In late February, we set out to explore five food value chains as part of TCI’s Promoting Value Chains for Climate Resilience and Nutritious Diets project, which aims to assess the challenges facing different value chains and recommend appropriate solutions. Over the next two months, we interviewed producers, aggregators, processors, researchers, and government officials to better understand the journey of food from farm to fork. In this photo essay, we share some of what we saw and learned from our respondents.

We focused on five value chains:

• maize (cereal) in Purnia, Bihar
• black gram (pulses) in Chhatarpur, Madhya Pradesh
• orange (fruit) in Nagpur, Maharashtra
• eggplant (vegetables) in Nadia, West Bengal
• soybean (oilseeds) in Latur, Maharashtra.

The evolving maize value chain in Bihar

Bihar is emerging as one of the largest producers of maize in India, with production more than doubling from 2.1 million tons in 2020–21 to 5.5 million tons in 2023–24. Many people we spoke to attributed this to the government’s push for ethanol blending in fuel. To understand what this shift looks like on the ground, we traveled to Purnia district, one of the highest producers of maize in the state and home to a wholesale market (mandi) that determines the domestic maize price throughout India.

We arrived in Purnia in the middle of the Rabi season when most farmers were growing maize, wheat and fox nuts (makhana). A few days before our visit, a storm swept through the region, flattening many farmers’ crops. For many farmers we met, the losses from the storm were compounded by something more systemic: defaults on past loans had limited their access to government programs such as subsidized credit and crop insurance at a time when it mattered the most. This left them with no choice but to rely on middlemen (local village traders) and money lenders for credit.

Workers load maize onto trucks at a warehouse in Purnia.

Village-level traders continue to play a pivotal role in this economy as they aggregate produce, extend informal credit and absorb risk, but new players are emerging. DeHaat, an agri-tech startup, has set up collection centers and warehouses in Purnia, positioning itself as an alternative aggregator that links farmers more directly to distant markets. On the day we visited, workers were loading two trucks: one bound for a poultry feed supplier in Kaithal, Haryana and the other headed to Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.

Women clean and grade makhanas (foxnuts) at a processing facility in Purnia.

Beyond logistics, DeHaat is investing in post-harvest infrastructure such as a grading plant for foxnuts that processes makhana before it reaches buyers. The plant creates local employment and returns a better price than what is available through traditional channels.

Ethanol processing units are among the major buyers of maize in the region, and their presence has reshaped cropping decisions across the district. However, during our visit to a Purnia ethanol plant, processors highlighted how shifting government policy on blending mandates had left the plant running well below capacity for months.

Water and soil contamination were very visible around the plant and a persistent smell served as a reminder that agricultural transformation carries costs that do not always show up in production numbers.

Black gram under pressure in Bundelkhand

Of the five value chains examined over the two months, none bore the weight of weather-related negative impacts more visibly than black gram in Bundelkhand. Unseasonal rains just before the harvest season over the past few years have caused pulses to sprout inside the pod, turning a farmer’s yield into a loss before it ever leaves the field. We traveled to Chhatarpur district, one of the country’s largest black gram-producing regions, to understand what this crop means to the people who grow, trade, and process it.

Black gram sits in piles at the APMC mandi (wholesale market) in Tikamgarh.

In principle, government-regulated markets called mandis offer farmers a transparent auction system in which crops fetch a fair price. In practice, most farmers in Bundelkhand never reach them. Crops first move to village-level traders, who sell to larger traders in towns, who then bring the black gram to the mandis. By the time it arrives, the farmer is several hands removed from the sale.

The nearest pulses processing mill is located 200 kilometers away in Tikamgarh. This distance is one of the defining constraints of this value chain. Without local processing infrastructure, farmers give up on a key opportunity for value addition. A grading plant we visited in Chhatarpur district, set up with support from a central government program that provides a 35% subsidy to establish small food processing enterprises, offers a glimpse of what closer-to-farm processing can look like.

Six grades of black gram, six markets, six prices. Grade 1 is on the left and grade 6 is on the right.

