Initiatives in surplus F & V Management: Inclusive and entrepreneurial pathways

Abstract

Rational farmers increase production expecting higher profits, but when production exceeds demand, distress sale often results. The abundance of fruit and vegetable production in India gives it the title ‘fruit basket of the world’. This paper focuses on the challenge of perishability of surplus F & V that is multiplied due to suboptimal post-harvest management, inadequate storage and transportation facilities. The goal of the paper is to identify the measures (rather, the lack of them) that can address the aforementioned problem, highlighting the regional variations in good practices of surplus management. The authors focus on the all India data to indicate that states with high production is high but low storage capacity throws open opportunities for specialized intervention in the form of processing businesses. Innovation of new processing technology especially at the farm-level may efficiently utilize a large proportion of underutilized agro-surplus.