Analysing the cause of unsustained growth in agro exports, Rajagopalan told The Financial Express that this sector was at present riddled with several weaknesses like very low productivity level in many of the agro products, lack of appropriate pre and post harvest management practices, lack of infrastructure in terms of good roads, marketing network, lack of cold chain linkage to maintain the quality of fresh produce, lack of quality awareness and lack of knowledge about the requirements of global trade.

He said that all these weaknesses have a very severe impact on the performance of agro product sector. So much so that the level of domestic agro products export was less than one per cent of the total world agro trade. Therefore a very concertedeffort was needed to be made to overcome these weaknesses. If developing countries like Thailand, Chile, Mexico, Brazil could overcome their initial difficulties and boost their agro trade why can't India, he quipped.

India is the second largest producer of horticulture products in the world, producing about 110 million tonne of horticulture products per year. However, due to lack of proper cold chain facilities and appropriate technology for preservation and increasing shelf life of horticulture products, the wastages amounted to about 40 per cent.

Further due to lack of appropriate marketing network, the number of intermediaries involved from farm to the market level was very high. Given this situation, the horticulture products from our country were subjected to value loss of around 50,000 crore both because lack of proper infrastructural facilities spurred wastages and due to the influence of additional middlemen or commission agents. Hence, the realisation at farm level in India was around 30 percent of the retail price as against a realisation of 50 per cent of retail price in developed countries like US, said Rajagopalan.

He said by adopting the approach followed by the developing countries like Thailand, Chile, Mexico and Brazil, India should primarily ensure that concerted efforts were made to introduce cold chain linkages from farm to the market. APEDA, National Horticulture Board and National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) are primarily assisting private entrepreneurs to set up cold chain facilities in their units. But the investments on these cold chains set up by different units were not found viable as they operated for only a short period and remained idle for rest of the year.

In this context, Rajagopalan suggested adoption of a strategy wherein these facilities were provided collectively for a region with potential strengths of producing horticulture products throughout the year or for most parts of the year. This would enable the facility to be utilised throughout theyear and therefore, the service will become economically viable both because of economies of scale of operation and also due to its operation for a longer period of the year.

He said APEDA has already identified centres for common cold chain facilities in different potential regions throughout the country. The entrepreneurs can safely invest and set up common cold chain facilities in these regions with assistance from APEDA, NHB or NCDC in case of cooperatives. These centres would be serving farms in the respective regions of an area of around 5000 to 10,000 hectre. The common cold chain should have basic facilities like cold storage, humidity control storage, control atmospheric conditions storage, precooling facilities, washing, sorting, grading and packaging facilities.

The services of these centres will not only increase the value of the farm products but also remove most of the unwanted biodegradable bio mass from the horticulture products which can be utilised as farm manure or even as cattlefeed.

Rajagopalan also stressed the need for regerigerated vans for transport of these products from the the rural based common cold chain facilities to the cold chain units in the nearest wholesale markets from where they could be further transported to supermarkets.