Due to COVID-19 pandemic, like with all other sectors, India’s agriculture sector face Rs. 93,000 crore, post-harvest loss. Now, the sector has differing rules that make the problem more complex. In the case of labour, the government has used the present situation of the pandemic to issue a quick ordinance to replace the existing statues. Agriculture is in many ways the backbone of economic activities in India. The pandemic situation has changed everything in many ways. Apart from impacting the way of life and work, it negatively affected the economy in every aspect. The whole world has been compelled to overcome the impact of crisis through relook various sectors.
Considering India as a developing country, more than 50 per cent of the workforce and the growth in agriculture also impacted the manufacturing and the service sector. In this situation, the total loss due to poor post-harvest processing of agriculture products in India reflects a big loss in the economy as well. Due to inadequate processing and preservation leads to a heavy post-harvest loss in wheat, sugarcane, pulses, oilseed, vegetables and fruits. These losses were valued in $503 million. The financial analysts said that it would be continued to increase the loss and rise in the price of food products.
In this pandemic situation, e-commerce can solve problems including a high level of fragmentation in the supply chain, high quantity of products, quality and costs of products. To access the adoption and assimilation of innovative technologies in the supply chain of these companies, helping to reduce cost. Another indirect advantage of e-commerce is it would be empowering farmers for better prices for their production. The E-commerce platform will give them access to capital for adopting technology suitable for enhancing new agricultural practices. They can help to fill in the bottlenecks by setting up a specific channel of the supply chain. By using this way they can procure easily from farmers effectively leading to the agriculture market. Technical adoption can help with the finest utilization of produce. Indian farmers are highly exploited by middlemen, this leads to heavy loss of their rightful earnings. To make transparency and efficiency followed by e-commerce companies will help eliminate unnecessary middlemen resulting in inventory reduction, which makes it easier for a farmer to sell their products to consumers at a competitive price.
As per NASSCOM study of 2019 has suggested that Indian farmers face post-harvest losses of Rs 93,000 crore. The agricultural tech startups are trying to eliminate the gap between farmers and customers by adding e-commerce technical platforms to boosting farmer income. Digital inclusion, therefore, would enable most farmers to access a new supply chain that decreases leakages, losses during transportation and warehousing and allows for a far more efficient supply chain linking the procedure to the common channel.