The grading plant separates black gram purchased from local farmers into six distinct grades. The top three (clean, whole, well-formed) sell for 25–70 rupees per kilogram across different consumer segments. Grade 4 travels to paapad manufacturers in Gujarat and Rajasthan at 20 rupees per kilogram. Grade 5 becomes animal feed at 10 rupees per kilogram. Grade 6, which is otherwise unsellable, goes to chicken farms as a base material for 3–4 rupees per kilogram. Infrastructure like this, built closer to where farmers live, helps capture value that would otherwise leave the region entirely.

During our visit to the Tikamgarh mandi, we witnessed intense negotiations between buyers and sellers of black gram. Unlike wheat and soybeans, black gram was not being auctioned because the price gap between buyers and sellers was very large. We later visited one of the processors, who shared his concerns about black gram imports from Myanmar, which are pushing down domestic prices. He acknowledged the superior quality of black gram imports from Myanmar but expressed concern about their implications for the government’s push to be self-sufficient (atmanirbhar) in pulse production.

The modernizing orange value chain in Vidharba

Unlike cereals and pulses, which can sit in a warehouse for months, many horticulture crops have a very limited shelf life. The implications of this fact were evident in our conversations with orange growers, who emphasized the need for cold storage and processing facilities.

We visited growers on both sides of the Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh border: in Warud block of Nagpur district and Pandhurna block of Chhindwara district. Across farm sizes ranging from 1.5–12 acres, we found farmers adopting better orchard management practices, such as raised beds to improve drainage and root health, and increasing tree density for higher yields. One of the larger farmers had recently started using drones to spray pesticides made available through a state government program.

Pre-harvest contractors shape the orange value chain here. These contractors secure orchards on contract and purchase the crop under one of two arrangements. Under the hunda system, a fixed price is agreed upon at the flowering stage, which provides the farmer with certainty but no additional benefit if the crop outperforms expectations. Under the ginti system, payment is based on actual harvested weight. Both systems keep the farmer at a distance from the final sale.

Most of the oranges grown in the region are sold at the Kalamna APMC mandi in Nagpur. During our time there, sellers returned repeatedly to the same frustration that agent commission rates of 7–8%, charged on every transaction, are very high.

Under the Maharashtra APMC Act, grains are regulated and must move through official market channels. However, fruits and vegetables can be sold directly into the private market, free of the mandi market tax. Some farmers we met had found their way to traders who had set up their own grading and crate-making units, bypassing the mandi system entirely.

One such unit had been built with the support of a state government program that subsidizes private infrastructure to strengthen horticultural value chains. The trader running the unit was selling graded oranges directly to buyers in Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and Kerala.

Bangladesh has long been a significant destination for smaller-grade Vidarbha oranges, the fruit that does not make the top grades for domestic premium markets but still has buyers abroad. When Bangladesh raised import duties, those oranges had nowhere to go. The export channel narrowed, domestic supply backed up, and prices fell. A trade policy decision made in Dhaka is now impacting farmers in the orchards of Vidharba.

The precarious eggplant value chain in West Bengal

The eggplant value chain highlighted a growing dilemma among farmers regarding the sustainability of food value chains in terms of health and the environment. While the crop provides high returns to farmers, they worry about the increasing use of pesticides needed to deal with new pests. We visited Nadia district in West Bengal, as it is one of the country’s highest producers of eggplants.

An eggplant farmer harvests white eggplants from his field in Nadia district.

As one farmer put it, you get two rupees back for every rupee you invest in growing eggplants. This was true for most of the farmers we spoke to, who reported making 80–120% profit. A major concern for many farmers was a new disease that had affected eggplant plants by yellowing leaves and reducing yields over the past two years, resulting in significant losses for some farmers.

Farmers in the North 24 Parganas district let eggplants rot in the fields because prices are too low to take them to market.

Compared to the other value chains examined in this project, the eggplant value chain was notably short and narrow in scope due to limited processing and value-addition opportunities. This led to food waste when prices fell. During our visit to farms in North 24 Parganas, we saw eggplants left to decompose in the fields as prices at local mandis had fallen to 4 rupees per kilogram, making it cheaper to abandon the harvest than to pay labor to pick it.

