From the floor of Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, Union Food Processing Minister Chirag Paswan told an audience of farmers, industry stakeholders and policymakers on Wednesday, November 11, 2026 that India's agricultural future must be measured not just in tonnes harvested — but in the value that travels from the field all the way to a global shelf.

Speaking at the Bharat Agriculture Conference 2026, organised by Kisan Tak — the agri initiative of the India Today Group — Paswan laid out a three-link chain that now anchors the government's thinking: 'Farm to Factory aur Factory to Global Market' (Farm to Factory and Factory to Global Market). The framing, he said, is not rhetorical. It is the operating logic behind efforts to give farmers a fair price, better market access, and greater economic returns through food processing.

Why 'value addition' is the operative phrase now

India has historically obsessed over production numbers — record wheat output, record rice procurement. What that metric misses is the spread between what a farmer earns at the farm gate and what a consumer pays for a finished product. Paswan's conference remarks zeroed in on exactly this gap. He stressed that increasing AI-based farming, modern technology adoption, and processing-led value addition are the instruments the government intends to use to close it.

The policy scaffolding is not new. The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana, launched in 2017, was designed to build the cold-chain and processing infrastructure that would allow perishables to survive the journey from village to market. The Pradhan Mantri Formalisation of Micro Food Processing Enterprises (PM FME) scheme, approved in 2020, targeted the vast informal tier of small processors — giving micro-units access to credit, branding support and market linkages that had previously been out of reach.

AI in the field — from buzzword to policy priority

What is newer in Paswan's articulation is the explicit emphasis on artificial intelligence and digital tools in farming itself — not just in the factory. Since 2014, multiple central ministries have pushed technology adoption across the agricultural value chain, but AI-led precision farming has only recently moved from pilot programmes to mainstream ministerial messaging. At Bharat Mandapam, Paswan signalled that the Ministry of Food Processing Industries sees itself as a bridge between the farm-tech conversation and the processing industry's hunger for consistent, quality raw material.

The 'Global Market' ambition and what it demands

The third link in the chain — global market access — is where the ambition is most pronounced and the execution most demanding. For Indian processed food to earn shelf space internationally, it requires standardisation, cold-chain continuity, and compliance with importing-country regulations — gaps that government schemes have tried to address with varying success. Paswan's framing at the conference reinforces the government's stated intent to position India's food processing sector as a global export powerhouse, backing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's broader push to lift agricultural value-chain earnings at scale.

The Ministry's next steps — including any fresh budget allocations or scheme guidelines for AI integration and value-addition infrastructure — will be the real test of whether this 'Farm to Factory to Global Market' vision acquires hard rupee targets or remains an aspirational frame.

The conference stage was set; now the policy calendar has to deliver the sequel.