For a case for any processing to become ‘compelling’, the advantages have to far outweigh the disadvantages. The processing has to be qualitatively so overwhelmingly beneficial that the quantification – always difficult and dicey – becomes redundant. In the next three posts, we talk about three India-specific compelling cases.

Improving ‘net advantage’ of processing thru green energy: Food processing, like all processing, causes depletion of non-renewable fuels, pollutes the immediate environment (land, water and air), aids climate disasters thru release of ‘green house’ gases, loads costs (and hence increases consumer prices), sometimes reduces nutritive value of the delivered products (though not always significantly), sometimes developes harmful chemical within the food, sometimes causes serious depletion of local resources like ground water and sometimes distorts consumer priorities adversely.

The advantages of processing are: the often significant and multi-faceted value addition for the consumer, improved portability and transportability making it exportable, employment creation, increase in incomes (and hence nation’s GDP) and rise in government revenue which enables welfare and infrastructure expenditure which has its own far-reaching benefits. Thus, food processing per se’ can have ‘net’ advantages which obviously underpin their growth.

This ‘net advantage’ is significantly enhanced when fossil fuel energy is replaced by green energy – defined as energy produced from renewable sources and hence having little or no fossil fuel consumption and green house gas releases. But this requires three agencies to ‘tango’: government, marketer and consumer. Here is an outline of sequential events that can (and are already beginning to) set off a virtuous cycle of reducing costs (including environmental):

A conceptual sequence of events encouraging green energy:  

1. Government, thru a complex set of economic measures, incentivizes production and consumption. This essentially means: (i) taming price rises, (ii) increasing incomes, (iii) increasing production or processing by marketers thru debottlenecking and targeted incentives and (iv) incentivizing fresh investments.

2. This increases government income thru corporate taxes, indirect taxes (on goods and services) and personal taxes.

3. Government pumps back a large part of increased income for further incentives and begins grant/soft loan aid in ‘green energy’ investments. These essentially lower the significant burden of installing green energy capacities and significant hand-held private investments in green energy capacity ensue.

4. There have been encouraging reports of solar energy producing electrical power at a fraction of the conventional fossil fuel power. As more and more installed capacities go on stream, the cost of green energy comes down with practically no environmental impact.

5. Processors pass on a part of the cost advantage (it is routine to have the green energy producer to commit to a certain ‘price to their buyer in rs/kwh’  in advance for a few years)  and reinvest surpluses for capacity expansions and efficiency enhancement.

6. Lower energy costs lower the delivered prices of processed goods and the energy costs to the consumers. Consumers’ cost of living comes down, savings and private investment rise and standards of living improve.

Thus increasing share of green energy in the energy menu for the processor or marketer helps offset the negatives of expanding and diversifying processing. In other words, it enables targeted and strategic encouragement to select sectors without the fear of negatives getting out of hand. 

This applies to all FMCG cases but a few foods have compelling logic beyond these net benefits and deserve extra encouragement.

Specific cases deserving extra encouragement: Like all eco-systems, India has some situational circumstances which call for extra encouragement of some food processing segments, obviously with material, energy and environmental efficiencies as pre-conditions: 

1. Fruits and vegetable processing
2. Milk processing

2a. Spray drying of dairy wheys to whey powders

2b. Condensed milk as ‘concentrated milk’

2c. Milk powder as fully concentrated spray-dried milk

Common features of all cases: 1. High perishability of starting materials because of high water content. 2. In case of drying, requirement of evaporation of a large part of water, high heat (and hence fuel) requirement, high processing cost and attendant weight and volume contraction.  (iii) High nutritive value of starting materials getting concentrated on ‘per gram’ basis with nominal nutrition losses in case of drying. (iv) Wide-spread preference for unprocessed versions. (v) Possibilities of a wide range of products with graded extents of  processing. (vi) Possibilities of products from merger of milk and fruit/vegetable universes.

