Scope, Prospects and Opportunities of Employment Creation in Different Food Processing Sectors in India

The paper is focused on the potential of employment creation in different sub-sectors of food processing in the country, which may help in improving farm productivity and promoting enterprise development of the rural India. To work out the returns to scale and elasticity of substitution for different subsectors of the unorganized food processing sector, Cobb Douglass and Constant Elasticity of Substitution function have been used. The study has revealed that the unorganized food processing sector is transforming from labour to capital-intensive structure and therefore, there is a tendency to employ more skilled labour to manage the growing capital. Most of the subsectors are facing decreasing returns to scale. The study has observed that there are two subsectors, viz. ‘Production, processing and preservation of meat, fish, fruits and vegetables, and oils and fats’ and ‘Manufacturing of grain mill products, starches and their products, and prepared animal feeds’ where substitutability of labour for capital exists, which implies that still there is scope for employment of skilled labour force. To boost food processing, two policy areas that deserve attention are development of skill and infrastructural facilities in addition to entrepreneurship.