Even as a global food crisis looms on the horizon with high prices pushing more and more into poverty, India prepares to export wheat and rice following a record harvest and another one in the offing because of an expected normal monsoon. But there is a huge irony in the prevailing situation.

We in India are better off exporting cereals because of inadequate and inefficient storage facilities. Rotting of foodgrain in a country where so many go hungry is not just unethical but criminal. The ways various authorities have deployed new technologies to store cereals has been tardy. If India today had superior infrastructure to store grain for longer periods, it could have acted as a cushion against cyclical fluctuations in both prices and availability.
On April 6, the ministry of agriculture recently increased its estimate of wheat output for the year that ended on March 31, from 81.47 million tonnes to 84.27 million tonnes — an increase of 3.4 per cent over the estimate made on February 9 — preparing the ground for lifting restrictions on exports. On April 1, total grain stocks in the central pool were around 45 million tonnes (15 million tonnes of wheat and 30 million tonnes of rice), more than twice the recommended “buffer” levels of 7 million tonnes of wheat and 14.2 million tonnes of rice at the beginning of April.
Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar has gone on record favouring exports. The Indian government had banned exports of wheat on February 9, 2007 and also prohibited exports of non-basmati rice with effect from April 1, 2008. In August 2010, the Supreme Court asked the Union government to give away foodgrain to the poor instead of letting them rot.
In 2009-10, around 68,000 tonnes of stocks were reported to have been “damaged”. Of this amount, 54,000 tonnes were in state government godowns while 14,000 tonnes were in those managed by the public sector Food Corporation of India (FCI). Of the damaged stock with FCI, not all were damaged either by rain or on account of “cover and plinth” storage. Some 7,000 tonnes of damaged stocks included rice procured four years earlier that were below norms prescribed under the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act rendering these unsuitable for issuance through the public distribution system. To place things in the right perspective, the damaged stocks were out of a total holding of 60 million tonnes by the FCI that year.
The important question is that when India can build world-class public infrastructure (be it the stadia that hosted the 2010 Commonwealth Games or the uber-glitzy Terminal 3 of Delhi airport), why is it that we woefully lag behind others when it comes to food storage? With the FCI expecting 15 million tonnes of additional storage capacity to be in place by 2012, the challenge it now faces is how to create this capacity, whether using traditional warehouses or silos. The current cost of setting up a silo is around three times the cost of storage paid to the Central Warehousing Corporation for a traditional godown.
A silo is a structure for storing bulk materials. Silos are used in agriculture to store grain or fermented feed known as silage. Silos are more commonly used for bulk storage of not just cereals and other food but also coal, cement and sawdust. Three types of silos are in widespread use: tower silos, bunker silos and bag silos. There is a question of costs and benefits. Silos require lower dependence on labour, ensure better quality and longer storage and there is lower requirement of land as compared to traditional warehouses. Foodgrain can be stored in silos for up to four years. Since execution times for concrete silos were deemed unfeasible, FCI went in for the creation of bag storage facilities. There are, however, a number of problems with this measure.
Explains Soumendra Nath Chatterjee, an engineer who has worked on indigenously designed and constructed scientific food storage facilities for the FCI: “First, foodgrain cannot be protected by spraying or fumigation. It is also not possible to aerate the grains, which is a must for their healthy preservation. Moreover, there is no provision for detecting or re-circulating, when and if any deterioration is detected. Besides, unloading of grains and their reloading are labour-intensive since they have to be manually handled for dispatch to consuming centres”.
The answer probably lies in the scientific use of available resources. “By using scientific bulk storage of grains in steel silos, post-harvest losses can be reduced by as much as 20 per cent of the grain cultivated, if they are brought to these silos as soon as possible after harvest. These need not be sun-dried as is usually done. So the harvested grain is not lost due to natural catabolism (destructive metabolism). When left for drying in the ground, grains are often consumed either by insects or by rodents which can even dig into storage pits”, Mr Chatterjee points out.
The harvested grain can be transported to the steel silo sites and unloaded through conveyors and distributed through chutes. Insecticide pellets can be added too. Depending on the period of storage, these can be “extendable gases for the preservation of the grins, and are considered superior to the current practices of fumigation”. The dried and clean grains are stored in large diameter steel silos that stand on flat slab concrete foundations. There are rectangular aeration ducts that are covered by perforated stainless steel sheets, besides and a central opening for unloading the stocks. These require both lesser time and costs than for concrete silos.
He adds: “Sensors that are suspended in the grain mass can detect any form of infestation by the rise in temperature of the stored grains. This can be tackled too, first by aeration of the grains and then by its re-circulation with further insecticide pallets being added to control the same if required. This measure is usually not required if the storage is to be for a relatively shorter period when the silos are in proximity to the points of consumption”.
The extent of savings achieved if the country were to shift to steel silos can be as high as 40 per cent, says the engineer who add his claims are scientifically verifiable. The savings can be in terms of both the amount of grains saved from damage as well as those required for handling and transport, asserts Mr Chatterjee, who complains that he has not been given an adequate hearing by the powers-that-be.

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta is an educator and commentator