"Oranges get good price if they are packed on the basis of grading. When small and big size oranges are mixed together farmers do not get proper return," said Kaji Giri, president of Dharan Agricultural Market.
"The state must introduce policy on grading packing and farmers must be provided knowledge about grading and access to such technology," he said adding that only then the farmers will be duly rewarded by orange farming.
The technology of packing the oranges as per their size and quality is called grading packing. In other countries, grading machines are deployed right in the farm while plucking oranges. However, Nepali orange farmers do not have such machines and most of the farmers don't even know about it claims Giri.
In Dharan, oranges are graded after they are collected from the farm and taken to market. The grading is done manually by humans. According to a local businessman Gyankumar Basnet, a person can grade around 15 quintal of orange in a day. And that's not flawless, he said. If machine is used for the work, this could be done in lesser time and lower cost, he added. "Human done grading is rough and uneven. It does not give accurate result. So it's not perfect," he said.
The oranges go for sale after they are graded according to their sizes. Smallest sizes of oranges are taken away by juice industries and medium and big sizes are sold in between Rs 20 to 200 per kilogram. However, in lack of proper grading local farmers are not able to satisfy the costumers with quality. This is one of reasons for which some consumers prefer oranges from India, basically Nagpur, Basent informed.
Even though such machines would fetch better prices for the farmers, the machines are not available in local market, let alone with individual farmers. Despite long initiation for introducing it into the market farmers have not been able to have one so far, they said.
Last year, the then agriculture minister Hari Parajuli had promised the farmers and businessmen to supply a grading machine in Dharan. Manager of Dharan Agriculture Market Laxman Bhattarai quoted the minister as saying that a grading machine that separates oranges as per their color, shape and size is already available and that would be supplied to the market following an application by the seeker. "He had promised to provide us a grading machine. But later, he had to resign from the post."
Bhattarai informed that even though the Nagpur oranges have beaten the market in Nepal, oranges of Khoku, Dhankuta stand ahead of the Nagpur oranges.
"The oranges from Khoku are considered best in Asia. If graded properly and exported, it can make good space in the international market," he said. "We must teach the farmers the best way to pluck the oranges, grade them and pack them. Machine should be made available for this. We can export oranges to Europe, America," he added.
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