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Don’t look for perfect fruit
Sushil Bhan on why cold chains are not a luxury but a necessity to supply food to the poor
MITIGATION OF food wastage’ is the core concept that must drive thought behind India’s food supply chain development, whether cold or ambient. Cold is when food is put under refrigeration through application of energy and ambient is when it is not. Our cold chain must step in to prevent food losses, while preserving nutrition and taste. Heaps of good food is wasted when there is a grading process and aesthetics (the look of the food item) is emphasised. India does not need this misplaced direction. We can’t waste and we do not have a choice.
We have poor farmers on one hand and the case of millions of hungry on the other. We have spiralling demanddriven food inflation and we have pressure of rising population. If India fails to solve the puzzle of its food losses, India’s social economy will be forced to enter the ‘oneway only’ road to devastation. The world can waste food but India absolutely does not have that liberty.
Food is wasted from production all the way to plates — and this happens everywhere in the world.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the challenge of food loss is universal, regardless of technology differences. They peg world food losses at an astonishing 40-percent level. fao works with the pristine agenda of making every possible ounce of grown food succeed in its journey to a mouth somewhere on the planet. I am a big fan of that.
I have provided expertise to the veritable who’s who of the global supply chain leaders of the west. However, in all my years with these companies, we never once claimed to be in the business of serving interests of the world’s hungry. Thankfully, I don’t see the business like that any longer. All that we did back then was to give our market every type of produce all the year round. Our cold chains were not engineered to reduce food wastage, they were there to concentrate on food aesthetics and quality. We did that gloriously well. The focus of the world has to change and fao is trying to bring this about. I am a convert.
I am on mission to marry what I learnt in the west about food preservation with the loss prevention needs we have down here in India. A combination of the two methods helps people do good-business and do good both at the same time. The world must lead India and India certainly must lead the world in reducing wastage. This is not just the new mantra of piety but this according to me is the new mantra of making loads of money. Going by FAO’s 40-percent wastage rule and applying it to India’s agri-GDP figure leads you to a realm that will shatter Warren Buffet’s own train of thought. There is a $100-billion-per year opportunity hidden in India’s annual food wastage vault.
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Estimated/assumed waste percentages for each commodity groups in each step of the food supply chain for South and South-East Asia |
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Agricultural
production |
Post-harvest
handling and
storage |
Processing and
packaging |
Distribution:
Supermarket
retail |
Consumption |
| Cereals |
6 |
7 |
3.50 |
2 |
3 |
| Roots & Tubers |
6 |
19 |
10 |
11 |
3 |
| Oilseeds & Pulses |
7 |
12 |
8 |
2 |
1 |
| Fruits & Vegetables |
15 |
9 |
25 |
10 |
7 |
| Meat |
5.10 |
0.30 |
5 |
7 |
4 |
| Fish & Seafood |
8.20 |
6 |
9 |
15 |
2 |
| Milk |
3.50 |
6 |
2 |
10 |
1 |
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Source: ‘Global Food Losses and Food Waste: Extent, Causes and Prevention’ FAO, 2011 |
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Using cold chain applications in transportation and storage, quite a fair portion of this produce can immediately be saved. Cold stores are necessary to preserve seasonal baseline staples like potatoes. Like my pal P Kohli, the cold chain expert, says with the cold chain you buy time. This buying of time in the cold store is really an essential for food supply planning, not just profiteering.
The cold chain is a virtual food creator. It brings to the market food that would otherwise be lost. So it is a good immediate step.
Finally, it is higher yields that will really breathe life into the farming sector in India. That will, of course, spin from aggregation of farms, if and when India can make the contract farming concept kosher. Right now, land-leasing is a can of worms no politician has the guts to touch — even if it is not an impossible change to promote and execute. The right politics to achieve this and much more is not far for India. Educated kids of farmers will not fight each other but will combine their holdings for mechanised farming to become possible. That is when the big change will come. The cold chain can start a side revolution of increasing produce numbers to market and do so by converting waste into wealth, without imposing on anybody’s revenue.
Cold stores don’t make vast commercial sense in the present environment. The warehousing deficit, especially cold storage, will find ways to progress from a chain cost model into a chain value model. And this puzzle will be solved with new eyes of the educated young that look at old problems with a more enabled outlook.
Some people in government talk of agri-market reforms but it is not easy to pull this off surgically. We must take cold chain awareness to the grassroots because this ‘cold swell’ will make farmers learn of alternative routes to market. They don’t have to be at the mercy of a poor solution. Cold chain can fire that change. Government is going to have to understand that this swell can be stirred through awareness and capacity building and never by doling out diktats and subsidies. Cold chain is the market lifeline for the farmer because it buys him alternatives to capitalise on his produce.
INDIA’S COLD chain must carry what the farm produces. This is where the west makes a mistake. The uniform-size same-colour fruit is a result of a lot of rejections. This picking and choosing sounds like a completely insensitive idea when you know that 25,000 people die of hunger every single day in the world. I should not care about the beauty of my fruit if it comes at such a cost. India as the mother heritage of humanity must not fall for fascination. Our cold chain is meant for preventing food loss and not for pampering the rich — we should not forget this.
Our bananas are tasty enough. We certainly don’t want to waste the bunches that bend at a different angle and do not have stickers pasted on each one. Like the apples from New Zealand that surely can’t keep doctors away more than our Golden Delicious can.
We are a sane nation with strong preservation instincts: our cold chain needs to assimilate that ethos. May no food be wasted, may no one ever go hungry. Via cold chains.
Sushil Bhan is a strategy and technical operations veteran of 25 years.
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