Drones to Deliver Vaccines?!?

 

In recent months, there was hype in the media about using drones – remote controlled small flying craft – to deliver vaccines. The banter got excited when a government agency invited drone operators to set up a pilot project for delivering medical supplies. It was promptly assumed drones would be to supply COVID19 vaccine to poorly connected rural areas, especially villages in remote mountain regions.

The premise for considering such a vaccine delivery mechanism inferred that many rural parts of India do not have suitable infrastructure and roads to enable last-mile connectivity. I was reached out, for opinion and guidance on how drones could safely bridge the gaps in cold-chain logistics for vaccines.

My immediate response was that the idea is inefficient at multiple levels and I saw no urgent purpose to use drones for delivering these vaccines.

India's Policy Pathway to a Food System

Discussion Paper

‘Game changing’ policies, actions & initiatives of the Government of India that shaped the path for a sustainable Food System

Backdrop

The background to this paper is the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021 (UNFSS) and a review of the 'game changing' interventions that were identified and documented in the five theme documents prepared for this Summit. In turn, it triggered a recap of the various policy actions taken by India in developing its current day Food System. It was seen that many of the initiatives taken in India have been along the lines that fulfil the criteria laid down by the UNFSS. 

The UNFSS has defined three primary criteria to prioritise ‘Game changing’ policies, actions & initiatives across the identified action areas.  These criteria are Impact potential at scale; Actionability (taking into account politics, capacity, costs, tools); and Sustainability (including delivering beyond 2030). Further, it suggests ‘game changing’ solutions should support towards gender equity, empowering youth, and create synergies. 

The concept of 'Food System' - the complex web of activities involving the production, processing, transport, and consumption of food - is about adopting a system approach to how we think and act in relation to food. Note, that while the Food System is inherently linked with agricultural activities, it does not include all of agriculture.

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.

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.

High Technology in Agriculture

Use of technology in agriculture is normally interpreted as technologies that go into on-farm machinery. However, there are many more high-tech applications, involving various sciences, which have come into regular use in agriculture.

Drones are used in farming for various reasons

For example, India has a program called CHAMAN which uses satellite based remote sensing information or geo-informatics to manage crop forecasting. High tech systems, that use overhead Drones, chemistry labs and spectrograph analytics are part of agriculture and are used to manage crops and diagnose soil health. Spread your gaze wide, and you will find almost every possible form of science being applied in the field of agriculture.

General Queries on Cold-chain

1. What are the components of well-designed cold-chain system?
Simply explained, a good cold-chain is one that is designed to integrate the entire set of activities needed to transfer the harvested or produced value from source to consumer, while ensuring all climate controls for the value under its care. Such a system would also safeguard the environment, be efficient in managing waste and comply with food safety standards.

Doubling of Farmers' Income

In day-to-day conversation, a number of terms sometimes lead to confusion, especially when the words involved are in disconnect from colloquial and professional context. Revenue and profit are often used interchangeably by the average person, but these terms have separate meanings, albeit profit being an outcome of revenue. Contextual clarity on terminology is important to avoid confusion of intent or action. 

Value Realisation is directly linked to market connectivity, waste occurs when connections fail.

Revenue is a synonym for income, whereas profit mean net income. Profit, in simple terms, means the income or revenue that remains after all expenses.

Increase in Farm Yields is not always Revenue Generating

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.

Perspective on India's Cold-chain

India has developed an enviable capacity in the cold storage format across the country. As per the 2014 report of IARW (International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses), India had 131 million cubic metres in cold storage capacity, overtaking USA which has 115 million cubic metres. China has the third largest capacity globally with about 76 million cubic metres in cold storage space. The worldwide capacity in refrigerated warehouses was reported as 552 million cubic metres in this report by IARW. Between May 2014 and July of 2015, India added another 200 units or a little more than one million tons to its cold storage space. Though about 5% of the facilities may have become obsolete over the years, India can now lay claim to having created almost 7200 cold stores equivalent to about 33 million tons in holding size, most of these over the past decade.

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?

Shelf life is not storage life

Holding period in a warehouse is opportunity lost.

Keeping food secure for long is not always a worthwhile achievement... making sure it arrives for gainful end-use is the real target. Aim to make sure you reach the consumer - get on the shelf!

Cold-chain is about Speed!

Frequently cold-supply-chain strategists are asked to help develop models for a laudable vision, one that envisions a revenue multiplier for farmers-producers. This Vision is typically presented alongside tactical options, those that focus on enabling small farmers to offset their sales by storing their weekly or seasonal produce, thus avoiding peak season price drops. This is also expected to avoid distress sales due to low shelf life of the perishable produce.

Ergo the cold-store, which is viewed as a buffer space that can extend the trade opportunity, conceivably offering safe, risk free storage and defer the sale to a more favourable future date. This tactic lends itself to the core premise that the buying markets will pay a higher value at a later date, when supply patterns are low.

