Quote:Covered by plastic sheets in a football-field-sized area, the black mountain is a formidable presence amid the rolling fields of wheat ripening under a warm March sun.



Under its tarpaulin sheets, Fatehgarh Sahib’s mountain, 40 km west of state capital Chandigarh, stores wheat harvested three years ago.

The wheat bags have holes and rats run riot. This is part of India’s federal reserve of grain, to be stocked in a warehouse to feed the poor.



Out in the open, it quietly turns to garbage in a granary state that has more hungry people than 33 developing countries.



As India prepares for a record 2010 wheat harvest, many times more than the nation’s needs, the field of grain here in the eastern district of Fatehgarh Sahib is one of hundreds across Punjab. The black mountain — if it doesn’t completely rot away — holds enough grain to feed 300,000 people.



It hides the nation’s inability to store its plentiful food, one of the challenges ahead for Congress President Sonia Gandhi as she prepares to pilot a national effort to get food to the poor where and when they need it.



The annual test begins on April 1 as procurement, the process of buying foodgrain from farmers for national food stocks, begins at Ludhiana’s Khanna Mandi, Asia’s biggest grain market.

The portents for this year are as grim as ever. Officials expect 11 million tonnes of wheat from a bumper harvest from Punjab alone. With the state's storage capacity being 18 million tonnes (of which space for 13 million tonnes is already occupied), Punjab needs to create room for 6 million tonnes.



Across India, unless the government finds a solution, rot and rodents will claim 20 million tonnes, or a tenth of the total harvest.

These lost grains are keeping millions hungry: India ranks 66 out of 88 countries on the 2008 Global Hunger Index.



“We are doing our best to prevent further damage,” said Rattan Mittal, general manager, procurement, Punjab Agro Ltd, one of seven agencies that buy wheat and rice for the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which never moved the mountain at Fatehgarh Sahib for distribution.



Mittal said Punjab Agro hopes to hire panchayat (village council) land to store the grain that will spill out of warehouses this year.

Nearly 20 km north of Fatehgarh Sahib, a whole stadium-sized depot of openly stored grains risks contamination from a junkyard of food debris. Punjab stores 80 per cent of its grain in the open, said Mittal.

Getting the math right

How much foodgrain does India waste every year?

The FCI, the government company that manages foodstocks, isn’t particularly willing to answer that.

It took a right-to-information query in 2008 to force an answer: between 1997 and 2007, more than 1.3 million tonnes of grain (130,000 truckloads) decayed in storage. The government spent Rs 2.59 crore just to get rid of the rotten food.

The problem is more formidable today. India’s federal reserve of foodgrain is about 45 million tonnes, double the stocks held last year and 17 million tonnes more than FCI’s storage capacity.

“Obviously, this is much more than what is needed,” said Ashok Gulati, Asia director of the International Food Policy Research Institute. “Stocks kept in the open without proper care lead to unacceptably large wastages.”

If the stocks were to be distributed, every Indian, all 1.1 billion of us, would get 45 kg.

State-run companies and cooperatives have a capacity to hold about 109.2 million tonnes and need an additional 35 million tonnes of space to fill the gap with an investment of Rs 7,687 crore, according to the Planning Commission.

It costs the FCI Rs 15,000 to buy and store a tonne of wheat; Rs 19,000 for rice.

“So, 1 million tonnes wasted means a loss of at least Rs 1,500 crore for wheat and Rs 1,900 crore for rice,” said Gulati.

In July 2002, government agencies ended up with 63 million tonnes of foodgrain. It had to provide subsidies so the grain could be exported. Grain export is at present banned because last year’s drought and soaring prices led to an 11-year high in food inflation, 19.95 per cent on December 5, 2009. It’s 16 per cent today.

Experts say the government urgently needs to invest in modern storage, or failing that, throw open the doors to the private sector, or both.

Until then? Here’s Gulati’s prescription: Distribute the surplus grains to more people at subsidised prices, not just to those below the poverty line. That’s a better solution than letting grain rot in a country hungry for food.

(The Hunger Project is a Hindustan Times effort to track, investigate and report every aspect of the struggle to rid India of hunger. You can read previous stories in this series at www.hindustantimes.com/hungerproject).

Quote:As top officials from multiple ministries worked over the weekend re-crafting a draft legislation deemed inadequate to deliver food to the poorest, a grim reminder of the depth of deprivation in India emerged from its most populous state.



It is people like these that Congress President and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi wants covered by a national Food Security Bill. That is why she pushed the UPA’s top ministers back to the drawing board after rejecting last week a draft about to be presented to the Cabinet.Frail, malnourished children eating moist lumps of mud laced with silica — a raw material for glass sheets and soap — because they are not officially classified as poor and so ineligible for official help: This is what an HT reporter saw in a village of eastern Uttar Pradesh.



