Seizing on controversial new deregulation, entrepreneurs are selling farmers apps to connect them to big buyers nationwide and using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the rickety supply chains that lose one-fourth of India’s produce to wastage.
Enormous amounts of India’s grain, fruit and vegetables rot between farm and table because of manual handling, repeated loading and unloading, poor inventory management, lack of adequate storage and slow movement of goods. This rate of wastage from faulty supply chains is four to five times that of most large economies, experts say.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government introduced changes it calls a watershed that will “remove middlemen and let farmers sell their produce directly to buyers,” improving their…