CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. - After meeting with Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff and visiting greenhouses, produce auctions, a hydroponic farm and other sites of interest, a group of agriculture officials sat down Thursday to a fairly typical Pennsylvania meal - chicken, macaroni and cheese, coleslaw and apple compote.
Standard fare for Pennsylvanians, but perhaps new to the palates of the visitors from the states of Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Rajasthan in India. They were here as part of a three-year U.S. Agency for International Development program known as Strengthening Agricultural Marketing Systems (SAMS).
The days of American parents admonishing children to clean their plates by invoking the starving children of China or India are past. India can produce what it needs to feed a population of more than 1.1 billion people, but the country needs to develop its marketing, storage and processing capabilities to further increase productivity, said Patricia A. Fulton of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.