Under an unusually hot April sun, skinny, hungry children silently poked around on the dusty edges of a stone quarry in Ganne village, 45 km east of Allahabad and a 12-km walk from the nearest road.



“It tastes like powdered gram, so we eat it,” said Soni (5), a listless girl with a protruding belly. With most families reduced to one or two daily meals of boiled rice and salt — with a watery vegetable on a lucky day — the mud is a free but deadly option at the 20 stone quarries sustaining the poorest villagers.

These families are not eligible for subsidised food and other state programmes, though each of a family of five earns about Rs 400 a month.

Quote:A sluggish monsoon — 21 per cent deficient in the week ending June 23 — has stalled mid-way and is unlikely to progress into India's grain bowl of Punjab, Haryana and UP before July 4, as farm ministry officials look on nervously.



Overall, between June 1 and now, falls have been up to 13 per cent less, a weather official estimated.



The patchy rains have prompted the farm ministry to keep crop-rescue plans ready, with the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) saying if rains don't return to normal around July 5, crops in north India could suffer.



The UPA government is hedging on adequate rains to offset losses from last year's drought — the worst in three decades — and also to curb food inflation of nearly 17 per cent.

Abnormal delay in rains for north India will start affecting mainly sugar and paddy crops, as UP is India's largest sugar-producing state and together with Punjab, Haryana and Bihar, accounts for bulk of rice output.



A weather review meeting has been called for July 5 by the top farm expert body.

"Any delay beyond July 4 will certainly affect both crop output and cost of production for farmers,

Quote:New Delhi, Nov. 9 (PTI): The food and consumer affairs ministry today said it had turned down requests from Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh to resume non-basmati rice exports.



The government had banned the export of non-basmati rice in April 2008 to stabilise prices in the domestic market and maintain sufficient stocks to ensure food security in the country.

Quote:Kerala is the main producer of cardamom and contributes up to 60% in total production. During 2007, nearly 600 ton cardamom was produced, and this is expected to increase to 720 ton in 2008 due to good weather conditions. Plucking starts in July and August which continues till December. If weather remains unfavourable, plucking and production reduces. Arrival of good quality of 6 mm and 8 mm gets momentum during third and forth rounds of plucking.



Karnataka



Karnataka produces around 25% cardamom of total production. In 2007, nearly 250 ton cardamom was produced here. It is expected to increase to 300 ton during 2008. Karnataka quality is also known as Mansoor which is a low grade quality. Mainly masala manufacturers buy it as its rate remains low then other quality products. It is cultivated nearby place of Medikary.



Tamil Nadu



Ooty is the main producer of cardamom which contributes around 10-15% in total production. During 2008, around 150-200 ton cardamom is expected to produce here which is moderately up than last years’ production figure.

Quote:It is reported that the production in Guatemala in 2010 would be about 20,000 tonnes, which will be no way near their peak production of 30,000 tonnes in 2004/2005.



According to the latest estimates by the spices Board of India, India's production in 2010-11 is estimated to be almost at the same level of last year i.e. 10,350 tonnes.



It has been a phenomenal year for cardamom farmers as returns broke all previous records. Auction prices consistently remained above Rs 1,000 per kg after February, and the total volume in auctions crossed 10,000 tonne between the period of July 2009 and May 2010.



Arrivals are thinning out while demand, both from the international and domestic markets, continues to be good and robust, traders said.



Cardamom prices touched Rs 1,329.21 per kg during the week ended May 22 as against Rs 1,253.16 during the previous week.



Prices during the third week of April were at Rs 1,087.55 compared with Rs 609.35 in the corresponding period of the previous fiscal.

Quote:Egypt is among the world’s largest importers of wheat. When such commodity prices rise due to U.S. subsidy and tariff intervention, as well as speculation in the capital markets, the price of bread skyrockets. Bread is made from wheat.



In 2008, food riots broke out in Egypt, Mexico, Bangladesh and many developing countries when farmers, attracted to ethanol subsidies, abandoned food production in favor of fuel. This, along with rising oil prices, droughts, and other factors, decreased food supplies. Prices spiked.



Adding to the crisis was U.S. trade policy: Because we subsidize wheat, corn and a handful of other crops so much, we can offer them cheaper on the world market and “dump” supplies on other countries. This puts farmers in those countries out of business, as they are forced to compete with artificially low prices at the market.



Go back a little further in time in Egypt and the roots of the political crisis can be found with its 1992 land reform. Guided by what many say was U.S. and International Monetary Fund influence, the country’s small farmers who were “registered tenants” became subject to rent increases, in many cases triple what they had been paying.



As expected, these small farmers couldn’t afford the steep rent increases and were forced off their land. More than half of all Egyptians live in the countryside, and millions were forced into poverty. Moreover, Egypt itself became more reliant on imports.