PROJECT-

ZARAAT
- Research report by Akansha Rai

INTRODUCTION
“Alone we can do little, together we can do so much” this
belief drives Enactus along with En standing for
entrepreneurship, act as action and us as united. Project
Zaraat initiated by Delhi College of Arts and Commerce
focuses on helping Indian farmers and their community on
prevailing social issue of post harvest losses and distress
selling with entrepreneurial skills at the table powered by
various institutions like Adani foundation, Michigan State
University, ICFA, IARI and KPMG. The project upholds
itself in the race to feed the planet prevailing as a global
issue.

The great land of resources and perfect geographical

location, India faces a dilemma where the left showcases
poverty stricken societies unable nourish themselves with
common commodity like food whereas on the right India
ranks second worldwide and farm output as per 2018
agriculture employed more than 50% of the Indian
workforce and contributed 17 to 18% of countries GDP
Then why India is facing a very big social issue to provide
basic necessity of life like food to all the citizens of its
nation? what actually goes wrong when we have a big farm
output on the worldwide basis? So here is the catch that
lack of supportive food processing industry leads to the
wastage of about 30% of all fruit produce and causes India
to experience some of the highest food losses in the world.
These post-harvest losses mainly arise because of the non-
availability of suitable varieties of processing, lack of
appropriate technology and commercialisation of new
technology. lack of awareness among the farmers who are
uneducated about about schemes formulated also play a
crucial reason in post harvest losses

So in order to tackle this our project took the full

responsibility in order to come up with solution because
one can rightly say if a free society cannot help the many
who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich either.

Approaches undertaken –
Project Zaraat introduces the five-step model that works
on
• Community identification – one of the major cause of
post harvest loss is unavailable transportation which
also includes safety in carrying the crops as they may
suffer damage if not taken with care. This point plays
a vital role for places that are far from main market.
• Farmer mobilisation – rapport formation comes in
handy when dealing with victim which is the most
hardly hit throughout this social issue. We need such
formations in order to work with them and increasing
awareness and persuasion are very important too.
The Government has rolled out a number of new
initiatives like Soil Health Card Scheme, Neem
Coated Urea, Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana
(PKVY), Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana
(PMKSY), National Agriculture Market (e-NAM),
Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) and
Interest Subvention Scheme which may or may not be
well implemented due to lack of awareness.
• Strong establishment- we need firm leaders and team
members to establish a well circulated system
explaining functioning and establishing storage
systems
• Entrepreneurial creation- we need entrepreneurs to
carry out the project on a full fledge who can always
come up with ideas to fill out the loopholes present in
 the project.
• Building B to B linkages- it is well believed fact that
Samaj , Sarkar and Bazar can fuel any social
reformation and achieve success. In order to carry out
this project we need to collaborate and work with
organisations to eliminate the middleman’s profit and
up reach the project to higher masses.

Solutions exercised by the project –

• Portable tent like storage system are used which allows
the production to be stored between 5-30 days along
with extending its shell life by 7 days
• Water tank to be placed on top of storage tank made of
nylon cloth to regulate the temperature which
primarily causes damage of the production.
• Extended storage capacity with availability of storing
300-350kg of crops
• The storage tank can also function as an on field and
on market device

Business prospects of the project-

• Increasing consistency of the demand
• Acquiring payment security charges with a profit of
15-20% to fuel the project and its self sustainability
• To evolve the mechanism of ‘Pay as you store’ to
promote equal opportunities
• 70% revenue to be distributed amongst the
entrepreneurs
15% to cope with the various investments

Personal recommendations-
Combining following government schemes with the
project

• Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) and

various schemes for bio pest management or
integrated pest management

Indiscriminate and injudicious use of chemical

pesticides in agriculture has resulted in several
associated adverse effects such as environmental
pollution, ecological imbalances, pesticides residues
 in food, fruits and vegetables, fodder, soil and water,
pest resurgence, human and animal health hazards,
destruction of bio-control agents, development of
resistance in pests etc. Therefore, Govt. of India has
adopted Integrated Pest Management (IPM) as
cardinal principle and main plank of plant protection
in the overall Crop Production Programme since
1985.

Following are some successful bio control

programmes under ministry of agriculture and farmers
welfare and directorate of plant protection, quarantine
and storage –

1. Sugarcane Pyrilla
2. Apple woolly aphid and Sanjose scale
3. American bollworm / Gram Caterpillar on Cotton,
Pulses, Vegetables, Oilseeds etc.in India.

Following are some popular bio control agents used

world widely -

1. Lady bird and Dragonflies providing resistance

against aphids and mosquitoes

2. Bacillus thuringienesis provides resistance

against caterpillars and is easily available in the
form of sachets to be spread over crops.

3. Baculovirus are one of the best bio control agent

providing resistance against anthropods like
lobsters, crabs, spiders, mites, insects,
centipedes, and millipedes

• Introduction of better disease resistant varieties of

staple food products in India

(putting forward some realistic thoughts before

introducing further recommendations that these are all
indigenous crop species and can be easily provided or
to be converted into some contract with IARI
 especially the ones having Pusa in its name because
those particular varieties were developed in IARI
itself though obtaining all the mentioned varieties will
be hard so we can focus on the one which any
particular storage tank is facing or go by the majority
that can help)

Along
with our exclusive partner like IARI we can introduce
following indigenous plant varieties which are disease
resistant to the given diseases in accordance to table
presented

In 1963, several varieties such as Sonalika and Kalyan

Sona, which were high yielding and disease resistant,
were introduced all over the wheat-growing belt of
India and better yeiled - dwarf varieties Jaya and
Ratna were developed in India.

•
Crop varieties that can be bred by hybridisation and
selection, for insect pest resistance are given in Table.
These species are also indigenous exclusively for
India.

• E- NAM

In order connect the existing agricultural mandis on a

common online market platform for trading
agricultural commodities, Government of India,
 launched a pan-India portal, e-National Agriculture
Market (eNAM) on April 14, 2016. So far, e-NAM
has connected nearly 1,000 mandis in 18 states and
three union territories. Implemented by Small Farmers
Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC), eNAM aims at
reducing transaction costs, bridging information
asymmetries, and helping expansion of market access
for farmers and other stakeholders.

• Rural Godown Scheme (RGS) or Gramin Bhandaran

Yojana

Main objectives of scheme include creation of

scientific storage capacity with allied facilities in
rural areas to meet out various requirements of
farmers for storing farm produce, processed farm
produce, agricultural inputs, etc., and prevention of
distress sale by creating the facility of pledge loan and
marketing credit Capacity of a godown shall be
decided by an entrepreneur. However, subsidy under
the scheme shall be restricted to a minimum capacity
of 100 tonnes and maximum capacity of 30,000
tonnes.

• Hybrid plants that are sold at very prices can also be

introduced in this project to increase profit albeit there
are not any government scheme that supports the
production of hybrid plants for uneducated farmers
which can be quite a task to be done solely by the
project so this recommendation is not yet complete
but can be used in the profit perspective and for future
purposes. (Who knows somebody can actually link
this idea to our project)

References
th
Class 12 Biology NCERT book (especially the tables)
https://ncert.nic.in/textbook/pdf/lebo109.pdf
Government site of ministry of agriculture and farmers welfare
http://ppqs.gov.in/divisions/integrated-pest-management/successful-bio-control-
programmes
https://pib.gov.in/newsite/printrelease.aspx?relid=136922
https://iari.res.in/iari-varieties/menus.php
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