Current & Waves

The term Warehouse is almost as old as agriculture. Although in recent, agriculture has seen few major transformation but the post harvest technology and storage is still struggling hard.  Indian  farmers incur loss of Rs 92,651 crore per year in  post - harvest , the primary causes of which are poor storage and transportation facilities. Ironically, to improve the state of storage and transportation facilities for food crops to control the post harvest losses all it need is an investment of Rs 89,375 crore. This is according to a high-level Dalwai committee report, a figure lower than the annual post-harvest losses. About 65-70% of total foodgrains produced in the country are stored at farm level. There are estimates that substantial quantity of foodgrains (about 6.0% to 10% of total production) are damaged due to moisture, insects, rodents and fungi. When Govt is trying hard to double the income of farmers by 2022 they can’t ignore the post harve...

I was into a project regarding storage and supply chain . The primary data we needed was to know the movement of commodities and requirement of space. Warehouses are supposed to be the loci in the supply chain, so we started with warehouses.  To know the supply chain better and requirement of storage space we contacted warehouses for data pertaining to it. Only one of 3 warehouses were able to map the movement plan in last 5 years. Most of the warehouses ended up in saying they do not map the requirement of space or movement plans. Data is a backbone for any research so ultimately the research could not be carried out. This incident made us to learn - 1. The warehouses in India has not changed for last 60 years when it comes to operation. 2. Maintenance of records are also on the same track. 3. There is lack of making system efficient through vertical and horizontal field co-ordination. An update and upgrade of working of warehouses is required so that data management should get ea...