Technology could be the answer to tomato price volatility

Rising onion prices give us tears and that of blood red tomatoes make our hearts bleed. The skyrocketing prices of common man’s essential vegetables do cause political slugfest with leaders indulging in muckraking without realising the seasonality of cyclical nature of prices of onions and tomatoes in particular. Regrettably though, most politicians from the ruling as well as the opposition parties have rural and farmer background.

The Congress led by Indira Gandhi started it all in 1980 by blasting the then rulers with striking media advertisements when the social media was not only unheard of but unthinkable, too. This caused the fall of the first ever non-Congress government at the Centre. Demand-supply mismatch obviously leads to price hikes and profiteering and excess supply causes such an unrest that the farmer is forced dump tonnes of onions and tomatoes on the highways.

Recently, we had the spectre of Nashik farmers flooding the roads with tomatoes when the prices nosedived to less than a rupee-a-kg at the farm level and the Maharashtra Government failed to do anything other than making promises. The need for a price regulatory mechanism was discussed but nothing was done.

But technology may soon be able find solutions to price fluctuations of tomatoes to begin with. A silver lining amid dark clouds is announcement of a Tomato Grand Challenge (TGC) hackathon which is ultimately aimed at ensuring availability of tomato to the consumers at affordable prices and help farmers get value for the produce.

TGC may not have made it to the front pages of the national media, but is definitely a very important announcement.

By the way, the word hackathon may give rise to fears and apprehensions as it reminds us of terror hacks and cyber terrorism. Let us have a close look at hacks and hackathons.

The word "hackathon" is a portmanteau of the words "hack" and "marathon", where "hack" is used in the sense of exploratory programming, not its alternate meaning as a reference to breaching computer security, says techtarget.com. The first event labelled a hackathon was the OpenBSD Hackathon in Calgary, Canada, on June 4, 1999, techtarget tells us.

Cambridge dictionary defines hackathon as an event at which a lot of people come together to write or improve computer programs.

Facebook, for instance, organised an all-night hackathon to develop new software to celebrate its sixth birthday.

A hackathon is an event designed to use technology, primarily coding, to accomplish an objective, says idtech.com. There’s no question that hackathons have taken the world by storm, spurring the development of everyday products and moving millions of dollars. And with the rise of hackathons for beginners and availability of online hacking classes (ethical hacking, of course), it's never been easier to get started.....As a movement, hackathons are rooted in the fact that technology defines the modern world, and that the global language for change is often written in lines of code, idtech says.

Microsoft conducted a novel event - Pledge to Progress: Sustainability Hackathon. This was designed to incubate ideas, build innovative solutions and shape India’s sustainable future leveraging the power of technology. It was a platform for organizations and individuals to develop progressive solutions that can help reduce carbon emissions, save water, manage waste, create green software, built on Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability platform, tools and extensibility options.

The hackathon that kicked off in March 2023 received over 95 entries from companies including Infosys, Deloitte, UST Global, TCS, Wipro, Oracle, FIS Global, Tech M, Cast Software, Capgemini, ITC Infotech, across the two themes of “industry specific solutions” and “green software development”. The hackathon was preceded by a series of enablement sessions with 154 participants from 92 partner organizations.

The winning solution of the hackathon came from a four-member team of Wipro employees who are committed to building climate change resilience for people with disabilities (PwDs).

In New York, the Weill Cornell Medicine’s Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) organises Health Hackathons. The recent one held in person from February 17-19 brought together 136 student participants and 37 mentors from both the Cornell ecosystem—including Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell Tech and the Ithaca campus—as well as the wider New York metropolitan area, such as Hospital for Special Surgery, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre.

The teams presented projects that included helping asthmatic children; devising solutions for teenagers with vaping addiction; seniors who feel isolated; women post-mastectomy; and uninsured individuals. Each project addressed what are some of the most enduring health challenges in society that have often been under-addressed.

Nguyen-Novotny said the participants revealed the great potential of “emerging technologies” — think machine learning, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, miRNA, 3D printing, on-demand digital fabrication — to solve these problems.

So, it is now clear that with the participation of young minds tech solutions can be found.

It is in this context that I think the government announcement assumes importance as entries for the TGC are invited under two tracks. First, students, research scholars and faculty members and secondly, industry individuals, indian start-ups, Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), Limited Liability Partnership (LLPs), Professionals.

Tomato is produced almost in all the states in India, though in varying quantities. The maximum production is in southern and western regions of India, contributing 56%-58% of all India production. Southern and Western regions being surplus states, feed to other markets depending on production seasons, the government says.

The production seasons are also different across regions. The peak harvesting season occurs in December to February. The periods during July-August and October-November are the lean production months of tomato. July coinciding with monsoon season, adds to further challenges related to distribution and increased transit losses adding to price rise.

The cycle of planting and harvesting seasons and variation across regions are primarily responsible for price seasonality in Tomato. Apart from the normal price seasonality, temporary supply chain disruptions and crop damage due to adverse weather conditions etc. often lead to sudden spikes in prices. Conversely, glut in the production of at local levels have also led to dip in prices causing huge loss to the farmers.

Rohit Kumar Singh, Secretary of Department of Consumer Affairs, says the TGC invites ideas on comprehensive and focused area interventions in tomato value chain - from cropping and market insights for the farmers, appropriate cultivars (OP varieties or hybrids) with higher shelf-life of the fruits for fresh marker, cultivars specifically suitable for processing, value-addition through interventions that can increase shelf-life, improve transportation of fresh and processing products, innovative packaging and storage.

The winning ideas will be evaluated by experts followed by prototype development and field implementation for ensuring its usability/scalability on a large scale and price of the product. Interested participants can apply on the portal: https://doca.gov.in/gtc/index.php

I am sure, once the tomato challenge idea clicks and the young brains come up with solutions, similar exercises can be conducted to monitor and regulate the farm-to-fork supply chain of onions, pulses, edible oils and other sensitive commodities and resolve the price – rise and fall - issues once for all.

Above all, it is important to have a national farming policy and guidelines with the active coordination of ICAR and the IMD to keep advising the farmers with content that suits their region and soil – be it paddy, wheat, sunflower, mustard or groundnuts, onions, potatoes and tomatoes. This is how we need to check inflation and not by tu-tu, main-main kind of pastime that does not give us food. Food security is a serious subject not to be trivialised in murky politics.

(The columnist is a Mumbai-based independent media veteran, running websites and a YouTube channel known for his thought-provoking messaging)