CFAs: Building Climate-Smart Post-Harvest Systems for Small Farmers and Micro-Enterprises (India)

The program focuses on nurturing innovation, enabling collaboration, and advancing inclusive technologies that create affordable, climate-smart solutions rooted in community resilience. The initiative aims to strengthen post-harvest systems through technology innovation, prototyping, piloting, scaling, creating training modules, certification, media, and outreach. It targets the development and adoption of climate-smart, energy-efficient, and decentralized technologies that reduce losses, enhance value addition, and strengthen resilient agri-food systems, particularly benefiting rural and underserved communities with inclusivity, accessibility, and long-term benefits.

Agricultural post-harvest losses in India amount to nearly 30–40% of fruits and vegetables and significant portions of cereals and pulses annually, causing economic setbacks to small farmers, wasting water, energy, land resources, and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. With the increasing challenges posed by climate change, resilient post-harvest systems have become essential for ensuring food security, safeguarding livelihoods, and protecting the environment.

To address these issues, enterprises developing climate-smart and energy-efficient technologies such as solar dryers, cold storage, energy-efficient milling machines, and climate-controlled packaging solutions are critical. These innovations help reduce spoilage, extend shelf life, and enable better value addition. However, many enterprises encounter difficulties transitioning innovations from prototypes to commercial markets and scaling validated solutions beyond pilot phases.

Challenges at the innovation stage include gaps in design refinement, technical validation, and field testing across diverse agro-climatic contexts, limiting market readiness. At the scaling stage, obstacles such as limited access to finance, insufficient manufacturing ecosystems, and weak market linkages hinder wider adoption and systemic impact. Targeted support at these stages is crucial to empower enterprises to move from concept to large-scale deployment.

SELCO Foundation’s program addresses these challenges by offering strategic financial support, expert insights through sector specialist engagement, innovation network integration within India’s agri-tech ecosystem and global platforms, comprehensive mentorship to evolve minimum viable products into scalable climate-smart enterprises, and market and ecosystem readiness through exposure to real-world contexts and validation opportunities.

By fostering an ecosystem of innovation acceleration and systemic change, the program empowers entrepreneurs and grassroots innovators to co-create solutions that not only address productivity, mechanization, and labor drudgery but also build resilience against climate challenges shaping India’s agricultural value chains. This approach advances hardware-led research and development that supports sustainable growth and inclusive livelihoods across agriculture value chains.

The program duration is 12 months from November 2025 to November 2026, with a call for enterprises working or innovating in post-harvest technologies to apply. Eligible applicants include those with innovative ideas, proof of concept, or minimum viable products seeking to pilot, test, deploy, or scale livelihood technologies, particularly those serving small farmers and micro-entrepreneurs.

SELCO Foundation’s offer includes financial resources for piloting, prototyping, research, outreach, technology demonstrations, and scaling, combined with expert mentorship, dynamic innovation networking, and market readiness support. This initiative aims to unlock collaborations, partnerships, and scale opportunities that foster climate-smart, inclusive agricultural development.

For more information, visit SELCO Foundation.