Fruit and vegetable processing: India has had an abysmal record of fruits and vegetable processing for predictable reasons:

1. High capital requirement of cold chains and processing facilities.
2. Need for multi-location plants to cater to regional availabilities and to minimize transportation of large volumes of perishable raw materials.
3. Wide and justified preference for fresh produce.
4. Moderate margins and built-in resistances to ‘far out’ products like vegetable and fruit powders, vegetable juices, fruit preserves, freeze-dried whole and powdered fruits and vegetables.

This has resulted in only a tiny fraction of fresh produce getting processed and the remaining desperately vying for transportation to consuming areas for quick consumption, and often failing. This has resulted in massive wastages which mean not only an opportunity lost but also environmental pollution. These are nature’s nutritive products providing dietary fiber (mostly insoluble), vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. They are low in proteins and fats or oils and have an entrenched and inherent ‘healthy’ image. An entire post is planned on how they can be used in daily life for significant health advantage even for diabetics.

Vegetables, with composition comparable with fruits except for negligible levels of sugars, start with a tremendous advantage in a country with a sweet tooth and bitter diabetic susceptibilities. (We will not consider the technicality of tomatoes actually being a fruit.) Large volumes of vegetables have always played second fiddle to much smaller volumes of fruits. Vegetables-(curd/yoghurt)-soluble fiber combinations and pulpy vegetable juices constitute an enticing processed food category for all, especially the diabetics. That soups have not made deep enough inroads into lives (and we plan to correct it) is an anomaly that will be analysed in detail separately. Fruits and vegetables thus deserve to be extensively processed and consumed.

Fruits and vegetables are characterized by high water content (80 % is a ball-park, going well above 90% in cases like watermelon and some tomatoes) and water is the main culprit in promoting spoilage, especially after bruising which is quite common.  The improvement in keeping quality increases as water-content is reduced by drying. Since industrial air-drying (non-freeze drying) requires heat which presently mostly means burning of fossil fuels, drier the products, more the cost and the climate damage. But water also limits the temperature of processing by absorbing a lot of heat in vaporizing. Their nutrients are largely stable to such temperature ranges and hence loss for moderate processing is moderate. In terms of water-content, the decreasing order is:

1. Clarified juices.
2. Pulps and pulpy juices
3. Jams, jellies, marmalades, ketchup, fruit concentrates (‘reductions’ in culinary language), pickles, preserves, chutneys etc.
4. Dehydrated fruits and vegetables – whole, pieces or powders.

These facts, taken together, mean that (i) they are best consumed fresh, (ii) the reduction in nutritive value by heat is limited, (iii) the less the drying, the less the negatives and, as a corollary, highly heat-processed and dried products will be justified only by exceptional advantages. (iv) cold storage may not constitute ‘processing’ but deserves maximum resource allocation in most cases.

Some promising processed vegetable and fruit products:

1. Pulpy fruit and vegetable juices. As mentioned in the profile of Preeti Trivedi – refer ‘About us’ – one of their value-added versions is a part of our lives.
2. Value-added vegetable soups in powder as well as in ready-to-eat format in retort pouches.
3. Air-dried as well as freeze dried onions, garlic and high value produce like broccoli, leeks, parsley, mushroom, strawberries and other berries, pomegranate etc.
4. Mango, banana, sapota (cheeku), pineapple and guava pulps – mainly for export.
5. Precooked i.e. pre-steamed vegetables seen as exquisite (e.g. broccoli, mushrooms) and ready for final flash stir-frying at home. (These are very popular in the US as ‘stir fry vegetables’ and this author can vouch for their utility.) If a pre-spiced edible oil with special attributes can also be made available, such pre-steamed vegetables can be readily made into tasty and nutritious ‘subji’ dishes in a couple of minutes.
6. Ready-to-eat vegetable or ‘subji’ dishes in retort pouches – presently mainly exported.  

Next post: Compelling cases for processing: Part II

(A brief history of milk processing and dried dairy wheys)

(Read ‘disclaimer’)