Analysis of post-harvest supply chain impediments for rural employability and waste reduction

Abstract

The tremendous amount of economic losses, welfare losses and distress among the farmers due to produce spoilage and quality losses are a few major concerns in the Indian post-harvest supply chain (PHSC). A study for identifying and analysing the impediments in the post-harvest supply chain was performed to minimise them. The interpretive structural modelling (ISM) was applied on the identified impediments to analyse the interactions among them and matrix cross-reference multiplication applied to a classification (MICMAC) analysis was used to categorise the impediments into four clusters on the basis of driving and dependence power. The key impediments obtained from the analyses are lack of government support, lack of transportation infrastructure and lack of fixation of minimum support price. And their revisions are to be improved with time to improve farmer profitability, rural employability and waste reduction. These impediments appear at the bottom in structural analysis thus hold a prime value among the identified impediments. The utility of this study is stated in the practical implications section, i.e., adaption of value addition practices for onion to reduce the spoilage ratio.