Vegetables and fruits across Nadia move through private markets rather than government-regulated mandis. We visited three in the district where private traders charged farmers 6–8% of the total crop value as commission.

From Nadia, the eggplants travel to Kolkata, Siliguri, and Forbesganj. We followed the chain to Koley market in Kolkata, one of the city’s main wholesale vegetable hubs, where eggplant was selling at 40 rupees per kilogram.

Eggplant and other vegetables for sale at the Koley fruits and vegetable market in Kolkata.

Just outside Koley market, street retailers were selling the same eggplant, purchased inside that morning, at 60 rupees per kilogram. The margin between wholesale and retail, compressed into a few meters of pavement, captures something essential about how value is distributed along this chain.

Organizations like Sufal Bangla are trying to shorten that distance. By purchasing vegetables directly from farmers through farmer producer organizations (FPOs) and publishing daily buy-and-sell rates publicly, Sufal Bangla introduces a transparency that the private mandi system rarely offers.

The uncertain future of the soybean value chain in Marathwada

The soybean value chain in Latur district was the best developed that we encountered during our two months of field research. Latur district has grading units, processing plants, seed facilities, an extensive network of FPOs, direct collection centers, and one of the region’s largest mandis. However, nearly every conversation we had in Latur circled back to the same question: how much longer will farmers keep growing soybeans?

Many of the processing and grading units in the region were established with support from state government programs such as the Project on Climate Resilient Agriculture (POCRA) and the State of Maharashtra’s Agri-Business and Rural Transformation (SMART) program, which were designed to strengthen agricultural value chains by subsidizing post-harvest infrastructure. We visited a seed processing facility in Ausa block, set up under one of these programs. The owner walked us through the operation and expressed his concerns about the future of the soybean value chain in Latur. First, he was worried about the declining soybean prices due to imports. Second, he was concerned about the low-quality seeds from Madhya Pradesh flooding the local markets.

Soybeans are the main crop traded at the APMC mandi in Latur. During our visit to the mandi, we witnessed the auction in progress. Most of the soybeans at the mandi are purchased by two large processing plants (Kriti Oils and ADM) in Latur. We had the opportunity to speak with many buyers (as they all meet for tea after the auctions). A major concern for most buyers was the impact of imported soybeans and soybean products from Brazil and Argentina, which had driven down domestic prices. They were concerned that farmers might reduce soybean production, thereby increasing reliance on imports.

We visited a soybean processing plant in Ausa and had the opportunity to see how soybeans are processed into soybean oil and meal (de-oiled cake). The plant owners told us they used to purchase soybeans directly from farmers through village collection centers, but as prices declined and farmers grew fewer soybeans, they have closed these centers. Instead, they now rely on soybeans from the mandi.

Ongoing trade negotiations between India and the United States (US) have raised the prospect of American soybean meal entering the Indian market. The processing plant owners in Latur were concerned about what that would mean for Latur’s soybean value chain. They acknowledged that US soybean meal is of higher quality than what Indian processors can currently produce. If import duties come down as part of a bilateral deal, Indian soybean meal may simply be unable to compete.

Latur built its soybean infrastructure over the past two decades. The question its stakeholders are sitting with now is whether the economics that justified that infrastructure still hold.

Strengthening value chains

Across these five value chains, stakeholders shared hopes and concerns about the future. While they were positive about increased investments in post-harvest infrastructure and the development of new marketing channels, such as FPOs, many shared concerns about climate shocks, trade policies and limited access to credit.

Strengthening these value chains for climate resilience and nutritional outcomes will require more than physical infrastructure. It will demand policy consistency, financial systems that reach the farmers who need them most, and recognition that the risks farmers carry today are too large and too systemic to absorb alone.

Raghav Puri is a research associate at TCI.

Naveen Sridhar Kottayil is a research support specialist and a TCI alumnus.

Photo credits: All photos by Raghav Puri/TCI.