The Chain, Interrupted or unInterrupted

Cold-chain value systems and options to be considered by planners. (also see Visions and Value chains)

1. The strategic business interest & capability of any concerned enterprise will define the scope and extent of the value chain of each such enterprise. Frankly, the involved models are easily differentiated and would extend across the following two basic categories-

 

a. Uninterrupted farm-to-fork sourcing and distribution of agricultural produce, especially perishables, wherein the fresh whole food does not undergo any change to its primary and natural characteristics. This value chain system is empowered with the agri-logistics intervention that services an out-reach into multiple markets through connectivity. This market link is key to generate a revenue stream that is volume based, and in turn feeds improved post-harvest handling, resultant growth in produce quality & productivity and also offers scope to stabilise demand-supply fluctuations.

Visions and Value chains

Cold-chain development is commonly debated over round table discussions, mostly by business researchers and prospective financiers. The non-inclusion of practical domain experts can tend to make these discussions academic about value chains and the result is a wizardry of numbers. This happens frequently, largely because there are merely a handful of strategic experts who have partaken across the wide range of functions that make the cold chain - it truly is a niche sector! However, the cold-chain is increasingly taking importance as the heart and centre of food security in our future, and such discussions need to move from the rhetoric into the realm of reality.

[There is real need to include operative considerations – after all, even the original round table of King Arthur had a functional head with fighting knights on board, and only one wizard]

Indian agriculture and G20

This February, the Group of 20 (G20) Development Working Group (DWG) holds its first meeting in Turkey. The meeting is the start of many, to prepare for the G20 leadership summit in December 2015. Agriculture and an understanding of next steps in this sphere, is an important matter for discussions. Under the framework of the Food Security Network (FSN), some of the items to be discussed – responsible investment in food systems, enhancing quality employment and incomes in agriculture, expanding food supply and sustainability are key topics.

In all these subjects, the Indian development records important examples, in terms of best practises followed, and the experiences and learnings that resulted. The G20 will do well to take cognisance of the India story, especially in the for agriculture area including cold-chain sector.  Let us touch on what Indian agriculture brings to the G20 table-

Definitions are for convenience

At a recent formal discussion of a PPP proposal, the attending resource persons (consultants from one of big 5), rather categorically reasoned that food processing is not a part of cold-chain business and hence such units were not considered in the project under debate. Hearing such blanket statements is a very distressing experience, particularly when long term plans are being developed with the overarching aim of public good. Such single-minded differentiation between cold-chain and processing units stems from an academic or research bent of mind, inexperienced in matters of business. 

Yet, if the aim is optimal utilisation of resources, with profitability and success in mind, then these narrow interpretations need to be shed and put aside, firmly. In the world of commerce, reason relates to align opportunities, maximise revenue, increase profitability options - common business sense.

Fire and Ice

In school, we learnt that the greatest boost to human evolution occurred when our ancestors learnt to manage fire. Domesticating fire for the purpose of cooking is considered the supreme causal factor for hastening the evolutionary development of homo-sapiens. Today, no human group eats all of its food raw.

If we were to feed on only raw uncooked food, we would need to chew for more than 9 of our waking hours each day.

Without fire, even if we had the chewing prowess of chimps, which delivers them a rate of 400 food Calories an hour, after done gathering the food we would be chewing it for the rest of our waking hours. Either that, or an active brain of this size would not be sustained.

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.

Food security breach… and bridging it

Cold-chain infrastructure pieces comprise a physical bridge that enables the farm-to-fork flow of food. How does one correctly evaluate the infrastructure capacity needs of a cold-chain?

Only with access to relevant information and only with clear understanding of what comprises the total cold-chain. Unfortunately, such assessments in the past have related to one sole component, the cold store. The most commonly quoted capacity gap was assessed in 2010, where that report stated that the country (India) needed creating another 37 million metric tons in storage capacity.

That 2010 analysis assumed that all infrastructure created, continued to be operational, irrespective of technology or ageing. The assessment did not resort to first hand data on the existing usable and available capacity in the country. As a mere desk review of statistics, with the existing capacity not ascertained, the gap mentioned served purpose at a very basic level only.

Perpetuating fallacies - more on market research

Yet another spate of research reports were sent to me, some having quoted the National Centre for Cold-chain Development (NCCD); almost all referring to out-dated data and sadly, confidently extrapolating that into futuristic scenarios.


I cannot help but point out some of the errors and omissions, else yet another set of documents, poorly understood and researched would be bandied about as gospel (distorting whatever they aim to propound)!

Perpetuating misinformation or inexperienced interpretations is the biggest threat to India's cold-chain development. Worse… when they are given guise of authoritative alignment. More so, because these studies are frequently lapped up by the gullible who buy this largely to make plans and strategise their businesses.

These theorised documents would be agreeable and pass muster if they were but reports or outputs from study groups... if only they did not attempt to lend their secondary collation undue legitimacy aimed at decision makers.