In Rourkela, farmers store unsold produce in solar-powered cold storage rooms and sell it at a later date, cutting food waste and securing farmers' income.

Rourkela

In Rourkela, Odisha, a pilot project has introduced solar-powered mini-cold rooms managed by a cooperative of local women. These cold rooms allow small-scale farmers to store their produce for a nominal fee, significantly reducing spoilage and increasing their earnings. 

The initiative, supported by the United Nations Development Programme and Bloomberg Philanthropies, has reached over 1,500 farmers across five markets. According to a UNDP survey, food wastage in Rourkela has dropped by a third over four years, and farmer incomes in the region have risen, highlighting the project's positive impact on food security and livelihoods.

How women in Rourkela are driving a new food security model

Pumpkins! Pumpkins! Pumpkins! Just 20 rupees for you. It's been a long day for the vendors trying to sell produce at Rurkala's markets, and things get harder as the heat starts to spoil fruits and vegetables that are not sold quickly enough. We would bring our vegetables here in a van and take any leftovers back with us in the same vehicle. About 25% would spoil on the way. At Panposh market in Rurkala, local resident Sumina Sonu Badal has seen what this means for the prices vendors are able to charge. If the market rate is 40 rupees or about 40 euro cents, they let it go for rupees 10, just to avoid taking it back. Sometimes they'd even have to throw it away. After all their hard work, they wouldn't even recover a day's wage. It left many farmers feeling helpless, some would even cry. As one of the largest food producers in the world, India harvests more than 300 million metric tons of fruit and vegetables each year. But a large proportion never makes it out to our plates. That's mainly due to produce going bad due to a lack of storage facilities in a hot country. For the average farmer, it means income loss even when a harvest is good. But a pilot project started by the Rurkala Municipal Corporation has a solution. It has set up solar-powered mini-cold rooms across the city. They're run by women like Tulasi Das. We charge just 3 rupees or 3 euro cents per day for each crate. That's a small amount and very affordable for farmers. Before, they used to lose hundreds of rupees worth of produce due to spoilage. That was disheartening. Now, for just 3 rupees, they have less waste and earn more. The localised model aims to disrupt the national cold chain market which is still monopolised by wholesalers and middlemen. With a minimal charge and easy access, it is specifically designed with small-scale farmers in mind. This is a 30-metric tonne cold room with three chambers, each set to a different temperature range. We have a list specifying the ideal temperature for each type of vegetable and we store them accordingly in the respective chambers. The cold rooms run on solar power. This keeps them independent of the electricity grid which can be unreliable, says its managing director. The solar panels of all the five sets cumulatively is around 80 kilowatts. So per year, there is a saving of around one lakh units. This cold storage is a reliable cold storage with 24x7 supply because in the daytime, it runs with the solar energy and during the night time, it is a backup of thermal storage. And there are tricks to optimise the system, Tulsi Das tells us. For instance, if tomatoes are picked along with their stems before storage, they stay fresh for longer. I assist and guide the farmers and vendors who come here, making them aware of the proper steps to follow while storing or removing vegetables from the cold room. It is still dark when Sumina Sonu Barla starts work. As part of the group running the cold storage units, today is her turn to collect vegetables from the local market and store them in the Paan Posh market cold room. The co-operative is made up of 10 women. They take turns running operations, that means receiving produce from farmers, maintaining temperature logs, managing deliveries and running the organic community store. Before, we didn't have a secure income. Now I have a regular salaried job. We started with 500 rupees or roughly 5 euros, then 5000 rupees and now we are making sales of about 700,000 rupees monthly. Between 2015 and 2021, India lost close to 70 million hectares of cropland due to floods, excess rains and drought. In the age of climate change, the need for a robust cold change ecosystem has become even more urgent, especially for farmers, who are the hardest hit. This project, supported by the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP and Bloomberg philanthropies, offers some respite to the city of Rorkela. Across its five markets, more than 1,500 farmers have access to the cold rooms, around 500 use them regularly. A UNDP survey reports that over the last four years, food wastage in Rorkela has dropped by a third. Another study shows that farmers' incomes have risen in the region. And behind these promising results, a small group of women are hard at work, supporting both themselves and the smallholders in their corner of the country.

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