Problem of plenty: Food grains left to rot in the open as godowns overflow

Bhuvan Bagga   |   Mail Today  |   New Delhi, March 4, 2013 | UPDATED 09:34 IST

 

In a country where millions living below the poverty line go without even two square meals a day, the Congress-led UPA government is constrained by the spectre of overflowing godowns to offload a whopping 65 lakhs of tonnes of wheat in the open market to make space for the next procurement season, starting April.

The govt to unload 65 lakh tonnes of wheat in the open market by the end of March.
In-fact the situation has become so grave that the government is running against time to unpack this amount of wheat in the open market by March-end. The next wheat procurement season will begin in April and the government expects to fetch between 46 MT to 47 MT of wheat. While meeting this target may have helped just a little, a review held late last month has revealed that the government won't even be able to offload more than 35 to 40 lakh tonne of this wheat.
With the food storage facilities overflowing, several cases have come to light in which food grains have been left to rot in the open. In response to a question asked in the Rajya Sabha by CPM member P Rajeeve on Monday, the food ministry said that as much as 1454.27 tonnes of grains were rendered unusable because of inadequacies in the storage system.

 

The revelation, interestingly, is expected to strengthen the arguments put forward by activists such as NAC member Aruna Roy and her former colleague Jean Dreze who have been pushing for the universalisation of food security scheme. In the immediate run, it may have an impact on wheat prices in the country, bringing it down in the coming months.

But the government has been left with no choice. "So far we haven't been able to offload between 3.2 MT to 34 MT wheat and in the next few weeks of March we can squeeze in a maximum of three, maybe four tenders of between 3 to 4 lakh tonne which just isn't enough," a senior official from the food and public distribution department said.

Pushed on the back-foot, Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, K V Thomas sought to give a positive spin to the entire exercise. "Besides exporting some quantity as the market is very good... we have also set a target of around 65 lakh tonne of wheat and do hope to achieve it before starting the next (wheat) procurement season. We are also trying to see the private players get involved when the procurement season starts," Thomas told Mail Today.

The seriousness of the situation can be understood from the fact that the government's net storage facilities for primary food grains, wheat and rice, is only around 74.5 MT, and this includes 15 MT to 25MT of temporary, makeshift facilities including under the open sky, covered with plastic, tarpaulin sheets. The officials in-know also describe these temporary facilities as 'high risk' storage for grains.

The gravity of this problem of plenty becomes clear when one looks at the numbers. Same time last year, when the government procured around 40 MT of wheat from across the country, it already had between 40 MT to 45 MT of grain in its storage facilities.  This year, when the government will go in the 'market' to procure the estimated 40 MT to 45 MT of wheat, it will already have around 60 MT to 62 MT of grain in its stock. "By these estimates, once we are done procuring the wheat we will have between 100 MT to 110 MT in our stockpile and this will soon be followed by a 'bumper' rice stock that will soon have to be procured for storage in the same infrastructure," the senior official said.

The issue has prominently figured in the recent review and planning meetings of the department, including the Food Corporation of India. In fact two different FCI officials raised a similar concern.

"With an ever increasing production and an apparently stagnant infrastructure growth we can only pray that nothing happens to the stockpile. While there is a clear protocol that the older stockpile goes out first (for sale or in market)...even that is in abundance in our godowns, some of it is as old as two years and obviously the most high risk category now," a senior official said. Besides this, the officials also forecast that they won't be able to get jute or other gunny bags from the market to pack, store or export the grain.

It is precisely this problem of plenty that recently made Thomas to approach the Prime Minister and C Rangarajan on the issue of state incentives to farmers beyond the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for grains.

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/problem-of-plenty-food-grains-left-to-rot-in-the-open-as-godowns-overflow/1/252581.html