Half of India’s food goes to waste | Fusion - WeRIndia

India is a developing country and many Indians know the fact that more than half of the people are unable to meet their daily needs with their meagre resources. This is one side of coin.

But, on the other side of the coin nearly half of the food is being wasted in the country.This is shocking but true.

The study of ASSOCHAM-MRSS India revealed that around 40 to 50 percent of the total production in India gets wasted. This include food and fruits which costs $440 billion.

India has storage facilities that is capable of storing only 11 per cent of the total perishable production of the country.

In other words, approximately 6,300 cold storage facilities are available in India. These have the capacity of 30.11 million metric tons which is not more than 11 per cent of total country’s production.

The main reason for wastage of food in India is not having adequate cold chain facilities.

High operating costs are the main barriers for this cold chain market.

In addition to this, cold chain sector is facing the following difficulties: Lack of sufficient infrastructure, shortage of skilled personnel, erratic power supply and obsolete technology.

The cold chain market in India has been growing gradually in the last few years. It is anticipated that this trend will continue to grow until 2020.The cold chain market value in India is $167.24 billion in 2016 and it is estimated to reach $234.49 billion by 2020.

At present, retail cold chain is struggling to be more effective. However, it can be improved using technology.

GPS and sensors are very beneficial to monitor and track temperature to keep the food in a safe manner.

They can also monitor the position of truck to make sure that control will be more for a better product quality.

Image credit: Matoli wastage image by Joegoauk Goa is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Image Reference: https://www.flickr.com/photos/joegoauk73/28847814024/