Researcher makes the case for small, affordable cold stores to cut crop losses

Huge amounts of fruit and vegetables rot in Bangladesh every year because farmers have nowhere to store them after harvest and no proper way to move them. In an opinion column published by Jagonews24 on 27 June 2026, Dr Surajit Sarkar, an agricultural mechanisation researcher and consultant, argued that small, affordable cold stores built for farmers could cut much of that loss. When a crop is wasted, he wrote, the loss falls not on one farmer alone but on a family, a community and the country.

Dr Sarkar put post-harvest losses of fruit and vegetables in Bangladesh at 20 to 40 percent. Earlier research points the same way. In October 2011 The Daily Star reported a study led by Professor M Kamrul Hassan of Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU) that found losses of 23.6 to 43.5 percent across 13 fruits and vegetables. Jackfruit lost the most, followed by pineapple (43 percent) and papaya (39.9 percent), and the loss was valued at about Tk 3,442 crore a year at retail prices.

The column gave several reasons. Fruit and vegetables hold a lot of water and rot quickly. Harvesting at the wrong time, dirty containers and transport open to sun and rain all add to the damage. When a whole season's produce reaches the market at once, prices fall, and with nowhere to store it farmers must sell cheaply. The BAU study likewise blamed poor transport and the absence of proper storage.

Bangladesh's cold stores were built mainly for potatoes. The Financial Express reported in 2021 that the Bangladesh Cold Storage Association's 400 cold stores could hold close to 6.0 million tonnes of potatoes. Dr Sarkar wrote that these stores are large, costly and clustered in cities or potato-growing areas, out of reach of small and marginal farmers.

He cited research by BAU's Department of Farm Power and Machinery. After a lime and hot-water pre-treatment, Amrapali, Haribhanga, Langra and BARI-4 mangoes kept for 14 to 21 days at 12°C and 85 to 95 percent humidity. Carrot, cabbage, radish and cauliflower kept for 14 to 38 days at 5°C; tomato and green chilli for 21 to 30 days at 8°C; and pineapple, lemon and amra (hog plum) for 7 to 26 days at 10°C.

As Dr Sarkar described it, the new small cold store runs on ordinary 220-volt household power, controls temperature and humidity automatically with Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, can be watched in real time on an Android app and uses environmentally friendly refrigerants. He suggested that young rural entrepreneurs could buy units and charge farmers a fee for storage. He also called for a full cold chain, from pre-cooling in the field to refrigerated transport and storage, financed through government subsidies, special farm credit, farmer cooperatives, NGOs and development partners such as the World Bank, IFAD and ADB.

Two weeks before the column appeared, on 15 June 2026, Agriculture Minister Mohammad Amin Ur Rashid said the government had begun an initiative to set up 2,000 mini cold stores across the country within one to two years, each to be run as a cooperative by 15 to 20 farmers (Dhaka Times). On 18 June, Dr M Shahidul Islam, a former director general of the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), wrote in The Daily Observer that the technology had been piloted under a project in 2025, that some units hold around 10 tons and that solar power can cut their running costs. Dr Sarkar called the plan a hopeful step.

The problem is global too. A 2011 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) found that roughly one third of the food produced for people, about 1.3 billion tonnes a year, is lost or wasted.

Photo: NahidSultan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Sources: Jagonews24 (opinion column by Dr Surajit Sarkar), The Daily Star, The Financial Express, Dhaka Times, The Daily Observer, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)