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Global recession is a serious issue to both the developed and developing economies. Reports published by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (2019–20) have revealed that the growth of gross domestic products (GDPs) has shrunk significantly in the last few quarters. Due to such recession productions by many, manufacturing industries have reduced significantly, and a large number of people have lost their work, and scope of new job creations has also decreased. Food sector has also been affected by global recession (Agbedeyi & Adigwe, 2018). Food Processing Industry (FPI) is India's one of the most sunshine manufacturing industries and ranks fifth among the Indian industries in terms of production, consumption, and exports. The country ranks second in global ranking in terms of producing food products next to China. Despite the global recession, the FPIs helped the Indian economy to maintain the growth of the GDP and have created new job opportunities. Around 70 lakh persons are employed in both registered and unregistered food processing units in India. The value of food exported in the year 2018–19 was US $35.30 billion which was 10.69% of India's total export (i.e. US$330.67 billion) (MoFPI report, 2018–19). In this backdrop, the present chapter will try to find out the role of FPI in the Indian economy and will also highlight the prospects of this industry in the coming years.

This chapter presents first a theoretical model of conflict between two agents characterised by a two-sector economy. In a contested sector, two agents struggle to appropriate the maximum possible fraction of a contestable output. In an uncontested sector, they hold secure property rights over the production of some goods. Agents split their resource endowment between ‘butter’, ‘guns’ and ‘ice-cream’. Eventually, tradable goods made of both butter and ice-cream produced by conflicting parties are sold to the rest of the world. Therefore, the opportunity cost of conflict depends also on the relative profitability of contested and uncontested production. In particular, productivity of uncontested production and profitability of contested sectors are countervailing forces. The empirical section focused on a panel of Sub-Saharan African countries for the period 1995–2006. Results are not fully conclusive. However, there is robust evidence that prices of manufactures (interpreted as the uncontested ice-cream) are negatively associated with the likelihood of a civil war. Eventually, international price of manufactures is also associated with a higher GDP per capita growth rate. The concluding remark seems to be that an increase in world prices of manufactures would make civil wars less likely.