Food storage or wastage?

By Pandurang Hegde
25 Aug 2010

To tackle food storage crisis in India, government should adopt two-pronged approach of encouraging large size foodgrain silos in states with surplus production and de-centralised foodgrain procurement and storage in other regions.

In most storage sites, jute bags packed with foodgrains lie in open
(photo courtesy: NDTV)
The damage of food stocks in Food Corporation of India (FCI) warehouses has made news headlines recently. The Supreme Court (SC) had to intervene to give stern warnings to the government to put an end to destruction of the food grains. It also asked the government to distribute the stocks to the poor and malnourished. This is not the first time the apex court has given such strong warnings. In the past too SC had asked the central government to initiate actions regarding proper food storage, but still no action was taken. It is a national shame that even for routine government function, especially in case of foodgrain storage, the judiciary has to intervene to reprimand the government to perform its constitutional duty.

As usual, the Food Ministry has not taken these warnings seriously. The Food Minister declared in Rajya Sabha that, “All reports on rotting of foodgrains are not factually correct and quite exaggerated. There are only certain cases of damage and we have suspended some officials”.

Despite facing innumerable hardships, the farming community of India has produced good results as the food grains output increased to 231 million tonnes in 2008. As we claim to be a Super Power in waiting, the rampant malnutrition and prevalence of anemic children and women to the extent of 48 percent of population is a definitive indicator that we have failed to feed the hungry. Under such critical circumstances, it is a criminal to waste food grains. Ironically our food storage methods are not only inadequate but also antique and outdated. In tropical climate, there is an acute need to invent methods of food storage that can deal with the high moisture content causing fungus and reduce damage by rodents.

Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI) made the Central and State Government aware of the problems of food storage way back in 1956. “If the problem persists after warning was issued more than five decades ago, it only means that Government is not serious in shoring up the storage facilities to keep up with the expanding production” said Dr Parpia, the ex Director of CFTRI. Despite the Government being warned in advance of the impending storage crisis, the intentional neglect on the part of the Food Ministry and the casual approach of the Planning Commission is a clear indicator of non-performance. They have miserably failed to provide policy support towards strengthening the food security.

At present, the food ministry hires space from private operators to store food paying higher rent. At the same time there are reports of state warehousing corporations renting out the storage facility to agricultural multinational corporations, instead of storing the foodgrains procured by FCI. These contradictory facts reveal the failure of the ad hoc policies of the food ministry in dealing with the food storage crisis.

These facts prove the insensitivity of the politicians and the bureaucrats in dealing with the essential commodities like food crops. They neither care for the farmers who produce the food nor are they interested in helping the poor to ease their hunger. The farmers produce food with their hard-earned labor and scarce financial resources, but instead of reaching the hungry stomachs it gets destroyed by the policies of the government.

Though the wastage of food grains is estimated to be Rs 60000 crores annually, in real terms the cost will be much higher. We need to add the costs of growing these crops, input costs for fertilizers, power, cost of water, and the labor costs of farmers. Adding these costs the estimate of the loss incurred by food grains wasted in the country would be around Rs 100000 crores annually. This is two times the food subsidy costs incurred in a year. If we take into account the environmental costs, of soil erosion and effects on water quality, it would be much higher.

The solution to food storage

In order to find solutions to the food storage, the minister of state for food K V Thomas toured China with some FCI officials. Impressed by the Chinese methods of food storage, the minister announced a further study team visiting China to learn about the modern warehousing construction and preservation methods of food storage.
We should definitely adopt good and practical techniques form China, but we should not ignore the time-tested methods of food storage that have been in practice in rural India.

Being an agricultural country, each region in India has evolved storage methods to preserve the food grains. In the villages we have grain gola, made from wood or local material that protects the grain from moisture and rodents. In most cases they use neem leaves or plant based pest resistant methods to repel pests and fungus. However, these silos like structures are small and they are suitable for storing village produce for a year or two. These time-tested methods are being abandoned in recent times as they are replaced with the concrete godowns, with support form central and state government under rural godowns scheme. Lack of maintenance, inadequate means to control moisture has led to failure of these rural warehouse projects.

Production of mountains of grain through intensive methods of high input agriculture calls for a different approach to store the food grain. The creation of grain silos as in the western countries is one of the options to store the food grains. Though it is capital intensive, it helps to prevent the moisture and control rodents. In contrast to this, in majority of the government godowns in India, grain is stored in open in jute gunny bags, which cannot prevent the moisture and can easily be destroyed by rodents and pests.

The best solution in a country like India is to adopt two-pronged approach of decentralized policy of procuring and storage of food grains at village level with community support and large-scale grain silos in regions like Punjab and Haryana. This will help to reduce the losses and increase the life of stored food grains.
Are our policy makers willing to adopt these practices?

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