Planning for urban freight distribution of agricultural produces: case study of Gurgaon

Abstract

Globally, wholesale markets are the major trading centres where buyers and sellers transact business in the manufacture of perishable products that has been increasing in India since independence. Output rose from 12.77 million ha and 96.56 million tons in 1991-1992, to 20.4 million ha and 22.1 million tons in 2009- 2010, respectively. Horticulture contributes about 30% of India's agricultural GDP produced from 13.08% of the crop region and accounts for 37% of total agricultural commodity exports rendering India the second largest fruit and vegetable producer after China. Restrictions on production, differences in yields and logistics costs influence the productivity of the region. (Gopal Naik, 2018). The understanding of freight issues and their applied solutions in developed countries still remains just a concept while planning for cities in developing countries like India. It also aims to facilitate decision-makers in assessing the importance of urban freight in making rational and informed policy decisions for transport infrastructure related to freight activity. The freight sector also faces several challenges such as congestion, parking for delivery vehicles and reverse logistics (e.g. recycling and garbage collection), the lack of awareness, understanding and overall vision for urban goods movement. Besides, lack of information about the flow of urban goods, fragmentation within stakeholders, lack of skills and knowledge are also contributory factors leading to negligence in the urban freight sector. where Logistics aspects related to supply chain linkages, storage, handling, distribution aspects including the modes used are often not given enough importance. The agriculture supply chain is rather unorganized and inefficient and there is a lot of wastage during storage. Also, lead times are high and security issues are not considered (Dr. Sanjay Gupta, 2017). In the study, methods like Multicriteria Decision Making (MCDM) i.e. AHP and Supply Chain Operational Reference (SCOR) model will be used for assessing and increasing the efficiency of agricultural produces. Various scenarios will be created after evaluating the parameters affecting agricultural freight transport and will be further compared based on the truck trip commodity-based modelling for efficient urban freight deliveries to agricultural mandis.