Chandigarh:
Millions of metric tons of wheat grain, lying in the open, being eaten by insects. This quantity of wheat is worth Rs 15 crores. A whopping 90 per cent of it is not fit for human consumption now.
This is the shameful math of a government storage facility in Srihand in Punjab, but it's not an isolated story. Across the state, at different government warehouses, wheat grain worth 500 to 800 crores is rotting away. In the last three years, 72 lakh metric tonnes of grain has been bought from farmers. Most of that is lying in the open because there's just not enough storage space.
''Unfortunately there has been no movement of these food grains going outside the state. There are no railway wagons available. And the Government of India is not sending this food out of Punjab,'' says Punjab's Finance Minister, Manpreet Badal.
Others try to defy what's obvious - a colossal and unaffordable waste. ''The shelf life of wheat stored in open is not more than one year. But this what is lying here is two years old. This is the crop of 2008,'' says Dr Bhupinder Singh, Joint Director, Food & Civil Supplies, Punjab.
Things will only get worse if that doesn't change. Punjab is heading for a bumper crop. The harvest begins next month. While the government figures out where to put it, consumers are dealing with food prices that pose a greater challenge every month for households all over the country.
Food rots as millions go hungry:
- 50% of the world's hungry live in India
- Over 20 crore people hungry
- India ranks 65th in the world in battling hunger
Source: International Food Policy Research Institute Food damaged in 10 years (1997-2007)
- 10 lakh tonnes of foodgrain damaged
- 10 lakh tonnes can feed 1 crore people for 1 year
- 3.95 lakh tonnes of rice
- 1.83 lakh tonnes of wheat
Each year:- Rs 50,000 crore of food wasted
- 10.5 percent of India's total food grain production wasted
Source: FCI