The food bowl overflows, and rots

Devinder Sharma

IT’S a year of record wheat harvest. It’s also a year of record wheat procurement. And believe it or not, it’s going to be a year when the food stocked in the open for want of adequate storage facilities is also going to break all previous records. 

This year, wheat procurement in Punjab has surpassed all previous high points to reach a record 126.91 lakh tonnes. In neighbouring Haryana, wheat procurement has crossed 87.39 lakh tonnes. In Madhya Pradesh, another 72.87 lakh tonnes have been procured by the state agencies. Collectively, these three wheat surplus states have procured 287.17 lakh tonnes of wheat till June 18. And, they have a Herculean task to safely store the massive quantity of foodgrains that have been officially purchased. 

In Punjab, nearly 70 lakh tonnes of the fresh arrivals will be kept in the open, technically called ‘cover and plinth’ (CAP) storage. For failure to move out previous year’s purchase of rice and wheat, an additional 20 lakh tonnes of carryover stock of wheat is already lying in the open. In other words, Punjab alone will have 90 lakh tonnes of wheat stacked in the open. In Haryana, another 44 lakh tonnes of wheat is expected to be stored under the skies, left to face the vagaries of monsoon. 

For almost 30 years now, precious food stocks have been ruthlessly mismanaged. While a significant quantity rots, much of the wheat stacked under CAP storage does get infected with aflatoxins fungus, thereby rendering it unsuitable for human consumption, a fact that is kept hidden.  

Of the approximately 215 lakh tonnes of wheat procured this year in Punjab and Haryana, nearly 134-lakh tonnes or more than 50 per cent is being kept in CAP make-shift storage. If 52 years after Punjab and Haryana spearheaded the Green Revolution, the country’s food bowl is still crying for adequate investment in warehousing, it shows how callously food has been allowed to go waste. It seems all the talk of minimising post-harvest losses is meant only for farmers, while the government continues to be the biggest offender. To allow food to rot is no less than a crime, especially in a country which ranks 100 on the Global Hunger Index spanning 119 countries. 

In MP, which has emerged as a major producer of wheat in recent years, a recent news report quotes officials saying that nearly 50 lakh tonnes of wheat and pulses (since pulses procurement has also begun in the state) will lie in the open. Meanwhile, UP too has procured over 50 lakh tonnes this year, and in the absence of adequate storage capacity much of it will be kept under the sun. This strange paradox of plenty — bumper harvests and mounting food wastage — defies all laws of what constitutes food management. I don’t know how policymakers can keep their eyes closed to the mammoth food wastage. After all, it doesn’t require any rocket science to build grain storage, including silos. 

The proposal to have grain silos, to be constructed at 32 locations in Punjab, with a storage capacity for 17.5 lakh tonnes of wheat is presently held up for lack of guarantee by the FCI. But even this is going to be a drop in the ocean considering the 90-lakh tonnes stocked in the open at present. Furthermore, if the government can construct panchayat houses for nearly 2.5 lakh panchayats across the country, I don’t understand why can’t it build food godowns at some 100 locations in the country? There is certainly no dearth of money, what is coming in the way is the failure of public policy to accord top priority to save every grain of food.