Enhancing Post-Harvest Management and Improving Market Access for Agricultural Sustainability

Abstract

This chapter provides the basic knowledge of post harvesting and management part of it also. The new technologies used or new technique used for post harvesting and also for market reach or could be said as market access of agriculture products. These two topics comes hand in hand as post-harvest management covers the transportation or the access to the market for the sustainable agricultural products. As we all understand, that agriculture is the backbone of our country (sectors contribution to India’s GDP is approx. 18 to 19 percent, not only that it is also the supports the livelihood of India about 42 percent approx. and these numbers have increased time to time and the estimations to the future for the contribution to country’s growth is also increasing). Not only the agriculture creates the direct impact but the indirect impact on the people who are working in the area of harvesting and for agriculture sector. Generally, there are drawbacks in everything, so in the process of harvesting. Mainly, there are three stages to it first is simply the harvesting of the product (which is also pre harvesting) and then there is post harvesting (here comes the whole management part of the products harvested and the managing part is different for every product category) and the third is value addition products which will discussed further, so the drawback could lie in any stage, examples the harvesting is done at wrong time or losses mainly occurs in post management where washing, cleaning, wrapping, transporting, etc. are not done properly. This is hindering the growth of the sector and the losses are also impacting the lives of the people involved in it.