INTRODUCTION
In India Agriculture and allied sector is the largest source of livelihoods. 70 percent of its rural households still depend primarily on agriculture for their livelihood, with 82 percent of farmers being small and marginal. The rural communities lack electricity and thus face serious problems of storage and preservation during harvesting periods, particularly, at seasons of increased yields. Huge losses can result from poor storage of fruits and vegetables. The level of losses depends on the storage structure, method of storage and the storage environment. Due to the high perishable nature about 35% of fruits and vegetables are lost their fresh forms in storage in the rural areas.
Importance of fruits and vegetables in human diet is well recognized. Man can’t live on cereals. Fruit and vegetables are essential for balance diet and good health. Nutritionists advocate 90 g of fruits and 360 g vegetable per capita per day in addition to cereals, pulse, egg etc. Fruits and vegetable are good source of vitamins and minerals without which human body cannot maintain proper health and develop resistance to disease. They also contain pectin, cellulose which stimulates intestinal activities and energy giving substances like oils, fats, and proteins. Many fruits have medical purpose. Proper food storage helps maintain food quality by retaining flavor, color, texture and nutrients, while reducing the chance of contracting a food-borne illness.
What is the Problem:
Poor storage of fresh and processed fruits and vegetables by the rural farmers have resulted in huge losses due to lack of knowledge of useful information on the methods of preservation and storing these perishable agricultural produce. It is astonishing that the losses in fruits and vegetables have been quantified as 30-35% accounting for an economic drain of Rs 2.40 lakh crore annually.
Fruits and Vegetables Losses among the major producing state:
| Rank | State | Total Loss (Rs. Crore) |
| 1 | Maharashtra | 10100 |
| 2 | Andhra Pradesh | 5633 |
| 3 | Tamil Nadu | 8170 |
| 4 | Gujarat | 11398 |
| 5 | Karnataka | 7415 |
| 6 | Uttar Pradesh | 10312 |
| 7 | Bihar | 10744 |
| 8 | Madhya Pradesh | 5332 |
| 9 | West Bengal | 13657 |
| All India | 212552 |
Present status of India’s cold chain storage sector:
As per available information, there are 8186 number of cold storages with capacity of 374.25 Lakh MT is available in the country for storing perishable horticulture produce like fruits and vegetables. In their report on cold storage infrastructure in India, Emerson Climate Technologies estimate that in 2012, 6300 cold storage facilities were installed in India with a total space of 30.11 million metric tons. The report further notes that this number is required to double if current levels of food wastages are not to increase further. Also intra-country differences with regards to cold storage capacity stand out: 60%, i.e. 10.187 metric tons, of cold storage space is located in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat and Punjab alone.
Whereas the disparity between supply and demand for cold storage is at 20% in Uttar Pradesh, this gap amounts to staggering 97% in Tamil Nadu, where in 2010 merely 0.0239 million metric tons of cold storage had been installed. The National Horticulture Board estimates that investments in the dimension of about INR 550.74 billion till 2015/16 are required to keep up with growing vegetable and fruit production of vegetables. Currently, 95% of total cold storage capacity in India is in the hand of private players. Due to the ubiquitous lack of cold storage, small-scale farmers are eager to sell their produce as close as possible after the time of harvest since the market value of vegetables decreases by 25% to 40% daily. A report by the World bank states that 10% of this loss occurs in farmer’s markets driving down prices in times of excess supply and in the worst case leads to price crashes resulting in prices that do neither cover production, harvesting or transportation cost.
Perishable Cargo Centre by ITC : A gift to the rural farmers of India
The Perishable Cargo Centre initiative by ITC for availing cold storage facility is a wonderful gift for farmers who can store their extra produce and can sell any time when they get good prices for their commodity. By the help of cold storage farmers can avoid the losses and get higher net return by selling their produce in the market .
Advantage of Perishable Cargo Centre : Storage of fresh vegetables
Fresh leafy vegetables can be kept fresh in storage for 4-6 days when sprinkled with water and covered with polythene sheet. In cool weather, the root of the fresh leafy vegetables were cut off and washed off with clean water. Test conducted with fresh tomatoes reveals that the system could store tomatoes for 25 days at average temperature and relative humidity between 14-20°C and 82-98% respectively. The cooling efficiency achieved with the storage system ranges between 93-98% and a temperature drop of 8oC below ambient was achieved.
How Farmer’s are getting higher return through availing the benifit from Perishable Cargo Centre
A flower grower from Varanasi named as Sri Amit Singh Patel(50) who used to grow marigold he stored his flowers for 1 week in diwali and sold his flowers on diwali date. Normally he was selling his one garland of marigold in 7-8 rupees. But on diwali day he sold the same garland in 25-30 rupees and earned upto 17 rupees extra on an average. In another case one more farmer who stored his pea in cold store when it was 10 Rs /kg which was the price before one week where as after one week he was able to sold the same pea at 17 Rs / kg.
Conclusion:
Our farmers of different parts of India mostly produce specific kinds of vegetables in bulk at shot time and mostly suffers from its distress sell due to lack of storage facility. From the above case studies it was found that the Perishable Cargo Centre by ITC is helping our farmers by solving the major issue of preventing the distress sell .
Rishi Kant Yadav
mob:9793064466
Center Incharge (Perishable Cargo Center – ITC, Varanasi,UP)
M.Sc.(Vegetable Science) Horticulture,
SHUATS, Allahabad, India
