About 30% of fruits and vegetables grown in India (38.77 million tonnes amounting to US$ 13 billion) get wasted annually due to gaps in cold Chain like poor infrastructure, insufficient cold storage capacity, unavailability of cold storages in close proximity to farms, poor transportation infrastructure etc. This results in instability in prices, farmers not getting remunerative prices, rural impoverishment resulting in farmers’ frustrations and suicides. India wastes more fruits and vegetables than it consumes. Enough attention has been paid at the Pre-Harvest stage for boosting up the levels of production by techniques like crop rotation, soil conservation, pest control, fertilizers, irrigation etc. But, Post Harvest issues have been addressed inadequately. Despite having achieved national food security, the well being of over 200 million Indian farmers and farm workers who have been the backbone of Indian agriculture continues to be a matter of grave concern. India wastes more fruits and vegetables than it consumes. Every 1% reduction in wastage of fruits and vegetables would translate into savings of US$ 0.13 billion.
Operating costs for Indian Cold Storage Units are a whopping $2 plus per cubic foot per year compared to less than $1 in the West. Energy Expenses make up about 28% of the total expenses for Indian cold storages compared to 10% in the West. These factors make setting up of cold storages difficult, unviable and uneconomical.
About 30–35% of these losses can be reduced by making use of solar photovoltaic power for cold storages and transporting the freshly harvested fruits and vegetables in refrigerated containers using solar PV panels to power the refrigeration machinery thus closing this gap in the cold chain. We would need about 40,000 refrigerated containers of standard 20 feet size with about 5 million sq. ft. of solar PV panels fixed on their rooftops to be totally independent of the power grid or DG sets using fossil fuels, to transport this freshly harvested produce, placed strategically at various locations in the farms all across the country. Commercially, the payback period for this mammoth project is quite attractive. Refrigerated Containers score substantially over conventional refrigerated trucks in terms of suitability for this application in Indian terrain. The requirement for powering Cold Storages through Solar PV panels would be much greater. India is a sunshine country and it is time we harness this energy for the betterment of the society.
