Post-harvest constraints across the vegetable value chain: A multi-actor Garrett ranking of growers, wholesalers and retailers in central India

Introduction

Food loss between harvest and retail depresses producer income after cultivation costs are sunk and wastes the land, water, labour and energy embodied in discarded produce; its reduction is embedded in SDG 12.3 (UNEP, 2024; FAO, 2019) [19,5] . The problem is acute for horticultural commodities, whose high moisture content, active respiration and mechanical fragility make them less forgiving of handling and storage deficiencies than cereals. India, the world's second-largest vegetable producer, illustrates the tension. Quantitative post-harvest losses for vegetables are estimated at 4.9-11.6 percent, with a material share arising at market handling rather than on the farm (Jha et al., 2015; NABCONS, 2022) [10,13] . The policy response has been dominated by infrastructural provision, with little attention to which constraints actors themselves regard as binding. This has allocative consequences: since infrastructure access, chain length and holding duration outweigh actors' socioeconomic attributes in explaining loss (Aidoo et al., 2014; Kitinoja & Kader, 2015) [2,11] , facilities addressing non-binding constraints yield little, whereas relieving the constraint that forces distress disposal can unlock disproportionate gains. Indian ranking studies consistently identify perishability, price fluctuation, inadequate storage and intermediary exploitation as leading grower problems (Kumar et al., 2019; Sidhu et al., 2010) [12,17] , but rarely prioritise constraints across multiple actor groups within one chain and geography, precluding assessment of whether constraints at successive nodes are independent or manifestations of a common deficiency.

The Chhattisgarh Plainsdominated by small holdings, commercially active in the peri-urban catchments of Raipur, Durg and Bilaspur, yet with minimal cold-chain penetration offer an instructive setting that earlier state-level work (Gauraha & Thakur, 2008; Raghuvanshi et al., 2018) [8,14] has not examined in these terms. This study therefore prioritises post-harvest constraints as perceived separately by growers, wholesalers and retailers using Garrett's technique, and derives actor-specific opportunities and policy measures from the resulting hierarchies. Its novelty lies in the simultaneous, comparable treatment of three actor groups within one chain, permitting assessment of whether constraints propagate along the chain or arise independentlya distinction with direct consequences for the sequencing of intervention.

Materials and Methods

Study area and sampling

The study was conducted in the Chhattisgarh Plains agroclimatic zone of central India, where Raipur, Durg and Bilaspur districts were selected purposively for their prominence in vegetable cultivation and functioning regulated markets. A multi-stage purposive procedure yielded 100 growers per district (n = 300), supplemented by 45 wholesalers and 45 retailers in the principal markets, giving 390 respondents. Data were collected during 2024-25 through pre-tested structured schedules administered faceto-face, with separate instruments per actor group. Constraint inventories, drawn from the post-harvest literature and refined through field discussions, comprised thirteen constraints for farmers and twelve each for wholesalers and retailers.

Analytical technique

Constraints were prioritised using Garrett's ranking technique (Garrett & Woodworth, 1969) [6] , preferred because it converts ordinal ranks to an interval scale and, being scaled to the number of items ranked, permits comparison across groups ranking different numbers of constraints. Respondents ranked all constraints from most to least severe without repetition, and each rank was converted to a percent position: Percent position = 100 (Rij -0.5)/Nj where Rij is the rank assigned to the ith constraint by the jth respondent and Nj the number of constraints ranked. percent positions were converted to Garrett scores using the standard conversion table (Table 1), mean scores obtained by dividing totals by the number of respondents, and constraints ranked in descending order.

