Hottor of |PI)Ilo£(Q9t)P in GEOGRAPHY
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SOME ASPECTS OF POST HARVEST TECHNOLOGY IN GANGA-SON DIVrOE -A STUDY IN FOOD SYSTEM ABSTRACT THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF Hottor of |PI)ilO£(Q9t)P IN GEOGRAPHY BY MAHJAB6EN Under the Supervision of DR. ABDUL MUNIR (Reader) DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY ALIGARH MinSLIM UNIVERSITY ALIGARH (INDIA) 2001 ABSTRACT It is known fact that there is pressing need to increase the food supplies to meet the demands of ever increasing population. Though,' the scope for increasing food production is limited as this would require expensive inputs which are more or less out of reach of the majority of farmers under Indian condition. An alternative is to reduce or altogether eliminate the losses to which food is exposed from the stage when it is produced to the moment at which it is finally consumed. By reducing these losses it will be possible not only to augment food supplies but will also ensure more balanced and faster economic growth. Therefore, an effort has been made by the author to discuss the present status of post-harvest practices in the Ganga-Son Divide region of South Bihar plain, India. The author has also tried to study the losses of foodcrops occurring at various stages of postharvest technology. Postharvest technology is an emerging technology. It is basically concerned itself to application of science and engineering principles to the post production phase of the agricultural sector. It is infact one of the major functional sub-system of the food system which is concerned with the consumption of the food produce. It has the capability to meet food requirement of growing population by eliminating avoidable losses, developing more nutritive food items, proper processing and fortification and economic utilization of organic wastes and by products. Hence, the postharvest technology has greater impact on making the agriculture sector - a boon to farmers and people of the region or country. The main objectives of the present study are : (i) To assess the efficiency of existing technology in the postharvest processes, (ii) To evaluate the loss and damage of crops by the existing technology and (iii) to account the impact of these technologies on the economy of the study area. In order to fulfill the above mentioned objectives the author has conducted survey in Ganga-Son Divide. This region forms the western part of south Bihar plain. It embraces the districts of Buxar, Bhojpur, Bhabua and Rohtas. Ganga-Son Divide lies between the latitudinal extent of 24"30' and 25M2' north and longitudinal extent between 83°22' and 84"50' east. This region occupies an area of 11,311 sq.kms and is inhibited by 5,781,132 persons (1991 census) giving a population density of 546 persons per sq.kms. The region of Ganga-Son Divide is suitable for the study in postharvest technology because this region has dominant subsistence economy and records great variation in the attributes of population, economy and society. The survey work was finally exposed to find out the loss in foodcrops and their responsible factors through various methods of postharvest technology in Ganga-Son-Divide. The data in this regard have been processed through field work with the help of a detailed questionnaire. To assess the productivity variations among the districts of Ganga-Son Divide, Shafi's productivity coefficient index has been applied. The measurement of agricultural productivity is of great importance as it not only helps in locating regional imbalance in production but also suggest the methods how production or productivity can be increased to feed the growing millions. According to this method, Bhojpur belongs to high productivity region while Rohtas lies in medium productivity region. Buxar and Bhabua both the districts fall in low productivity region. From each productivity region, three villages are selected making a total of nine villages from the four districts of Ganga- Son Divide. The selection of the sample villages is based on random stratified sampling. The objective is to select the villages from each productivity region, keeping in view the varying size of the villages, the easy access to the villages, population size of the village, no. of households, connectivity from the road and the availability of infrastructural facilities. From each village 10 percent of households is interviewed in respect of losses of foodcrops and other postharvest operations, crops cultivated by household surveyed, the yield per hectare and the production of each crop in quintals. All the three categories of farmers that is small, medium and large farmers were interviewed. Categorisation of farmers was done on the basis of land holdings. On the basis of information collected through field work, the losses in respect of each crop, cereals and pulses in all the three villages of a particular productivity region were added up and divided by the no. of villages considered. The