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Post Harvest Loss - Statistics
Food Corporation of India (FCI) along with Central
Warehousing Corporation (CWC) and respective State Warehousing Corporations (SWC)
are the primary agencies entrusted with the task of grain storage.
India has incurred post harvest losses to the tune
of 502,389 metric tons of rice and 133,206 metric tons of wheat at the state-run
FCI storage facilities from 1997 – 2013, according to FCI in response to an RTI
application .
Based on the PHL information received from FCI,
Minimum support prices for rice and wheat since 1998 – 2013 were availed from FCI’s
website and minimum support prices were adjusted for inflation using the yearly
wholesale price index data posted on the Office of Economic Advisor, Government
of India.
Computation of post harvest losses at minimum support
prices adjusted for inflation amounted to nearly Rs. 700 crores or USD 122 million.
Authorities at the Central Warehousing Corporation
expressed their inability to provide details of post harvest losses in their storage
facilities from 1997 – 2013 by citing section 7(9) of the RTI Act of 2005 “…it is
not possible to provide the requisite information since it is wide in nature and
not specific.”
The quantity of post harvest losses may represent
a small percentage of the total agricultural output in India, yet the monetary loss
to the national exchequer is significant and the opportunity cost of lost agricultural
exports will run into millions of dollars.
India’s efforts to address the challenges of combating
hunger, malnutrition and poverty will bear fruit when it realizes self sufficiency
in protecting its surplus production of agricultural commodities during the post
harvest cycles.