Value-added foods are increasingly beneficial in addressing food security, nutrition and poverty. The term “value-added foods” includes crops or foods that have been enhanced through a variety of improvements, including processing, fortification, increased safety or nutrition, better packaging or extended storage. The benefits of value-added foods include providing better nutrition; greater income for producers; access to new markets; and new processes to improve packaging and storage to reduce waste and ensure greater food safety.
Representing
the Northern province, 4 Agriculture Instructors, 3 Agriculture facilitators
and 16 small entrepreneurs including 10 female entrepreneurs participated in
this training. and the majority of entrepreneurs who attended were cassava chip
makers and bakery manufacturers.
Following the bad economic recession in the country, most of the bakeries are collapsing in Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu districts due to price escalation and scarcity of wheat flour. Therefore, the main task of this training programme was not aiming at replacing wheat flour completely or partially with manioc flour. but introducing other manic-based value-added products like sago, biscuits and cake. Value-added food production is cost-effective, can make easily and has high nutritive value compared to wheat-based foods. All participants had hands-on experience too.
The key contents of the training are Post-harvest technology of Manioc, Identification of Manioc processing equipment, Identification & characteristics of raw materials, Packaging, Designing of a label with participants as a group activity, Solutions for your packaging (technical) and other relevant problems, Suitable packaging/material for your products, Contact details for packaging equipment and packaging material, Usage of packaging equipment with entrepreneurs, Preparation of Manioc flour, Manioc starch, Manioc Cake, Manioc sago and Manioc Biscuit.
Story by R. Sanjeepan (Institutional Development & Capacity Building Specialist), NP, CSIAP
