Bhagalpur: D.S. Gangwar, additional secretary, Union ministry of food processing, on Wednesday admitted that Bihar would have to do many things for marketing post-harvest products of the farmers to save losses of 30-40 per cent.

He also assured the Bihar Agricultural University (BAU), Sabour, to arrange for international markets particularly like in American counties for its honey products. BAU, Sabour, is all set to start honey production at its newly installed processing unit here.

Gangwar was addressing a gathering of farmers and agriculture entrepreneurs on Wednesday morning during a seminar on food processing. The seminar was organised by Confederation of Indian industry (CII), Bihar.

Gangwar stressed the need of establishment of food processing units and food parks to help the farmers. He also highlighted Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana. "Agriculture still controls the economy of the states like Bihar but it has to import items like pickles, jam, jelly, sauces, cornflowers, cornflakes, chips, etc which are made of fruits or foodgrain. This morning when I was having breakfast at the Circuit House, I found a bottle of sauce was from Jamshedpur, the place known for steel. Ironically, despite plenty of food and fruit productions, we still have to depend on other places for such items because of lack of food processing units here," he said.

Though Gangwar tried to project the features of Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana for changing the agricultural scenario in Bihar, he had to face strong resentment from some guests as well from the audiences, mostly farmers.

Speakers like Bulo Mandal, the RJD MP from Bhagalpur, raised objection to such polices which are executed without preparing the ground work properly. "If we are concerned about post-harvest scenarios, we should first develop infrastructure facilities at the ground-zero level otherwise results of such efforts would be zero," he said pointing out plights of farmers.

He urged the government to address the farmers' problems first before making any such action plan. Dozens of farmers echoed Mandal and some of them even tried to interrupt Gangwar's speech. Some farmers logically put their points on concepts saying those are irrelevant unless and until have proper background support.