India's post harvest loss problem

Often we’re told to be thoughtful about how much food we serve ourselves. If you can’t finish it, it’s simply best that you don’t take it. Being callous here translates into a significant food wastage problem. But there’s also another side to food wastage. The kind that happens before this food travels to your plate ― we’re talking about post-harvest loss.

According to a study backed by the government, in 2022 India lost about 5–13% of its fruits and vegetables and 3–7% of other crops including oil seeds and spices between harvesting and consumption. If we were to give it a number, it’s a problem worth over ₹1,52,000 crores!

And it hasn’t witnessed any significant drop over the years. To put things into perspective, India grew 23% more grains and crops in FY22 than it did in FY15. But the post-harvest losses have only reduced by less than 1% during the same period.

So why has the progress been so feeble, you ask?

Well, to begin with, India has a post-harvest infrastructure problem. See, tropical weather can affect the quality of perishable crops. You can’t just sit them in a room until they’re ready to go. You need proper packaging material, climate-controlled storage environments and even proper cold storage facilities while crops are transported. But we don’t have enough of it.

Take storage facilities for instance. India’s storage facilities are only sufficient to accommodate 10% of its plantation products. And if you look at cold storage, India has a capacity of just 32 million metric tonnes of cold chains as against the 35 million metric tonnes that it actually needs.

And although there isn’t enough data to tell how much of this is shared amongst crops, meat, fish, eggs and dairy; it’s a given that the latter would naturally occupy most of the storage space.

But here’s the thing. The government actually has schemes that help farmers set up better post-harvest infrastructure. Pradhan Mantri Kisan SAMPADA Yojana (PMKSY) for example is a scheme that specifically aims to finance a certain percentage of the cost that goes into building cold storage chains and other infrastructure that adds value to crops.

This means that if farmers invest in such facilities, the government contributes anything between 35–75% of the cost up to ₹10 crores, depending on the state. That should be a great way to help alleviate the problem. Then why isn’t it helping?

You see, schemes like these don’t cover single or standalone storage facilities. And nearly 85% of our farmers are either small or marginal farmers who may not be able to invest heavily in such infrastructure. Even if they take advantage of credit schemes, they still have to bear a portion of the project cost and repay their debts. It just may not be viable. Sure, renting cold chains or storage houses is an option. But these rents don’t come cheap. So, farmers would rather bear post-harvest losses than carry the burden of these fat costs.

Enter irradiation, a small step to bring down that burden.

Irradiation is a process where food is passed through gamma radiation to destroy bacterial microbes. This delays spoilage and ripening, preventing sprouting and increases the food’s shelf life. And it’s not a new technique.

See, India began mango irradiation in 2007 and 10 years later we successfully exported irradiated mangoes. Soon after, we began researching the effects of the technique on increasing the shelf lives of crops like potatoes and onions. And research by the National Horticulture Research & Development Foundation has proved that irradiating onions can help prevent 6% of summer losses.

In 2018 the FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) even gave the process a go-ahead by busting safety myths and introducing guidelines on irradiation. It doesn’t harm your food, only sterilises it. And till now we’ve only used it to improve the quality of exportable produce, mostly poultry, fish and eggs. But it can be a great way to store locally consumed crops for a longer period too.

But here’s the catch. Irradiation is only a prelude to proper storage, not a substitute. Besides, setting up an irradiation facility also needs a good investment of ₹6–10 crore. So again, the cost of using it won’t come cheap.

And this sounds a lot like coming back to square one. The bottom line ― the government needs to focus on increasing access to affordable post-harvest infrastructure.

Without that, we’ll have no solutions. Rather, only a string of ballooning problems and post-harvest losses.

Source: Finshots