The biggest wholesale fruit and vegetable market in the world

Entering Azadpur Mandi

In terms of the quantity of fruit and vegetables that arrives each day, the Azadpur Mandi is the biggest wholesale fruit and vegetable market in the world. More than ten thousand tons of fruit and vegetables arrive at Azadpur Mandi each morning. Until recently, Indian farmers weren't allowed to sell their produce outside a wholesale market, known as a "mandi." At the mandi, fruit and vegetables are bought and then distributed--by truck, horse-drawn cart, and even bicycle--throughout Delhi and surrounding areas.

Yesterday some friends and I awoke at 5am, fortified ourselves with pancakes, and headed out into the not-yet-blazing-hot dawn to see the Mandi firsthand. We hopped on Delhi's new metro (dusty, but functional and incredibly convenient) at the Lajpat Nagar station near our apartment. When we got off at Ardash Nagar, the smell hit us: A heady combination of rotting fruit and vegetables, cow dung, and probably quite a few other things my nose hasn't learned to identify.

Rips in the sacks allow brokers to examine the potatoes.

As a former kitchen manager, I was in heaven surrounded by towering walls of stacked burlap sacks bursting with potatoes. We walked by never-ending mountains of sacks of potatoes, onions, and garlic and boxes full of Kashmiri apples. Rips in the sacks and open box tops revealed the contents for brokers and retailers to examine. Goods were weighed using metal weights and makeshift scales. In between bags and stacks of boxes, men and women were sorting chilies, ginger, and any other kind of produce imaginable on tarps on the ground.

Weighing chilies.

Weighing sacks of garlic.

A cow chews happily atop a compost heap.

Without cold storage, many of the less-hardy fruit and vegetables were rotting in heaps next to the trucks. The cows munching on decaying produce certainly seemed happy, but the muck made me envy my friend's galoshes. I wouldn't want to visit Azadpur in Delhi's blistering May heat, or during the overwhelming monsoon rains we experienced a month ago. It was easy to see how people estimate that 40% of fruits and vegetables rot between the farm and the consumer in India.

It's amazing to think about how much of the city--from the dusty fruit and vegetable salesmen in Old Delhi to the peas and eggplant cooked in Delhi's finest restaurants--depends upon the chaotic functioning of the Azadpur Mandi. Whenever I ask street vendors where they get their produce, the answer is "Azadpur." Similarly, most of the produce sold in supermarkets still comes from Azadpur Mandi. This means that while supermarkets may sell their produce in fancy bins in air conditioned stores, it's fundamentally the same as the fruit and vegetables sold outside on tarps or from street vendors' carts. Supermarkets aspire to set up contract relationships with farmers that will allow them to source produce directly from the farm, use cold chain transport and storage to reduce waste, and bypass the middlemen at Azadpur. But for now, everyone still comes to the Mandi.

Bargaining and paying for crates of apples.

Vendors and trucks loaded with squash.

Leaving Azadpur with boxes of apples and sacks of potatoes to sell in the city.