Much of India’s rural population relies on smallholder farming for their income and livelihoods. But every year about 30% of agricultural produce is wasted before it leaves the farms.
This is because bumper crops and price fluctuations often force farmers to leave unsellable crops rotting in the fields. These wasted crops squander the precious energy and water used to grow them, demand additional resources for their disposal and cause income losses for small farmers, which can deepen rural poverty and exacerbate inequality.
Founded in 2013 by six university friends – Nidhi Pant, Vaibhav Tidke, Swapnil Kokte, Ganesh Bhere, Shital Somani, Tushar Gaware and Ashwin Pawade – S4S Technologies combats food waste, rural poverty, and gender inequality by helping smallholder female farmers preserve and market surplus produce.
The organisation provides rural communities with cheaper solar-powered conduction dryers and food processing equipment to prepare their crops on-site, rather than using cold storage or other more expensive methods of conventional industrial food preservation.
With a focus on supporting female farmers, S4S also supports its entrepreneurs in using the preserved waste to produce and sell valuable food products, such as ketchup. S4S creates a market, connecting commercial buyers to these products and returning most of the profits to the farmers who made them.
Some 300,000 women smallholder farmers supported by S4S have recorded 10- 15% increases in their profits, while the 2,000 female entrepreneurs they partner with have seen incomes double or even triple. By 2025, S4S wants to extend their reach to three million smallholder farmers and 30,000 entrepreneurs. By 2026, they predict they will have reduced food waste by 1.2 million tonnes and removed the equivalent of 10 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere.
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