Idea 487 of 500. Cluster 27: The fruit nobody grades
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
The mechanism, from the book
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.
Every idea in cluster 27 uses this mechanism.
A first step
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.
The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.
In the book
- Ch. ElevenThe Mechanisms
What a brand and an owned variety are worth, from the kiwifruit growers - Ch. TwoAn Island Nobody Has Counted
The island's resources, counted
More from cluster 27
- 486The Karuthakolomban mango, the finest the island grows, graded, packed and sold under its own name, from Jaffna and every district that grows it, to Colombo and the world
- 488Mangosteen and rambutan flown fresh in season to the Gulf and Singapore in graded boxes, not left to the roadside
- 489The island's bananas sold by name, kolikuttu, seeni and ambul, in Colombo and in the Sri Lankan shops abroad, not as "banana"
- 490Avocado orchards in the hills for the breakfast tables of the Gulf, which now fly the fruit in from much further away
- 491Fruit-tree nurseries selling grafted saplings of the named varieties, with a guarantee that the tree is what the label says
- 492Pick-your-own orchards and fruit trails for visitors in the season, the way apple farms do it in England
Idea 487 of the 500 in the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? Every one can be started by one person, one family or one small firm.