Agri-food value chain and role of pulping industry

The world’s food production has reached 4 billion metric tons per year, of which 1.3 billion tons is wasted. As the world population reaches 9.8 billion in 2050, the world food demand will be around 14.8 billion tons. Around 800 million people sleep hungry every day, and, if the issue of food wastages is not addressed, another 2 billion people will join by 2050.

The problem is not inadequate production but inefficient food handling and excess wastage. Without proper measures, it is unlikely to alleviate hunger even with surplus production. In this context, adopting agri-food value chain is a viable option to reduce food waste and to develop a resilient food security model.

The Agri-food comes from two main segments; Grains and Horticulture. The major portion of food wastage comes from the horticulture segment.

Food wastage also brings with it the loss of valuable resources that are used during the life of a crop such as huge water quantity, electricity, labour and fertiliser. An effort to reduce the food wastage will thus have dual advantages: food security and appropriate return on utilised resources.

Agri-food value chains

An agricultural food value chain constitutes all the steps involved in bringing food “from farm to plate”. The main idea behind this concept is to take care of the crop and farmers in each phase of crop life cycle; it ranges from seed selection to land preparation to irrigation to nutrition plan to crop management to supply chain issues to storage to processing units and ultimately to end users of produced and processed crop.

Pakistani farmers’ dilemma:

Pakistani farmers, when successfully bring the crop to the market, they are confronted with the most important challenge i.e., perishability. Owing to water content, the age of fruit and vegetable, which is produced after the hard work of 4–6 months, is not more than 4–6 days. This weakens their bargaining power and adversely affects the price of the crop.

Agri-food value chain miserably fails when the issue of the shelf life of crop is not properly addressed. That discourages farmers from investing into agribusiness and reduces the area under cultivation. This badly affects the environment and acts as a catalyst in the heatwaves and climatic changes.

The issue of perishability is adequately addressed by pulping industry that extracts the fruit content from fresh fruits and converts it into natural pulp; its packing technology extends the shelf life up to two years without compromising nutritious values. The pulping industry, as such, acts as a change agent in the overall agri-food value chain.

Pakistan produces the best quality of fruits and vegetables only because of fertile land and conducive climatic conditions for crops, with four seasons. However, Pakistani farmers need support; they are acting alone in their efforts to bring eatables to the masses. Once this support is there, ideally with public-private partnership, farmers would act as a pivot to generate foreign trade of the country and greenery of the planet.

In the absence of well-integrated agri-food value chains, different interest groups step in to fill the vacuum and take away the lion’s share of the value produced by farmers. At present, one such group is, Arthi (middle man) who is occupying this space.

However, now multinational companies and foreign entities are also entering into this space. Their entry is more dangerous in the sense that they take away the crop out of country in addition to the major share of profit. The public is then left with the problem of food shortages.

These developments require a close review and prudent intervention by the government.

Actors of agri-food value chain of Pakistan

There are different stages and actors of this value chain. The first three stages of the chain are the least attended segments. These require solid intervention by government to make a highly productive agriculture system in Pakistan. Agronomical services by government should act a central role in this phase to create an agriculturally educated workforce.

1. Pre-Production.

i. Seed selection

ii.Land preparation (through modern machinery and technology)

iii. Irrigation (Critical; water level is going down and quality is compromised)

iv. Nutrition plan for soil and crop

2. Production (crop and soil management)

3. Crop harvest (modern techniques and machinery are missing)

Post-harvest phase: This is the most vulnerable phase; major food wastages generate during this period.

4. Processing (Companies that convert crop into consumable products)

5. Marketing and Distribution (Network that helps bring the final product to consumers)

6. Consumers

Post-harvest phase requires intervention by pulping industry as it reduces food wastages and extends shelf life of fruits and vegetables.

Pulping process:

Pulp is the natural content of fruit & vegetables, extracted by separating seed and peel. It is nearest substitute of fruit & vegetable content.

Pulping process of fruits:

Washing - seed/peel separation - crushing – preheating – refining – evaporation - de-aeration – sterilization – aseptic packing

Packing technology: Aseptic packing protects the product from light and entry of microorganisms, and thus the shelf life is increased up to 18–24 months without any preservatives. This packing is eco-friendly and energy efficient with reduced storage cost. It keeps the contents with its natural aroma, texture, colour and taste.

Importance of pulp:

In the post-harvest phase, one third of the crop is wasted. Part of the food crops is consumed immediately, and the remaining portion, because of no immediate consumers, gets exposed to environmental stresses, and then perishes. Pulping provides a good solution in the shape of immediate extraction of fruit content for longer shelf life. As such, pulping industry can act as a pivot in the agri-food value chain.

Pulping industry in Pakistan:

Few pulping units are operating in Pakistan for aseptic packing. They extract pulp primarily from mango, guava, peach, Apple, citrus and tomato. The users of this extracted pulp are juice and ketch-up manufacturers. This is underutilization of these highly productive facilities. There exists a huge potential to utilise these facilities for the conversion of various other fruits and vegetables, available in abundance in Pakistan, into pulp and paste, which are otherwise wasted. This is hidden exportable surplus. As such, one way of evaluating the intrinsic value of these pulping units is not what they are producing, but what they can potentially produce and sell all across the globe.

The United Nations (UN) is running a programme to end hunger called ‘Goal 2: Zero Hunger’, which is part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs were adopted by all UN member states in 2015. The goal is to end hunger and malnutrition by 2030

To support this UN programme, the government of Pakistan should take initiatives, under public-private partnership model, to convert various vegetables and fruits into pulp through the existing pulping units in Pakistan, and start supply to poorer countries suffering from malnutrition and food shortages.

Pakistan has foreign exchange reserves worth multibillion dollars, but these are under the soil in the shape of fruits and vegetables. Focus on the soil is required to dig out unexplored FX reserves in the shape of improved yields and to save the leakages of these FX reserves in the shape of post-harvest losses through government intervention for the creation of well-integrated agri-food value chains and through private investment in pulp and purée production plants.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024