Northeast India is known for its diverse nature of crops, soil, and climate. Home to a variety of fruits, vegetables and flowers, this region loses a significant amount of produce to spoilage. Poor post-harvest management practices due to insufficient storage and processing facilities in northeast India is the main cause of this wastage. Prevention of such losses is the most effective method to make available better quality produce. And it is a complementary means of increased production.
This waste is particularly significant in areas where a majority of produce comes from smallholder farmers. To avoid wastage due to poor resource availability (storage, transportation etc.), the farmers are forced to sell their vegetables in the local markets soon after the harvest, without considering a fair market price.
Ecozen teamed up with the SELCO Foundation and Collectives for Integrated Livelihood Initiatives (CInI), to help the farmers in the region reduce waste and increase shelf life at the farm level, enabling them to reach farther markets, sell more produce and increase their earnings. 10 Ecofrost solar-powered cold rooms totalling a pre-cooling capacity of 5000Kgs and cold storage capacity of 50MT were installed at the Integrated Village Co-operative Societies of Meghalaya.
Why Ecofrost?
Ecofrost is an off-grid solar cold room that is equipped with 30 hours of batterless backup. While solar energy is its primary source of power, it can also be operated by connecting it to an electrical grid or a generator. The solar cold storage room automatically switches to the available alternative power supply. An Ecofrost maintains a temperature range of 4˚ C and above, and relative humidity between 65% to 90%. Made smart with ecozen.ai, Ecofrost is AI and IoT enabled. This enables 24×7 remote monitoring, predictive and preventive maintenance.
Also, Ecozen post-harvest management expertise is uploaded to each Ecofrost. All you need to do is choose the product and weight to be stored using the mobile application, and the recommended settings are automatically selected.
“We will be using Ecofrost- Solar Cold Room for storing green vegetables and fruits to sell in distant markets of Assam. Currently, we are selling commodities to the middle man and getting fewer profits.
Using Ecofrost- Solar Cold Room we will retain the quality and freshness of commodities with 0% food wastage and sell them directly to markets to gain profits. Farmers from nearby villages can also use this cold storage with minimal rental tariffs”.
Mr Riton Marsing, Secretary of Mawlong Nongtluth Integrated Village Co-operative Society
