Tomatoes and trees

At the height of the tomato season, some 200,000 boxes of tomatoes arrive from the Indian hill state of Himachal Pradesh and pass through Delhi market in transit for the other parts of the country. The tomatoes are packed in wooden crates, each holding 15kg. Just imagine the number of trees that were felled to make them, and the impact that a ban on tree felling would have on the trade.

This was the dilemma to which an Indian NGO, International Development Enterprises (India), brought their special style of problem solving. This involves selling technology to poor rural households, a task which does not, on the face of it, sound easy. But, based on experience gained over the last decade with small-scale irrigation, IDE has been able to create a system that combines the development of new technology - in this case packaging technology - with all those involved in the supply and distribution chain from farm to market. This was even though IDE themselves knew nothing about how to pack a tomato to ensure it reaches its destination as a tomato rather than as tomato juice.

In this hilly region of India, poor households exploit their small plot sizes and family labour to grow a range of out of season fruit and vegetables. This produce commands high prices in other States, getting to the Delhi market at a time when other growing areas cannot produce a crop. Tomatoes offer the highest income-generating potential and highest return per hectare. In recent years production has increased more than five-fold. More than 70% of these tomatoes travel to market in wooden boxes.

Credit: International Development Enterprises (IDE), India

The six Indian metropolitan centres of New Delhi, Kolkatta, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore have a population between 60-65 million people. This enormous urban market relies on fruit and vegetables from production zones across various regions of the country. Estimates suggest that 7000 tons of fruit and vegetables arrive in the Delhi market, 365 days of every year. Much of this produce is packed in wooden crates. Vegetable consumption throughout the country is subsidized by tremendous environmental damage in distant production zones.

Cutting down of trees for packaging material and the environmental damage that this causes have not, however, gone unnoticed. The introduction of environmental protection legislation by the Himachal Pradesh State Government has banned tree felling in the State. This has had two effects. Firstly, it shifted timber felling to adjacent States of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana. In other words, the environmental threat has not been removed but simply transferred. Secondly, shortages in packaging material and rising costs restrict access to the lucrative all-India off-season market. This threatens the livelihoods of the approximately 50,000 small-scale farmers who depend on the crop as their main source of income.

Hill farmers, working in small single-family units, growing tomatoes on 0.25 ha can earn about US$1500 in the short harvest season. These incomes are far higher than those from any other type of farming in the hill area, and have raised farm families well above the poverty line. Changes in environmental policy banning tree felling, while clearly needed, threatened the livelihood of poor households. If, as a result, tomatoes could not be packed in wooden boxes, but sold only in the local market to which they are transported in baskets, or plastic crates, farmers would lose 70% of their income. Local market prices are around Rs.7/kg while graded tomatoes can fetch up to Rs.20/kg, in the Delhi market.

Credit: IDE, India

Commissioned by the Crop Post-Harvest Programme of the UK government's Department for International Development, IDE recognized that the key task was to establish a network of partners around the development and supply of an alternative packaging technology - cardboard cartons. In fact this involved identifying and accessing four existing informal networks and establishing partnerships with them. These were as follows.

Technology network. This consisted of scientists from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and a box manufacture with a design studio with whom they had previously worked on packaging development. The scientists and their industry partners were willing to design and test tomato boxes. This involved conducting a major trial when 1,000 cartons were transported from field to the Delhi market. The carton went through four generations before an appropriate design was arrived at.

Local knowledge network. A local grass roots NGO that had already established a relationship with the tomato growers was identified. It also included a partnership with the local agricultural university for information on local crop production systems. The communities were involved in the development of the carton and subsequently took the lead in pre-financing their manufacture.

Market network. This consisted of all those linking farmers to the Delhi market, including transporters, commission agents, wholesale traders and the farmers themselves. This market network was important, as these were the people who would have to accept and use the cartons in their transactions. They had to be willing to promote its use.

Production and distribution network. This consisted of local carton manufacturers and box traders. Obviously it was important to form partnerships with such organisations as these would form the backbone of the supply and distribution chain. To establish the first commercial production of cartons, farmers used a loan from a micro-finance institution to pre-finance a local carton manufacture. 31,000 cartons were produced and supplied in time for the 2002 season.

The project still has one more season to run, but it has already generated a major change in the post-harvest system, centred around the introduction of environmentally sustainable packaging technology. But, as both IDE and DFID point out, this could not have been achieved without developing new partnerships and ways of working together. In other words, both technical and institutional innovation are equally important. And, while the tomatoes continue their journey safe in their cardboard cartons, and the trees remain protected on the hillsides, everyone involved in the supply chain has gained experience that could serve them equally well when faced with similar challenges in future.

Article adapted from: 'The two faces of innovation: how combinations of institutional and technical innovations are changing the post-harvest systems of small-scale tomato producers in India', by Shivani Manaktala and Amitabha Sadangi, IDE (I) http://www.ide-india.org/) For more information on 'Appropriate food packaging' see In Print.