Results and Discussion

Constraints perceived by vegetable growers

The constraint ranked first by growers is structural rather than biological (Table 2). Glut-driven distress sale and associated price fluctuation scored highest (57.53), ahead of absent cold storage in production areas (56.13) and poor transport causing transit damage (55.99). The narrow band spanned by the three leading constraints (55.99-57.53) describes not three separable problems but one causal mechanism: when a seasonal glut depresses prices, absent cold storage removes the option of withholding produce, and inadequate transport constrains the search for a better market. Relieving any single element leaves the mechanism substantially intact. The middle tier intermediary exploitation (55.63), commission charges (54.47), distant processing (53.27) and weak market intelligence (52.92)describes the institutional environment converting a physical glut into a low realised price, consistent with evidence on the attenuation of producer share as intermediation lengthens (Sidhu et [17,15,3] . The lowest-ranked constraints are knowledge-and organisation-related: scheme awareness (44.08), planting material (43.41) and FPO aggregation (39.42). These scores indicate low salience rather than low importance, growers experiencing them as background conditions rather than the proximate cause of loss on a given harvest day. The distinction matters, since the last-ranked constraint is precisely the institutional lever through which the highestranked constraints could be relieved. The problem set reproduces that reported across Indian states and crops for over a decade (Kumar et [12,17,18] , but with an instructive shift in emphasis: earlier studies typically ranked perishability first, an inherent property of the commodity, whereas the leading constraint here describes the market and infrastructure environment. Respondents thus attribute losses to correctable structural gaps rather than unavoidable crop characteristics, aligning perceptions with econometric evidence that infrastructure access, not physiology alone, governs loss magnitude (Aidoo et al., 2014; Kitinoja & Kader, 2015) [2,11] .

Constraints perceived by wholesalers

Sharp price volatility headed the wholesaler hierarchy (61.33), followed by commission charges and statutory deductions (60.78) and inadequate mandi-level cold storage (59.47) (Table 3). All four leading constraints exceed 57, indicating that the wholesaler's central difficulty is managing price risk on stock that can neither be held safely nor moved quickly. This is the growers' cluster observed one stage downstream: the same glut and cold-chain deficiency reappear as intraday price swings and peak-arrival congestion (56.09)the study's central comparative finding. Two features distinguish the wholesaler profile. Financial and counterparty concerns rank higher than elsewhere, downstream credit-risk exposure falling in the upper-middle band (53.47) and reflecting trade credit extended to organised retail and institutional buyers, a constraint rarely itemised in older cash-market-centred studies. Conversely, weak APMC enforcement (28.78) and limited institutional credit (22.11) score well below the corresponding farmer tail, since established wholesalers self-finance through own or informal capital and have adapted to regulatory weaknesses.

Constraints perceived by retailers

Daily spoilage and shrinkage recorded 62.09the highest score in the studyfollowed by absent cold storage or display refrigeration (60.84) and end-of-day distress disposal (58.71) (Table 4). The top three retail constraints form one continuous mechanism: without refrigeration, unsold produce deteriorates within the trading day, deterioration compels disposal at whatever price is obtainable, and the resulting shrinkage registers as the spoilage ranked first. The mechanism is thermal in origin, explaining why display refrigeration ranks second despite being capital equipment rather than a market condition, and corresponds with national assessments attributing a distinct share of vegetable loss to market handling (NABCONS, 2022) [13] . Competition from organised retail and e-commerce scored only 47.07; its middling rank indicates that this threat remains secondary to the physics of perishability at the point of sale. Traditional vegetable retail is currently jeopardised less by digital competitors than by the absence of a cold room.

Thematic grouping across the chain

Aggregation into functional categories clarifies where the binding deficiencies lie. Infrastructure constraints (F2, F3, W2, W5, R3, R8, R10) occupy second or third position in every hierarchy without exception, and market and pricerisk constraints (F1, W1, W4, R2, R5) occupy first position for farmers and wholesalers and third for retailers; together the two categories account for all top-three positions. Institutional constraints (F4, F5, W3, W11, R9) occupy the upper-middle band, except commission charges among wholesalers. Financial constraints (W6, W12, R7, R11) fall in the lower half of both trader hierarchies, as do knowledge and organisational constraints (F7, F10, F11, F13, W8) among farmers.

The ordering carries an implication running counter to much extension practice: the binding limitation on post-harvest performance is the infrastructure an actor can reach and the price risk that actor must absorb, not the information held or the credit obtainable. Training and advisory interventions, while valuable, are unlikely to shift the loss curve materially without the physical capacity to hold produce out of a glutted market.

Agribusiness Opportunities Emerging from the Constraint Structure

Because storage deficiency and price risk recur at every node, interventions addressing both simultaneously offer the greatest expected return. Opportunities are organised by level of operation, each anchored to the constraint from which it derives.

Production-cluster level

Decentralised cold storage, pack-houses and zero-energy cool chambers address F3 directly, enabling produce to be withheld from a glutted market; operated as pay-per-use custom-hiring facilities or producer-organisation assets under the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund, they convert a fixed-capital barrier into a variable-cost service, with solarpowered micro cold rooms extending the model to clusters lacking reliable grid supply. Producer-organisation aggregation addresses the paradox in Section 3.1ranked last because under-developed, yet the mechanism through which bargaining power (F4), commission burdens (F5) and the volume justifying a cold room would improve. Primary processing near production areas converts glut volumes into storable higher-value products (F6); custom-hiring centres for post-harvest equipment reduce the mechanical damage later manifesting as transit loss (F2); and mobile marketintelligence services (F7) enable growers to time sales away from the price trough.

