AHP-TOPSIS Based Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) Approach for Performance Evaluation of Commercial Food Grain Storage Practices in Indian

Abstract

Food grains are an important part of the Indian diet. The grain production has been steadily increasing over the years with advancement in scientific productions. The produced grains are being most commonly stored in bag storage in go-downs/warehouses and cover and plinth storage (CAP), silos, and various other methods like conventional storage structures etc., to maintain grain quality characteristics for certain period. Due to improper storage practices are resulting in huge losses of the total production of the country. World Bank, have reported post harvest loss of 10% to 16% of food grains every year in India, which impedes the mission of achieving food security in India. In parts, among the major causes of these losses are the reluctance among farmers, especially of small holding, towards adoption of scientific storage methods/ technologies and inability of the national agencies to meet the challenges imposed by the supply of surplus grains to them by the farmers. Although sets of improved grain storage technologies exist among Indian farming communities, a controversial account about their effectiveness and performance is available in the literature which negatively impacts the endeavor of bringing rapid developmental in the farming associate societies. In order to develop an informative argument about the performance of the existing storage practices, a nearly comprehensive study has been undertaken to compare the different commercial food grain storage structures used by Indians. Both qualitative and quantitative parameters were compared individually and simultaneously to achieve their effect on performance individually and in unison. Another objective of the study was to test the applicability of hybrid and multi-attribute approach, based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) for the performance evaluation and ranking of the attributes and structures. Finally, based on analysis and ideas borrowed out of literature a set of theoretical and conceptual guidelines to assist improvement in these structures was brought in. The study will help understand the status of grain storage practices in the society and also increase the adoption of better storage practices.