State agricultural university MBA admission Food Processing & Technology Management: practice questions

1 · Status of the food processing industry · easy

Which product is an example of tertiary food processing?

1. Wheat flour milled from cleaned, tempered wheat in a roller mill
2. Ready-to-eat breakfast cereal packed for retail sale
3. Crude groundnut oil pressed from shelled kernels in an expeller
4. Dehulled split pulses

2 · Post-harvest losses and their reduction · medium

FAO's State of Food and Agriculture 2019 estimated the share of food lost globally between harvest and retail at roughly:

1. 4 per cent
2. 40 per cent
3. 14 per cent
4. 70 per cent

3 · Post-harvest losses and their reduction · medium

Contract farming for a processing plant is exposed to 'side-selling'. This means:

1. Contracted farmers sell produce to other buyers when open-market prices exceed the contract price
2. The processor rejects produce when market prices fall
3. Farmers sell inputs supplied by the processor to neighbours only after harvest
4. The processor sells finished products through several channels

4 · Food safety in processing · medium

ISO 22000 differs from a stand-alone HACCP plan mainly because it:

1. Removes the need for hazard analysis
2. Applies only to primary producers
3. Is a law enforced by national regulators, replacing each country's own food safety act and its inspection system
4. Adds management system elements such as policy, objectives, internal audit and management review to HACCP

5 · Cost analysis of processing · easy

A spice-grinding unit has annual fixed costs of 6,000,000 currency units. It sells ground spice at 50 currency units per kg and variable cost is 35 per kg. What is the break-even quantity per year?

1. 120,000 kg
2. 171,429 kg
3. 70,588 kg
4. 400,000 kg

6 · Food laws and the FSS Act · medium

China's Food Safety Law, first enacted in 2009, was substantially revised in which year to create a stricter regime?

1. 1995
2. 2015
3. 2001
4. 2020

7 · Plant-level project formulation · easy

A bakery producing fresh bread is usually located near its market because:

1. Flour cannot be transported
2. Bread has a very long shelf life
3. The product is perishable after processing and gains bulk relative to its ingredients
4. Bakeries need to be near wheat farms

8 · Case studies in processing ventures · medium

A tomato paste plant built to use table tomatoes bought from open markets suffers high cost and low utilisation. The most likely technical-commercial reason is:

1. Paste cannot be made from tomatoes grown in open fields
2. Open-market tomatoes are always more expensive than contract tomatoes, whatever the season or the region
3. Table varieties are low in solids and irregular in supply, so more fruit is needed per kg of paste
4. Paste plants cannot use tomatoes from more than one region

9 · Case studies in processing ventures · medium

An integrator in broiler production typically:

1. Supplies chicks, feed and advice to contract growers and buys the birds at a formula price
2. Buys broilers only from spot markets
3. Sells feed and medicines to farmers on credit but plays no part in buying or marketing the birds
4. Owns every farm that raises its birds

10 · Case studies in processing ventures · medium

A village rice mill that charges farmers a fixed fee per quintal to mill their own paddy is following which business model, and what risk does it avoid?

1. Contract farming; it avoids quality risk
2. Toll (job-work) processing; it avoids raw-material price risk
3. Co-packing (contract manufacturing); it avoids volume risk
4. Integration; it avoids market risk for farmers