Lalitha Vaidyanathan
With the proposed National Food Security Bill which is currently with the Parliament Standing Committee on Food and Consumer Affairs, the policy makers will have to be prepared with the issue of providing sufficient and safe food including grains, fruits and vegetables to the evergrowing population without any foreseeable increase in the cultivable land.
The Government had decided to expand the scope of Food Bill to cover about 70 per cent (instead of 63 per cent as proposed in the Bill submitted to Parliament in December 2011) of the country’s population under the ambitious programme to provide them legal right to highly subsidized food grains.
The July 18 meeting was significant as the expert group had proposed doing away with dividing beneficiaries into ‘general’ and ‘priority’ groups to hasten the implementation of the Bill once it is cleared in the coming Monsoon session.
However, one of the most important ways of meeting country’s increasing demand is to prevent post-harvest losses which constitute around 20 to 50 percent. It is also to be noted that only two per cent of the food produced in India is processed.
Food security and safety in India is challenging both economically and technologically. It is time for India to consider a holistic way for processing and preserving food grains that are produced with great hardship by farmers by making huge investments in establishing irradiation facilities for disinfestations and large scale silos systems and good quality polyethylene lined jute bags to provide for pest free food grains from field to market distribution system till the last consumer.
These technologies are the best to be adopted for saving huge losses for food grains and their products caused by storage pests, insects and fungi due to lack of proper storage and protection facilities.
This would ensure safe and secured food products with good packaging and storage practices at all level of the food distribution chain in the country and could enhance export.
Disinfestations at the post-harvest field level is very crucial and India does not have effective disinfestation methods. The Government which does most of the procurement through Food Corporation of India (FCI) uses fumigation method which is effective only on adult insects and larvac and does not destroy the eggs.
So when the grains are moved from FCI warehouses to consumption centres, the eggs start hatching and that is how many a times insects and worms are found in grains and their products when they reach final consumers.
According to the scientists of Food Technology Division of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BAARC), irradiation of food grains soon after procurement will help destroy storage insect pests in all forms from their eggs to adult stages.
So the grains from the FCI can either be packed in insect impervious bags (jute or gunny bags lined with polyethylene of polypropylene) and irradiated or alternatively irradiated first and stored in silos which are insect proof.
“Government must make it mandatory for the manufacturers of gunny bags to have them line with polyethylene or polypropylene to make them safe and secured for the storing food grains,” the scientists said.
According to Ministry of Consumers Affairs, Food & Public Distribution and Food Corporation of India (FCI) promote ordinary jute (or gunny) bags for storing and transporting grains. This allows contamination. Also they are liable to tear with the use of big hooks to lift the gunny bags during loading and unloading thus creating huge wastage once again.
Inspite of food security pointing out that jute mills cannot get away (by making spurious jute bags) with this type of negligence under the cover of the Mandatory Packaging Order. Unfortunately, jute bags and sacks do not conform to BIS norms.
Coming back to irradiation of food grains and food products, the investment for an irradiator of about 10-20 tonnes per hour capacity would be about Rs. 20 to 25 crore and with the use of this technology, one could avoid eating insect infested grains or their products like flour, flakes saving thousands of crores of rupees on health caused as a result of consumption of sub-standard infested products, Dr A K Sharma, Head Food Technology Division of BARC.
“Fumigants are harmful to human health as they leave carcinogenic residues on food and also harmful to environment, as they react with ozone, Sharma said.
“The investors can also choose high throughput irradiators or electron beam accelerators of 100 to 200 tonne per hour capacity. Then there will be no wastage,” he said.
Meanwhile, the director of Pune based Krishna Grain Systems Pvt. Ltd. Jayesh Shah said, traditional way of grain storage in India with godowns. This is a primitive method that involves manual handling of gunny bags. There are also heavy losses due to rotting, rats and spillage. “In such arrangements, grains which were stored first are taken out last which is against scientific storage principle,” Shah said.
“We market Grain silo systems (Galvanized silo) which is the most advanced mechanized system. This is a bulk storage method for food grain, in this system grain is received either in bulk or bags and emptied into the receiving pit from where it is mechanically lifted and conveyed to the silo top and filled into the silo.
The silo is provided with aeration mechanism which ensures maintenance of grain quality for much longer period. The silo system also facilitates grain cleaning before storage which is added benefit. Silos are made for galvanized corrugated steel sheet with bolted construction.
For mechanized handling – equipments like Bucket Elevator, Conveyor etc. are provided in the system. The modern innovations have also incorporated, provision for inventory management (stock), carbon dioxide, temperature and moisture management within silos.
Major benefits of silos are they require lesser space than godown, mechanization helps to reduce labours up to large extent. Thus handling cost is minimum, Handling of grain is very fast, Grain quality is maintained and wastage of grain almost nil.
There are broadly three types of silos —- RCC (concrete) silos – outdated, 2. MS all weld silos – outdated in grain and the 3. Galvanized corrugated silo – Being used all over the world now.
In Galvanized Silo there are two types — Flat bottom type – capacity upto 20000 MT and the Hopper Bottom type – upto 1200 MT.
“We market Galvanized silo system for all food grains. Basically any material which is free Flowing and granular can be stored in silo. We also make small silos for Industries like Rice, Dal mills, and Poultry farms, Shah said. In India there are around seven to eight vendors supplying silo and other equipment.
“Silos are insect proof sufficiently. However the grain to be stored in silo should be properly cleaned, dried up to optimum (safe) moisture content before stored in silos,” he said adding the idea of bulk irradiation will be quite helpful in case of large food grain agencies like FCI, CWC and other state warehousing corporations like Punjab, Haryana, where they have started using silo now.
The proposed Food Security Bill aims at providing legal entitlement over subsidized food grains to the poor. If the Government is able to provide pest free and pathogen free food grains and products including for the Public Distribution System (currently the grains supplied is not fit for human consumption) by using appropriate technologies, the India will be viewed as a benchmark for the world.
It is to be reiterated that huge investments not only in agriculture but in the entire food security and safety and nutritional security and safety using appropriate technologies,are very essential.
India targets food grain output for 2011-12 at 245 million tonnes and about 6 million tonne of grain worth at least USD 1.5 billion could perish. Analysts say the losses could be far higher because more than 19 million tonne are now lying in the open, exposed to searing summer heat and monsoon rains.
The only big way to adopt is to stop the wastage and rot immediately to feed millions who are hungry and malnourished even in this 21st century’s modern society.
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