Since the inception of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) in the 1960s, it has done a great job ensuring the implementation of minimum support price for procurement and maintaining food reserves for public distribution. Procurement and distributions are State subjects. Maintaining reserves or storage in between procurement and distribution is Union Government per se FCI subject.

FCI hardly procures as many agricultural dominant States have gained domain knowledge on the subject. States are also interested in warehousing so FCI is outsourcing its storage operations to the State Governments. FCI procures and stores only up to an intervention level. FCI mainly works on the logistics part of the distribution and other administrative services.

The subject of Food Security had emerged primarily to ensure that Indian farmers’ produce is bought at declared MSP under quality norms of fair average quality parameters. This ensures right quantity and quality for end users, while ensuring that farmers’ interests are taken care of. This has resulted in some States creating a good procurement infrastructure. Still, after 50 years some States lag behind.

These States are primarily Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha and some North-Eastern States. Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar are the worston this issue and farmers are affected as a result. .

‘Look East’ had been a mantra for United Progressive Alliance II and National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has to focus on this. The FCI is the best instrument in helping the cause as it has a lot of foodgrains value chain domain knowledge.

However, the NDA should not divide the FCI into three units. Prime Minister Narendra Modi needs to focus on Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar as they are the ones badly affected. The Government can create States Export Oriented Foodgrains Zones (EOFGZ) as some deficit States are now producing more than what they consume and contribute the rest to the Central pool under the Food Security scheme.

Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are the States. I am advocating the idea of EOFGZ because the logistics cost for the public distribution system and taxes are high in Punjab and Haryana. This will result in lower food storage losses and higher revenues for States and farmers. But fulfilling this dream concept of EOFGZ needs radical changes in terms of fair average quality norms, rice milling process, etc. This concept can be taken up as a pilot project and then scaled up based on its success. This will also be the first step towards making a Food Security a revenue generating source as the Chinese are doing.

The writer is a professional Post Harvest Technologist

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