Govt can feed all for about 3 months from reserves

Although drought threatens to eat into India’s food production, the government has enough food stocks to feed the country’s one-billion-plus population for nearly three months in the event of any crisis.

According to the official data, the Centre has 50.4 million tonnes of foodgrain — 18.79 million tonnes of rice and 31.62 million tonnes of wheat — in its granaries as of the end of July.

Since India consumed 219 million tonnes of foodgrain in 2008-09, as stated by Food and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar in the Lok Sabha last month, the country may need about 221.3 million tonnes of rice and wheat this year, accounting for a slight increase in population from about 114.79 crore last year.

If consumption this year remains at the level of 2008-09, when rainfall was fairly good leading to higher supply of foodgrain in the market, the government can still feed the entire country for a good 82 days.

While the Food Corporation of India has built a stock of 14.14 million tonnes of rice and 10.34 million tonnes of wheat, different state agencies have built reserves of 4.64 million tonnes of rice and 21.27 million tonnes of wheat, the data showed.

The current reserves have far exceeded the government’s buffer norms, according to which the country needs to keep foodgrain stocks of at least 26.9 million tonnes till July 1 and 16.2 million tonnes by October 1.

The huge stocks are the result of an all-time-high procurement of foodgrain this year.

Moreover, the large stocks seem to bolster the Centre’s initiative to fight back the menace of poor monsoon, which was evident from Pawar’s statement in Parliament that India has enough foodgrain to meet requirement under the public distribution system and some other welfare programmes for as long as 13 months.

Not just Pawar, even Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had said earlier this week that it was not yet time to “press the panic button” on the impact of monsoon.

“This country has the experience of handling the situation (drought) and I will advise not to press the panic button,” Mukherjee had said, maintaining, however, that the deficient monsoon would result in a 20 per cent decline in sowing of summer crops.

Earlier this week, the meteorology department forecast that this season’s monsoon may bring only 87 per cent of the usual rains.

Nevertheless, the huge reserves are expected to provide some cushion against the dampening impact of the poor monsoon. India produced 99.15 million tonnes of rice and 80.58 million tonnes of wheat last year, paving the way for record procurement by the government at about 57.6 million tonnes of both the grains.