Start-up Rural India, after Covid19

Most of rural India witnessed an unseasonal reverse migration of its able bodied manpower, who had to return perforce fearing prolonged economic duress. In the backdrop of the Covid19 pandemic, this movement from urban centres to home villages, was undertaken in defiance of a nationwide curfew. 

As this virus spreads its reach, it is quite evident that the risk of disease is heightened in localities with a high population density. When working in cities, these workers (termed migrants), tolerated crowded and squalid living conditions, usually in illegally built building blocks and slum areas that do not even pretend to have basic norms. Typically employing themselves in blue collar jobs and semi-skilled tasks, often as informal labourers, this workforce by now would understand that they are safer in the more open expanses of rural India.

The Farm is Humankind's first Solar Powered Factory

Agriculture is most commonly correlated with the act of cultivation (and herding, catching, harvesting) and a few other field activities, carried out by agricultural serfs. It is also mostly linked with food security concerns. However, farming is the heart of the agricultural value system, a value system that not only ensures that humankind and their livestock gets fed (food & fodder), but has also evolved to provide feedstock to industries.

Agriculture has a unique place in the primary economic sector, as its output can be directly consumed (as in milk, meats, fruits & vegetables) and also service the demand of industries (as in cotton, leather, medicinals, chemicals, processed foods, and more). The other main primary sector is mining, where the harvest of natural resources (eg. ore, crude, coal, etc.) has to necessarily undergo transformative processes before it can come into gainful end-use. Like how cotton cannot be worn unless converted into cloth, and oilseeds have to be processed for oil before it is consumable.

Farm Productivity is not an End in Itself!

Heard at a recent lecture, the expert recommendation that India should direct greater resources for raising the field level productivity of crops, to alleviate two core concerns: the food security needs of the nation and to improve incomes for farmers. 

As someone who might have believed in these platitudes till a few years ago, I think it is imperative to set some records straight, and offer a more nuanced picture.

While one cannot ignore the 'general sense', it should be understood that productivity in itself is not a 'silver bullet', and except at individual enterprise level, such focus is in many ways contraindicated.

Stop Food Loss to Counter Climate Change

Artificial refrigerant gases cause global warming... and so do decomposing gases from wasted food

India has the world’s largest footprint in cold stores. Recent estimates indicate that over the last few decades we have created 130 million cubic metres of refrigerated warehousing space. Most importantly, 97% of these happen to be users of natural refrigerant gases – in effect this is the world’s largest collection of users of ammonia based refrigeration. This is not a petty matter, as most of the developed world has cold stores that deploy artificial refrigerants. Unlike ammonia, these artificial fluids - Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) - either caused Ozone depletion or are negatively impacting Global Warming.

In Europe alone, reports indicate that almost 50% of their food chain refrigeration is using such gases with a thousand times higher global warming potential (GWP) than CO2. Ammonia on the other hand, extensively used in India, has zero GWP.

Logistics Connectivity is Key to Reduce Food Loss

Food has one end-use, to be consumed...food loss or waste occurs when food left unconsumed - or, when food perishes before it could reach the market within its normal saleable life cycle.

Food loss can be reduced... only by ensuring that all the harvested produce reaches its logical end use. This means that food delivery mechanisms must also aim to counter the perishable nature of food, to extend its saleable life cycle.

Meeting the Global Food Crisis

There is a Food Crisis in our world - can it truly be met by sowing more crops, increasing farm level yields, to store that food in banks? These are among some topics I mooted when speaking on the subject at UK's House of Lords.

There ought to be no doubt that there exists a global food crisis! Across the world, 795 million people suffer from hunger - Hunger is defined as a painful sensation from want of food! This pain afflicts 525 million people in Asia, 215 million in Africa, 37 million in Latin America & Caribbean and others. Women form 60% of these numbers and a child dies every 10 seconds from hunger related inflictions.

What is notable, is that this food crisis is most prevalent in producing regions, areas that have a food surplus, not food shortage. The question is why? Why is it, the producing areas face more hunger?

Cold-chain in relation to Food losses

Cold-chain does not directly reduce food loss - it is incongruous to proceed with that as the key premise. Cold-chain can only help take food to intended uses, preferably directly from farm-to-fork.

Food has one use, to be consumed, and food is lost when not consumed. Food loss can be reduced by facilitating that the produce reaches all logical and feasible end uses.

The idea of cold-chain is not to preserve endlessly, it only applies technology to extend the marketable life of a perishable product, for a finite duration.