The World Bank Group said on Tuesday, 9 June that South Asia — and India in particular — stands poised to unlock substantial gains in employment, investment, and poverty reduction by transforming its agricultural and food systems beyond the farm. The assessment came at the SAPLING High-Level Policy Dialogue inaugurated in Ahmedabad, jointly organised by the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) and the World Bank Group-led SAPLING initiative.

Scale of the Opportunity

South Asia's agriculture sector is valued at over $700 billion annually and employs nearly 43 per cent of the region's workforce. Yet it contributes only around 16 per cent of regional GDP — a structural gap that experts at the dialogue said reflects untapped value rather than a ceiling. More than 30 per cent of food produced in the region is lost or wasted every year, a volume sufficient to feed nearly 300 million people.

Experts emphasised that the next wave of agricultural transformation must move beyond increasing production and focus instead on food processing, storage, logistics, marketing, and value addition — activities capable of generating millions of productive jobs while simultaneously cutting food losses and raising farmer incomes.

India's Progress and Remaining Gaps

India's own trajectory illustrates both the progress made and the distance still to travel. Food grain production has risen from 51 million tonnes in 1950–51 to more than 330 million tonnes today. Processed food exports have more than doubled over the past decade, climbing from approximately $4.9 billion to over $10 billion. The food processing sector now contributes around 9 per cent of manufacturing value added and nearly 13 per cent of India's total exports.

Despite these gains, food processing still accounts for only a small share of total employment, and a large proportion of agricultural produce remains unprocessed. Strengthening cold chains, storage infrastructure, logistics networks, and market linkages, according to experts, can substantially deepen value creation across the sector.

The AgriConnect and SAPLING Framework

To accelerate this transition, the World Bank Group is advancing a combined strategy through two platforms: AgriConnect and SAPLING. AgriConnect is a global platform targeting the connection of 300 million farmers to markets by 2030 through infrastructure investment, policy reform, and private capital mobilisation. The initiative is already supporting projects across India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.

SAPLING, the regional initiative under which Tuesday's dialogue was convened, focuses on policy coordination across South Asian governments. Participants stressed that unlocking the sector's potential requires coordinated action by governments, businesses, investors, and development institutions working in concert.

What Investors and Companies Were Urged to Do

Investors at the dialogue were encouraged to direct capital toward cold chains, warehousing, logistics hubs, processing clusters, agro-industrial parks, and early-stage agri-enterprises. Companies were urged to build integrated value chains, adopt digital technologies for traceability and quality assurance, and invest in workforce skills and capacity building.

With the World Bank Group setting a 2030 horizon for its AgriConnect targets, the coming years will test whether coordinated policy and private investment can convert South Asia's agricultural scale into sustainable economic and nutritional gains.