Food items in India cost around Rs 580 Billion go waste each year because of fragmented farming, old laws and lack of appropriate infrastructure of post-harvest.
By sighting the report 'Rabo India Finance', Subodh Kant Sahai, the Minister of Food Processing Industries, said that Food items cost around Rs 580 Billion go waste each year because of fragmented farming, old laws and lack of appropriate infrastructure of post-harvest, as per the news published by India Infoline.
Mr. Sahai also said that loss, because of wastage, can be trim down by developing food processing industry, intensification of post-harvest infrastructure like cold chains, storehouses besides filling gaps in supply chain.
Because of the fragmented nature of farming, the food-processing sector of India is bearing the burden of diseconomies of scale. In addition, high cost of power and funds and irregular supplies also makes production expensive. Fragmented & complex food chains that are ruled by small farm players and intermediaries also add to the food wastage.
Also, dearth of refrigerated transport and cold Storage facilities lead to inefficient handling of perishables that manifest itself into the wastage. According to some estimates, the post-harvest fruits & vegetables losses in India bypasses the total fresh fruits and vegetables production in Britain.
The wastage of food items can be checked through continued improvement in farming and also big investments in technology, capital equipment and skills. Loosely operating players, like farmers, seed companies, educational institutions, commodity, farmers, cooperatives, & value-added producers need to be integrated together.
Private sector's help can fill this annulled. Companies like Bharti, Reliance, and ITC have already started their farm-to-fork initiative. Others like Subhiksha and Aditya Birla Group have also made huge plans.
In the United States, Europe, and United Kingdom, retailers like Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Tesco have built outstanding supply chain capability within food sector. But in Indian food processing market, political resistance is restricting these foreign players to enter the market. Also, there are worries of dislocation of present neighborhood stores.
As per the research analyst at RNCOS, "To reduce the post-harvest loss, sufficient post-harvest, cold storage and cold chain facilities need to be set up. Development and advancement of existing post-harvest facilities at farm-level should be encouraged to diminish the post-harvest loss. Post-harvest management is an area requiring improvement through research & capital investment".
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