Sometimes, a plan can be a key to open the doors to future prosperity if the implementation is right and there is a political will supporting it from the backstage. In this case, it is about the prosperity of the farming communities.
Karnataka Agriculture Minister N Chaluvarayaswamy on February 4 announced that the state government is introducing a first-of-its-kind post-harvest value-addition model aimed at significantly improving farmers’ incomes by moving beyond cultivation-centric agriculture. The model focuses on processing, branding, packaging and marketing of produce, enabling the farmers to earn four-five times higher incomes and reduce their dependence on middlemen.
Chaluvarayaswamy announced this at a two-day conference “Agriculture Beyond Production – Empowering Farmers”. It was organised by the Department of Agriculture under bilateral cooperation with the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare through the Support of Agroecological Transformation processes in India (SuATI) project, a German Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)-India initiative commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
The SuATI project promotes sustainable agriculture while strengthening, adapting and scaling up agroecological practices to enhance livelihoods, soil health and biodiversity. The project is focusing on Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Assam.
This step is in the right direction, which would be of much value to the entire farming community if systematically implemented.
But the new model should also aim at generating business opportunities for the agrarian womenfolk to enhance their incomes to much more than four-five times their current earnings. An ideal opportunity lies in fruit and vegetable drying – a method by which the produce is dehydrated, powdered, packed and then stored, with a shelf-life that extends to months and years.
Dehydration of fruits and vegetables is an ancient practice, which removes up to 80%-90% of the moisture by using heat. It inhibits microbial and bacterial growth, and enzyme activity, shrinking the produce to allow compact storage, and concentrates its nutrients. It is rehydrated with water while cooking without the loss of its flavour or nutrients.
The common methods of dehydrating fruits and vegetables are through sun/solar drying and electric dehydrators. The process involves applying heat to the produce to remove its water content, typically at low temperatures to ensure that the produce does not get cooked while dehydrating it. The purpose of dehydrating the produce is to prevent spoilage, reduce weight/volume for transport, and enable off-season consumption.
The dehydrated produce can offer snacks like dried fruits and vegetable chips; dried herbs, sun-dried tomatoes and vegetable flakes; fruit and vegetable powders for instant soups, baking, or beverages; besides using the dried vegetable powders in common Indian dishes like sambars and gravies. It also offers compact, lightweight, pantry-staple food for camping or even as emergency supplies in times of need.
In the mid-1980s, scientists at Application of Science & Technology to Rural Areas (ASTRA) (now Centre for Sustainable Technologies) of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, unveiled biomass-based dryers for efficiently drying vegetables and fruits by exposing the produce to varying degrees of heat depending on their respective water content. This was popularised by Technology Informatics Design Endeavour (TIDE), a Bengaluru-based non-government organisation that works with the Indian government’s Department of Science & Technology, linking research organisations and communities by adapting technologies for a greener future. It had conducted a series of workshops to educate farmers and their families to utilise the benefits of these fruit/vegetable dryers to run lucrative businesses by marketing the dried produce through cooperatives.
The advantage of this concept is that a major problem of the farmers could also find a lasting solution. It would effectively insulate them from glut-induced price crashes, which often lead to frustrated and desperate farmers dumping their valuable produce on the roads, incurring avoidable losses and wastage of the produce that takes so much of hard work from sowing to harvest. The produce, instead of landing by the roadside, can be diverted to the dryers, the powdered produce packed and marketed through cooperatives to the markets directly without the middlemen interfering in the farm-to-market cycle.
You may call it “killing many birds with one stone” – a win-win for all concerned many times over. The benefits: business opportunities for womenfolk in every farming household as the dryers can be set up within home premises; no more dumping of produce due to price crashes for farmers as the dried produce can be sold to rural and urban markets through cooperatives; women empowerment; optimal utilisation of the produce without wastage; and a fillip to the rural economy.
Moreover, it falls in line with what the agriculture minister said the new model would focus on – processing, branding, packaging and marketing the produce.
We have the tools for progress. But we need to use them optimally and efficiently to gain from them. Progress needs a sincere push, followed by handholding for the farming community to march towards prosperity with the appropriate scientific tools.