Board emphasized on the issues being addressed by the Ministry Of Agriculture through NHB and highlighted some of the initiative like strengthening the
cold chain etc.
Mr Ashok Sinha, Secretary ,Department of Food Processing said that their Ministry is very aggressively engaged in participating in the development of food processing in the country and it is like a relay race for achieving efficiency and proficiency in the sector and his Ministry is at the third position .He emphasized that we should have world class Food Processing Research and Incubator centers to facilitate industry and take our country to the world leadership. He also made an appeal to the various channel partners to come together to strengthen each other and create self-employment opportunities with the help of food processing.
Prof.M.S.Swaminathan, the legendary agriculture scientist and founder member of Green Revolution , said that India has come a long way as far as research and development in Agriculture are concerned. He gave a major emphasis on the availability of disease free Potato seeds and a special reference for the promotion of true potato seeds .Explaining how Potato and sweet potato are going to play a major role in food safety innext two decade, he made an appeal to establish Potato Villages to have a integrated activities, addressing the entire value chain of potatoes.
Hon'ble Minister Shri Subodh Kant Sahai,the Chief Guest of the inaugural session expressed his happiness on the initiatives taken to promote potatoes and hoped that this will certainly bring the solutions for all potato channel partners and assured all possible support from his Ministry to strengthen Potato Processing in the country. He said that he has already made potato processing tax free for five years. By quoting the example of Europe that in Europe the agriculture is being done by 7% population while in India 70% population is involved in agriculture and even than we are behind, so let's team up ourselves and grow together to strengthen ourselves and our country. He gave a message to the farmers that their farming should be market driven and made an appeal to all the participating states to come forward with the potato policies for helping thefarmers and industry.
There was also a official release of a Potato Report by ICC & Yes Bank highlighting the issues, problems and solutions in the presence of the dignitaries.