As India sizzles, rotten bananas expose a cold problem
Wholesaler Gadadhara Mohanty in Bhubaneswar anxiously awaits trucks that are transporting bananas from several hundred kilometers away to a food market early every morning. A single day’s delay in selling the bananas can lower the value of his stockpile by at least 10% because his warehouse is not refrigerated.
He’ll go through bushels and check the skins for rot when they get there.
For India, where hunger and malnutrition are still widespread despite the loss of up to 15% of fruits and vegetables after harvest, this is a serious issue. The main cause of the ruined food is inadequate infrastructure. The majority of farmers in this area are small-scale producers with little resources for supply chain refrigeration and cooling. Furthermore, India is second only to China in terms of food waste at the retail and consumer levels, with close to 80 million tons wasted. South Asia is one of the most sensitive regions to rising temperatures, so the numbers there are likely to get worse as climate change exacerbates extreme heat.
While most of India’s infrastructure has been upgraded under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, farmers claim their industry has not advanced as quickly as others. Despite the fact that more fruits, vegetables, and cereals are being produced, there is still insufficient refrigeration along the entire supply chain. The distance between farmers and wholesale marketplaces, as well as India’s rutted highways, slow down storage, transportation, and retail distribution outside of urban regions. Therefore, spoiling during transportation raises the cost of procurement and drives up consumer prices, which is a big worry ahead of next month’s Indian election. Produce has a short shelf life, which makes it more difficult to hedge than grain, which can be kept for months or even years.
Consider bananas. Trucks from fields in the nearby state of Andhra Pradesh travel for almost twenty-four hours to reach wholesale markets in Bhubaneswar, in eastern India. The world’s greatest producer of highly perishable bananas is India. Fruits are covered with leaves during transit to keep them cold. It is in no way a solution: in the fiscal year 2020–21, India lost 1.53 trillion rupees ($18.4 billion) worth of food, with spoiled fruit accounting for nearly a quarter of that total.
The nation’s small-holder farmers have not been fairly served by the cold storage capacity, according to Pawanexh Kohli, a former head of the government-run National Centre for Cold-Chain Development. “Distress sales are a must for them.”
The stakes are higher for farmers in India due to the rising heat. Cultivators in Andhra Pradesh claim that more crops are being lost to harsh weather. An estimated 80 to 130 bananas each ruined bunch is a significant financial loss for the farmers, who may lose up to 150 rupees every bunch. Margin is already tight, and rising expenses for agricultural inputs like fertilizers will only make it worse.
The 50-year-old Venkatanaidu Guntreddi, who cultivates bananas on 150 acres (61 hectares) of land, believes there are no practical solutions. The highest recorded maximum temperature in Andhra Pradesh in 2023 was the second-highest since 1901. Guntreddi believes that having a cold storage facility will help his produce last longer, but he cannot afford it.
During a tour of his farm in the village of Parajapadu, Guntreddi pointed to wilted banana trees and stated, “There is no profit in cultivation because brokers make most of the money and we are hit by extreme weather.” He implored the local government to assist farmers in establishing wineries and banana chip shops as a means of reducing losses from crops scorched by the sun.
India can store more than 30 million tons of cold food. Retailers and distributors mostly use the coolers for potatoes, which are a mainstay in practically every Indian meal. What the nation lacks are enough pack houses and refrigerated trucks, which are establishments that store produce fresh from harvest.
Farmers who cross some of the region’s most productive banana growing regions said that because pack-houses are typically located far from their plots, they are constantly in a rush to offload fresh fruits and vegetables. They are then compelled to sell crops at whatever prices traders and brokers are willing to give. In India, the food processing ministry states that establishing storage facilities, such as pack-houses, is subsidized by 35–50%. Infrastructure for frozen storage is slightly more heavily subsidized. However, many argue that the expenses remain excessively high despite these incentives.
Former farm secretary Siraj Hussain claimed that the fact that most food is sold by small businesses and street sellers informally deters investors from upgrading infrastructure. He declared, “Large investments in the food chain are not considered profitable.”
When contacted for comment on this topic, Anita Praveen, secretary of the Ministry of Food Processing Industries in India, did not respond.
Recently, in order to avoid the intense sun, 32-year-old Bhanu Rokkam, a banana farmer from Thotapalli, Andhra Pradesh, started harvesting early. After over four hours, he had collected about 250 bunches. Two brothers who bought the fruits from Rokkam as middlemen paid between 200 and 220 rupees per bunch (not including transportation). That’s around 12% less than what Rokkam may anticipate in the fall and winter. According to him, brokers take advantage of the warm weather.
Retailers in the nearby state of Odisha are similarly limited by the absence of cold storage facilities, which forces them to buy only as much fruit as they can sell that day. This restriction occasionally affects availability and sometimes impairs their capacity to stockpile. The majority of supply chain losses are borne by consumers because increased fruit prices are the result of costs being passed along along the chain.
