NEW DELHI: The government is working on geotagging all warehouses, cold storages and refrigerated vans in the country for real-time tracking of the location and status of space availability. The data will be captured in a mobile app, which can be used by the government as well as farmers to locate the nearest warehouses and store their produce, reducing the risk of wastage. This will also help curb distress sale by farmers and help them get a remunerative price for their produce by timing their sale rightly.
“We have mandated the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) to identify and geotag the agri storage infrastructures (ASIs) across the country. So far, a survey of 82,000 ASIs has been completed out of 1.08 lakh structures identified across the country. After verification, the GPS coordinates and the data will be uploaded on Google Maps for public use,” said a senior food ministry official, who did not wish to be identified.
He said the country suffers harvest losses of about 15% due to lack of information on storage facilities.
“As per an estimate we lose Rs 44,000 crore every year due to harvest rot. Even if there are storage facilities available in the vicinity, farmers don’t know about them. With the mobile app, they will have access to information and space status of nearest warehouses, cold storages and mobile refrigerated vans,” said the official.
He said the total storage capacity in the country is about 162 million tonnes, out of which cold storage capacity is just 32 million tonnes.
“Cold storage facilities are dominated by the private sector. We need more than double the existing capacity to safeguard the interest of our farmers. By providing them proper agri infrastructures, we can encourage them to shift to high-value horticulture produce from food grains which are in excess,” said the official.