Wholesale (mandi) level

Mandi-level cold storage and pre-cooling target W2, permitting stock to be held through intra-day swings rather than liquidated into them, while shared reefer logistics address W5. Price-risk dashboards providing real-time prices, arrival data and short-horizon forecasts respond jointly to W1 and W8; standardised grading and packaging enterprises address W7 and reduce weighment disputes (W11); transparent digital commission and settlement platforms respond to W3; and warehouse-receipt finance paired with storage assets allows borrowing against stored stock rather than dumping it.

Retail level

Affordable display refrigeration and shared neighbourhood cold rooms attack the mechanism underlying R1 and R3 at its origin. Last-mile refrigerated micro-logistics and insulated-crate delivery address R10; demand-forecasting and inventory tools reduce the over-stocking producing endof-day disposal (R5); and surplus redistribution channels recover value from unsold stock. Quality-graded, prepacked supply from upstream grading lines addresses erratic quality (R6), while ready-to-cook formats convert spoilageprone loose stock into higher-margin lines. A common feature unites these opportunities: each converts a lumpy fixed investment into a shared or rented service. Given that actors in this chain are predominantly small, with individual scale well below the threshold justifying dedicated cold-chain assets, this conversion is essential rather than incidental.

Policy Implications State government and Department of Horticulture

Public investment should be sequenced by constraint hierarchy rather than administrative convenience. Since storage and transport occupy second or third position in all three hierarchies, decentralised cold-chain capacity at production clusters and mandis warrants precedence. The commission-and-fee structure of regulated marketsranked second by wholesalers and fifth by farmersmerits review alongside electronic auctioning and same-day settlement.

NABARD and financing institutions

The coexistence of severe storage constraints with lowranked credit access among traders suggests the binding financial problem is not credit availability but the absence of financeable assets. Warehouse-receipt and cold-storagereceipt financing, and products designed around producerorganisation-owned infrastructure, address this more precisely than general working-capital expansion.

Producer organisations and cooperatives

Since aggregation ranks last in salience while underpinning relief of the highest-ranked constraints, FPO promotion should be framed in terms of the problems growers reportprice realisation during glut, storage access, bargaining powerrather than in institutional terms.

Extension agencies and agricultural universities

Because knowledge constraints rank below physical and market constraints, extension effort will yield most where bundled with infrastructure access. Priority areas indicated by the hierarchy are harvest-timing advisory (F9), scientific handling (F10) and scheme navigation (F11).

Private agribusiness firms

Section 4 identifies commercially addressable segmentsshared cold-chain logistics, grading-and-packaging services and retail refrigerationwhere demand is evidenced by actors' own constraint scores. Public-private partnership models combining public capital support with private operational management suit the pay-per-use configurations that the small scale of operation requires. Collectively these measures bear on SDG 12.3, and connect to SDG 2 through availability effects and to SDGs 1 and 8 through the income and enterprise consequences of retaining a larger share of on-farm value.

Conclusion and Suggestions

This study prioritised post-harvest constraints simultaneously across three actor groups in a single vegetable chain and found that constraints at successive nodes are not independent problems but recurrent expressions of one syndrome. Price risk compounded by the inability to hold or move produce heads the grower hierarchy, reappears as intra-day volatility and mandi congestion for wholesalers, and terminates as the daily spoilage retailers rank most severe. The binding constraints are physical and market-related rather than informational or financial, so training and credit cannot substitute for the capacity to withhold produce from a glutted market; and because the syndrome propagates, interventions confined to one actor group will be attenuated by unrelieved constraints elsewhere, making chain-wide sequencing necessary. Public investment should therefore be sequenced according to constraints that intended beneficiaries report as binding, prioritising decentralised cold storage and market intelligence. Findings are cross-sectional and reflect perceived rather than measured severity, with trader samples drawn only from principal markets. Future work should employ multiseason and longitudinal designs, test the latent structure of constraint groupings through factor analysis and structural equation modelling, apply optimisation and GIS methods to cold-storage siting, and extend comparison across states.

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