Paper Title
An Evaluation of the Economic Aspects of Agro-Food processing Sector

Abstract
India is known for its multi agro climatic zone, thus producing a wide variety of farm produce, which provides necessary impetus for food processing industries to sustain and thrive. A well developed agro and food processing sector will reduce wastages, ensure value addition, generate additional employment, earns foreign exchange and ultimately leads to better socio – economic condition of millions of farm families. Thus the growth of this sector would be critical for accomplishing the 4% average annual growth rate of agriculture . This agriculture growth rate may also be considered as a pre –requisite for achieving the overall target of 9% growth rate for Indian economy. The recurring nature of food inflation in the country has also brought in sharp focus ‘supply side’ constraints which points to the need for increasing agricultural production. At the same time it is equally important to save each grain produced by reducing the wastage. This would improve farmer’s income and economic viability of agricultural operations. Keywords - Food processing, Value addition, Convenience food, sunrise sector