EVERY OTHER day there is either a newspaper report or an editorial comment lamenting the loss of food grain stored in buffer stocks. Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, while prophesying a bumper kharif crop, admits he is worried about not having adequate storage for the produce. At a national conference in 2003, the Central Warehousing Corporation said it had covered storage capacity for 48 million tonnes of food grain. In 2002,...
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Blueprint for farm growth by Mohan Dharia
Acting with determination and firm action, it should be possible for India to step up its agricultural growth rate to 10 per cent. The 11th Five Year Plan seeks to achieve 4 per cent growth rate in agriculture by the end of the Plan period. The Planning Commission is working towards an overall 9 per cent to 10 per cent growth rate. But the target of 4 per cent growth rate is...
More »In Punjab, wheat worth Rs 800 cr goes waste annually by Prabhjot Singh
Antiquated food storage methods and technologies have been costing India dearly. The chairman of the Food Corporation of India (FCI), Siraj Hussain, admits that food worth Rs 50,000 crore is wasted every year. This comes roughly to 20 per cent of the total food produced by the country. Though this figure includes food that is lost in processing, packaging, transportation and even marketing, yet a substantial portion of it is lost...
More »Rain hope rests on statistics
Weather scientists today pinned their hopes for a surge in the monsoon’s advance over central and northern India on a feeble low pressure system over the northwestern Bay of Bengal and on statistics. India has received 16 per cent rainfall, which is below normal during the first month of the season, and 31 of the country’s 81 water reservoirs are filled to less than 50 per cent of the normal capacity. But...
More »Wheat stocks, storage crunch give FCI sleepless nights by Komal Amit Gera
At a time the country is facing high food inflation, its bread basket is sitting on colossal wheat stocks. The stocks, to the tune of 12 million tonnes, lying in godowns and open spaces in Punjab are giving sleepless nights to the Food Corporation of India (FCI). About 800,000 tonnes wheat moves out of Punjab in a month. Based on these figures, the state can clear about five million tonnes wheat...
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