A fruit-grading standard and the graders trained to it, so that Grade A from any district means the same thing to a buyer in Dubai

Fruit the world wants, sold in a heap by the road. Grading, a name and a cold box make the heap an export and the season a reason to visit.

Choose one fruit and write a one-page grading standard for it: size, ripeness, blemishes, and what Grade A, B and C each mean, with a photograph of each. Train two graders to it in one district and grade a season's boxes for a packer who ships to the Gulf. Ask the buyer at the other end whether every box marked Grade A arrived as the page says. The proof is a buyer who orders by the grade.

Who pays first

A packer or exporter sending fruit to the Gulf who loses orders because a box marked Grade A means something different from every farm.

What leaves today

Without a shared grade, fruit sells at the heap's price, and the sorting, the trust and the margin are done by the importer abroad.

Confirm who owns the standard, that the grades can be checked by a buyer from a photograph and a measurement, and what a trained grader's certificate promises.

Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen

"None of that is a value. All of it can be checked."

A grade is worth something only when a buyer far away can check it the same way.

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?