Grass-root farm tech cutting losses, raising incomes

Sunita Muthe lives on a three-acre farm with her two young children, husband and his parents in Kamkheda village in Maharashtra’s Dhule district. Income for the family, at one point in time, came from the maize, corn and cotton they grew on their arid land with no irrigation. The 28-year-old supplemented the farm income by working as a labourer.  

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, farmers were further affected as normal life was disrupted. But Sunita tapped into an alternate source of income and her economic condition began to improve. She has started using a solar dryer to dehydrate turmeric, onion and ginger and then ship them to the market. The process of dehydration increased the shelf life of her produce, eliminated wastage from transport and reduced transportation costs as more produce could be transported in the same vehicle. Instead of having a loss in income, the family doubled their income during the pandemic. 

Innovating farming

Sunita’s story is, however, not unique. She is among the nearly 300 women farmers in four clusters of Maharashtra who have received solar-powered dehydrators from Navi Mumbai-based start-up S4S Technologies. The S4S solar dryers give the produce a year’s shelf life without adding chemicals while preserving over 90 per cent of the nutrients.  

These women are a part of a growing base of farmers who apply grass-root level innovative farm tech to add value to their produce, cut wastage and extend shelf-life. Getting one step closer to the supermarket shelves, they are increasing the value of their produce while cutting down post-harvest losses. 

According to a 2019 study, post-harvest losses for Indian farmers are around ₹93,000 crore, a result principally of the lack of an efficient cold chain as well as post-harvest processing. Farmers lose out on income due to spoilage during transport, increasing transport fuel costs, logistical bottlenecks and compulsion to sell their fresh produce at the given market price due to low holding and storage capacity. A harvest crop is often a curse due to a glut in the market.  

Cutting carbon emissions

Implementation of innovative farm tech such as solar dryers, farm level bulk packaging of dried produce and solar powered cold storage solutions are making a significant difference to the value farmers are obtaining for their produce. While, earlier, they were solely dependent on increasing yield and quality for better incomes, they are now narrowing the distance from farm to fork by adding value to their produce at the farmgate. 

One of the consequences of this adoption of grass-root farm tech is a reduction of carbon emissions. Currently, up to 40 per cent of smallholder farmers’ total produce results in a post-harvest loss. Globally, food wastage contributed to 8 per cent of total emissions. Further, the difference in hauling fresh food that requires more space as against the larger volumes that can be carried by dried produce significantly cuts down transportation requirements, thereby reducing emissions. Most of these farm technologies are climate-friendly and are replacing large-scale, energy-hungry industrial processes with decentralised food processing using renewable energy. 

Decentralised food processing eliminates multiple shipping points, minimises long-distance movement, improves energy efficiency and transfers higher value to the bottom of the pyramid. Recent studies estimate that savings on wastage and transportation increased margins by 15 per cent as compared to centralised processing equally benefiting farmers and customers. 

The government too recognises the benefits of decentralised renewable energy-based livelihood applications. As a result, a policy framework for Decentral Renewable Energy was proposed by the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy in February this year. The policy framework includes solar cold storage and bulk milk chillers that can increase the income of farmers significantly. The government has also announced an ₹1-lakh-crore Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF) to provide financing for agriculture infra projects at farm gate and aggregation points.  

Mitigating climate impact

Policies such as these help address this issue as studies have shown that, from farm to the final sales point, almost half of the farm produce get wasted due to poor infrastructure facilities. 

Given that there are a number of emerging technologies in India that can help farmers earn more while at the same time also mitigating climate impact, what is required now is investment from the private sector to scale up these solutions and modernise the supply chain. Most importantly, for decentralised renewable energy solutions to be adopted by farmers across India, we require enabling policies, particularly affordable and non-collateral-based asset financing as solar cold storage and decentralised renewable energy solutions require capital expenditure.  

New financing models will be required to help farmers access these solutions. Further, it is also important to support self-help groups that can train farmers on the usage of these products. Additionally, the Centre needs to launch awareness-building programmes among farmers about these solutions and their benefits.  

(The author is Chief Investment Officer, Shell Foundation) 

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