Adityanath govt hopes to harness sugar mills for food processing in UP

The state's sugar mills are idle for six to seven months a year, after cane crushing gets over

In the first week of January, tonnes of potatoes were dumped in front of the Vidhana Sabha  here by angry farmers, after a price crash following a bumper crop of about 15 million tonnes (mt) last year.

While agricultural and horticultural production has been rising in Uttar Pradesh, the supply bottlenecks, lack of cold chains and a non-existent food processing industry has meant low returns to many and massive farm wastage.

Now, the Yogi Adityanath government wants to harness the idle capacity of sugar mills during the off-season, for food processing. The state's sugar mills are idle for six to seven months