Service Design for Social Needs

Optimizing supply chain for Farmers

Neeraja Kulkarni worked with SELCO Foundation (an energy provisioning NGO) to understand the scope role of renewable energy in the agricultural supply chain (Demography: Andhrapradesh and Karnataka)

The social sector is a collaborative environment of a community which includes private funders, the State and Central Government and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). Commercial service design focuses primarily on improving businesses. Learnings therein can be used to socio-economically empower vulnerable individuals.

The solution implores a paradigm shift in the supply chain and will take years for full functioning implementation. Here, the aim is to give the power to the FPOs instead of a third party controlling the supply chain.

Persona

Pain points in the supply chain:

• Cost of grading and sorting — Grading and sorting is practised at every stage of the supply chain; farm-level, market-level, trader-level, supermarket-level. This leads to excessive waste and high labour cost (Rs.2- Rs.3 per crate, Rs. 500 per day) on all stages. Loading, unloading, packing, unpacking, grading and sorting are the activities that are included.
• Tomato market fluctuation — Glut incidences due to oversupply can lead to excessive loss, farmers prefer to throw away their produce at such times. The tomato market fluctuations are unpredictable. — graph
• Excessive use of chemical fertilizers — It was observed that Andhra Pradesh farmers have been applying excessive and unnecessary varieties of fertilizers and pesticides on their tomato crops. 40% increased input cost in two years was observed (30,000 INR per acre per cycle).

How it was working before

“+” defines an increase in cost and wastage. “n” defines any number

Optimized Solution Proposed

“+” defines an increase in cost and wastage. “n” defines any number

Detail overview of the solution

• FPO heads identify farmer cluster, could own processing centres on a Panchayat level
• Farmer clusters could supply their produce on a contractual basis to collection centres
• Supermarkets/traders/retailers could be the contractual forward linkages
• State Government could provide subsidies for solar and land allocation for primary processing centres
• Other non-profit NGOs could provide training and capacity building to workers and the importance of value addition awareness to farmers
• Bio-composter builds in the processing centres could make compost out of the generated waste and add Organic fertiliser to the product list sold by FPOs.

System Map

For detailed overview contact: Neeraja Kulkarni

Team and partners

SELCO Foundation — Pavithra Chandrashekhar (Project Manager), Rachita Mishra (Senior Manager), Manjunatha HT (Senior Manager)

GIZ (German Corporation for international cooperation)

Information Design & Diagrams: Tejaswee Pandey (SDD India Volunteer)