Billing for your fruit and vegetable shop in Mizoram
Two grades of the same orange on one bill, and a family's monthly udhaar on a page of its own.
Mamit's oranges and the farm districts that fill a Mizoram shelf
A fruit and vegetable shelf is filled from the districts around. Two of them, and what each is known for.
- Mamit has abundant orange production and is often called the Orange garden of Mizoram.
- In Lawngtlai about 60 percent of the people depend on agriculture and allied work. The family that grows may also be the family that buys.
The trader's rate, two scales that disagree and a fruit out of season
The trader's rate is not yours
In 2020 Mizoram's Agriculture Minister said traders buy vegetables from farmers and sell at prices they like, and announced vegetable market chains with producer societies supplying Aizawl. For a vegetable shop that sentence is the morning: the rate you paid for tomatoes today is not the rate you paid last week, and the customer remembers last week's.
The farmer's scale and yours
A farmer weighs twenty kilos of tomatoes on the scale at his gate. At your counter the same tomatoes show nineteen. He says your scale is wrong. A customer, looking at the same needle, says the same about it when she buys. Neither of you has a record to point at. You pay on one number, sell on another, and the difference falls into the day's takings where it is lost.
A shelf that follows the crops, and a memory that does not
A fruit shop's year turns with the crops. A fruit that filled the shelf last month is gone this month, and a new one arrives at a rate nobody has seen yet. When a family asks if you will have it again, or how much of it sold last time, you answer from memory and guess the order for the next truck.
Two grades of one orange, a shelf planned round the truck day and the last tray of strawberries
The marked oranges in the orange weeks
In the orange weeks the marked oranges come in with the good ones in every load. A customer who takes the cheaper ones may be a customer who would have bought the better. At the end of the week read the kilos of each grade on the bills, and see whether the cheap grade brings new buyers or only takes the place of the better one.
The society's truck day and the kilos still ripening at the back
The producer society's truck has its day. That evening the back room is full and the shelf is thin. In the days after, the kilos ripen at the back, and you bring out only what will sell. The back room's count says how many ripening kilos are left, and the order for the next truck starts from it.
Strawberries that come down the hill on their own day
A basket of strawberries comes when the grower can come down the hill, and not on the lorry's day. Put the basket's kilos in as stock the day it comes. On the lorry's day the shelf is the lorry's fruit, on the basket's day it is strawberries, and the report shows which of the two days carried the week.
Tools for a shelf that changes with every crop
Bills on your phone
A bill for a box of strawberries, a hand of bananas and a pineapple, each counted in its own unit.
Godown stock
The back room where bananas and mangoes ripen, counted apart from what is on the front stall, so you know what is ready to be brought out.
Low stock warnings
A mark on the oranges, so the warning comes when the count of kilos falls to it and before the truck has left the village.
Stall bills and an online shop that a farmers' group brought together
Questions Mizoram fruit and vegetable shops ask about scales, grades and the back room
The farmer's scale and mine differ again this week. Is it always the same way?
Count the heap at each week's end and set it against the phone. If the gap is about a kilo every week on the same side, it is the scale and not the day.
The society's truck leaves a paper sheet that reaches me later. Where do I write what it left with me?
Write the items and kilos that the truck actually left, on the day it came, against the order you sent to the society. When the sheet comes, set it beside your own entry, and a difference is seen at once.
A tray of strawberries must go today while the mangoes ripen over days. What does the tray need by evening?
The tray needs to be sold before dark, at a rate that moves it, so put it at the front of the stall and call it first. The mangoes can wait in the back room, ripening, while the strawberries are cleared.
A grape grower leaves his boxes with me on trust when he cannot stay. How do I know what I owe him?
The money is due only when the boxes sell. Write each box against his name with its weight and the day. At the week's end read what sold of his, and pay him for that and no more.
What the villages sent to Aizawl, and the fruit the state grows
Mizoram's fruit crops include mandarin orange, banana, mango, strawberry, grape, pineapple and dragon fruit. The state accounts for 13.2 percent of the Northeast's fruit output.
During the 2020 lockdown, trucks of vegetables from villages across Mizoram, including Serchhip, supplied Aizawl. The horticulture director said local produce was enough.