result thus obtained yielded the average loss of crops considered for that productivity region. The losses calculated are finally converted into calories to find out the caloric losses. The same procedure was followed for all the remaining productivity regions and for all the crops. Survey work revealed that in the region of Ganga-Son Divide agriculture as a whole is still means of subsistence and is practised in traditional ways with little use of fertilizers and plant protection measures. It is reflected further, in the cropping pattern of this area which is generally subsistence oriented. Since most of the postharvest practices are wholly traditional with little or no mechanization, the problem is further compounded due to the smaller size of land holdings. it has been seen from the field work that harvesting is a real constraint because there is a lack of harvesting equipment. Farmers of sampled villages mainly use sickle for harvesting operations, thus this process is very labour intensive and time taking. In the study region, the small size of land holdings and the various socio-economic systems do not allow the use of combine harvester. The average loss of sampled villages varies between 4 to 7 per cent due to bad weather condition, untimely rains, storms etc. Sometimes crop loss may be as high as 50-100 per cent due to floods during rainy season. For drying the farmers of this region still follow traditional practice. The crops are sundried for 3-4 days. The crop losses are low as estimated by the farmers. Thereafter crops are taken to threshing floor for threshing. Traditional methods of threshing is still prevalent that is trampling of crops under the feet of animals or beating the crops with stick or wooden plank. But now power or diesel threshers are increasingly in use for cereals and some legumes. The losses during threshing are caused by stray animals, birds, rodents and rats leading to 2-3 per cent losses of crops. Threshing is followed by winnowing which is also traditionally practiced in sampled villages except sometimes. Winnowing is done with the help of siipa that is wooden basket in front of air stream which blows away the chaff. When wind is weak power operated winnower is also used. The loss in paddy is greater as compared to other crops. Usually little loss occurs during winnowing. As far as storage is concerned, farmers hardly follow the scientific method of storage. The farmers generally use jute bags, piicci kolhi, kacchi kolhi and underground storage locally known as bakhar. Another storage structure locally called as khop is also used to store crops. In this structure losses of crops is mainly due to seepage of moisture as it is made of straw. Usually, at subsistence level farm structures are built with local agricultural materials as straw, bamboo, timber, mud or bricks. It should be built to have the stability and strength for holding crops. Farmers use kerosene oil, ashes, gamexine as preventive measures to cut the losses but these are not very effective leading to large losses of crops. The rats, rodents, fungi, moisture, excreations of pests infest these storage areas which result in losses iipto 4 per cent. Insects and rodents not only physically consume material from the crops and reduce the weight components, but also inflict qualitative losses through degradation which encourages further biodeterioration by moulds and mites. All this reduces the hygienic quality of the foodgrain and lowers the nutritive value. The transportation of produce is usually done either on labour back, horse cart or tractor trolley. In sampled villages surplus are taken either by broker or traders from the village itself. Only sometimes farmers sell their surplus to local hal or niandis. Thus little loss takes place while transporting the produce. From the presentation made so far it has been observed that farmers of this region are not exposed to the modern PHT and thus postharvest system prevailing in the region of Ganga-Son Divide leads to large losses of foodgrains. Most of the farmers in this region are poor and cannot afford for appropriate equipment to carry out farming operation efficiently. However, due to increase in the labour cost, some of them shown interest to adopt the modern equipment or hire basis. The farmers are trying to reduce the losses by adopting simple technologies and small changes such as timely harvesting and transporting the crop quickly to the threshing floor, use of blade cutter for harvesting lentils or threshing the produce with stationary thresher rather than by hand or by animal which could result in considerable savings. The present study despite the paucity of data has succeeded in confirming the another hypothesis that there exist positive relationship between agricultural productivity and crop losses. On the basis of the sampled villages of respective productivity regions it has been found that percentage of postharvest losses are high in high productivity region and it is low in low productivity region comparatively.