The food-processing industry in India plays a vital role in the national economic development
and has potential to meet the local needs and export requirements. It helps in processing
agricultural products such as field crops, pulses, horticultural crops, livestock and fisheries and
converting them to edible and other usable forms. Thus, transformation of agriculture through
creating forward and backward linkages with industry has been emerging as an important option
to overcome the increasing challenges of creating employment opportunities for increasing
labour force and sustaining the livelihood of households in rural areas. Most important point in
the food-processing is that a sizeable portion of raw material processed in them being rural based
it has a very high employment potential with significantly lower investment.