The Horticultural Producers’ Cooperative Marketing and Processing Society Ltd. faces considerable amount of loss every year for not having cold storage facilities.
Bengaluru, Sept. 04, 2018 :Fruits and vegetables are highly perishable products and are thus subjected to considerable loss and wastage. They do not have long shelf value, except for certain vegetables such as onions, ginger and other root vegetables. The farmers’ cooperative society faces loss every year due to the perishable nature of fruits and vegetables.
HOPCOMS tries to counter the wastage by drying some of the fruits and vegetables and then preserve them for later use. Yet, it still faces a significant amount of loss due to the perishable nature of fruits and vegetables.
Malikkaarjunaiah, a second division assistant at HOPCOMS agrees to the fact that HOPCOMS’ not having a cold storage facility is detrimental for both the cooperative society and the farmers who have to face the burden of huge losses.
Lack of cold storage facilities often leads to attacks by pests and other organisms. The damage leads to a reduction in market value. In some cases, the produce is declared unfit for consumption and has to be destroyed.
In a 15-year period study carried out by the HOPCOMS of the loss through perishable from 1999 to 2014, it has shown a compounded annual growth rate of 2.04 percent.
Partha Choudhury, an Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) scientist feels that the traditional ways of storing the product has certain disadvantages. It often leads to wastage of food, reduction in nutrient quality, damages like colour changes and loss of weight of the product.
Since India is a tropical country, about 25 to 30 percent of the produce of the commodities are spoiled every year. Hence, the pressing need for having cold storage facilities increases manifolds in a country like ours.
