China's Food Storage Woes

Ray

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Bringing in the sheaves

China's farmers battle to ensure maximum crop yields, but inadequate storage facilities and a lack of technical know-how are undermining their efforts


The stalks of corn stand more than a meter high in Northeast China's Jilin province, but the corn that farmer Han Chang'an harvested last autumn is still stored in his homemade shelter.

Given the constant rise in the price of corn over the past few months, Han's joy was such that he found it difficult to keep a straight face. However, in the past few days his neighbors couldn't help noticing that his smile has faded somewhat.

The weather has turned humid, and rain has fallen for days on end. Some of Han's corn got wet and mold has set in. Even worse for the 50-year-old farmer, rats have penetrated his storage space twice, eating the valuable grain and leaving kernels scattered everywhere.


"I kept the grain for a long time, just waiting for a good price, and now all my efforts have been in vain," said Han, a resident of Dongling village in Shulan city.

Han estimated that he has lost at least 15 percent of his stored grain and the remaining moldy corn is unlikely to fetch a good price at market. "It would have been better if I'd sold it earlier," he admitted with a sigh.

Similarly, Zhao Zhiwen, who lives about 40 km from Han and has stored around 500 kg of rice in her simple barn, also has a headache: Her rice is swarming with bugs because it's been exposed to moisture.

To solve the problem, she has bought vacuum bags and plans to seal the rice off from the air to preserve it and kill the bugs. "Who will want to eat bug-ridden rice?" she asked.

"Farmers are still in the habit of storing grain for personal use. The amount accounts for 45 percent of China's annual grain harvest. However, poor storage conditions and improper methods mean the grain is vulnerable to mold and attack by insects and rats. That means a high level of loss," said He Yi, director of the department of distribution and science and technology at the State Administration of Grain.

To make matters worse, many grassroots grain stores are poorly maintained, resulting in even greater losses.

Thirty percent of China's county-level grain storage depots are in a parlous condition, according to a recent survey conducted by the SAG. It noted that the situation is at its worst in the country's less-developed western regions.

Officials and experts recently warned that the country must take measures to tackle grain losses as soon as possible. They maintain that even if China witnessed good harvests every year, the government's huge financial investment, aimed at increasing output, will have been in vain.

"China's annual post-harvest losses equate to as much as 25 billion kg, that's around 8 percent of national output," said Zhang Tianzuo, director of the farm produce processing bureau at the Ministry of Agriculture, at an agricultural forum held in Beijing in July. The amount equates to the annual output of Heilongjiang province, the country's largest grain-growing area.

Scientific storage

To reduce losses, the SAG launched a program in 2007 to promote scientific grain storage containers, which are specially designed to prevent the intrusion of moisture, insects and rats.

Under the program, central and provincial governments pay 60 percent of the cost of each container, while farmers pay the remainder.

"By the end of 2010, 2 million households had improved storage conditions. The program resulted in an obvious reduction in losses, and so we plan to increase that number to 10 million by 2015," said He, adding that 10 million is still just a drop in the ocean.

"To lower the cost of the containers, we hope the program can be listed in the government's agriculture infrastructure, under which farmers will be eligible for subsidies."

Li Guoxiang, a senior researcher in rural development at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out that as more young farmers leave the land and head to large cities as migrant workers, their land is being taken over by a small number of large producers and so improvement of the storage facilities would be a practical move.

Qin Fu, director of the institute of agricultural economics and development at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, holds a different view. "To reduce losses, we need to gradually change farmers' storage habits and encourage them to sell their crop as quickly as possible. Just as people deposit money in banks, farmers can also deposit their grain with enterprises that have good storage facilities," he said.

In Guantao county, Hebei province, some granary logistics and processing enterprises provide free storage facilities for farmers, who can withdraw the produce when they desire in the form of cash, rice or flour.

Red frames, rotting roofs

Visiting the Yushu Grain Depot in Jilin province feels like stepping back in time: Several rows of red wooden-framed silos dominate the yard. Many were built in the 1950s and some still carry quotations from the late Chairman Mao Zedong painted on the walls.

The dark rooms give off a close, damp smell and some of the wooden roofs are rotting. "These barns are no longer suitable for grain storage. We urgently need new barns, but without money, reconstruction has never really come onto the agenda. It's really a waste of resources, because we have convenient transportation links and a railway runs alongside our facility," said Wei Chunyuan, director of the depot's warehousing department. The other, newer storage facilities are also in need of renovation, he added.

Wei opened the door of a huge silo, built in the 1980s, which was brimful of corn. "It is just a huge room, without an underground ventilation system. When the room is too damp, the only way to dry the corn is to open the windows. It's often the case that the corn at the bottom of the pile goes off, and so a high level of loss is inevitable," he said.

"We need to rebuild the barns, because without decent facilities our lives are miserable. We only receive our salaries once every three or four months," said Wei.

According to Liu Xin, general manager of the Yushu branch of Dalian Northern International Grain Logistics Co, the town has 200 grain-related enterprises. A number of the larger ones have built their own well-equipped barns, but a lack of funds means most of the smaller outfits store their produce in simple shelters.

At Yushu Guangfa Grain and Oil Co, the corn is stored in a temporary brick barn whose inadequate construction allows birds to enter the stores at will, stealing grain and fouling the produce. The store's limited capacity means that some of the corn is simply piled in the yard and covered with blue plastic sheeting, leaving corncobs scattered everywhere.

According to He Yi, the central government has invested more than 30 billion yuan ($4.7 billion) since 1998 to establish a number of standardized grain depots nationwide, accommodating 50 billion kg of produce. These depots are equipped with computerized monitoring systems. They provide excellent storage and grain losses can be controlled to within 0.15 percent of the volume.

However, the task of improving storage facilities is far from finished. Many grassroots grain depots are beyond repair.

A town-level depot in Renhuai city, Guizhou province, collapsed in 2009, as farmers were busily selling their produce. The collapse cost 10 lives.

"That bitter lesson taught us that it's imperative that the grain depots should be completely repaired or even rebuilt. We plan to eliminate these dangerous depots within five years, but that will require strong support from the central government," said He.

The world has entered a dangerous period, according to Qin. The international situation remains tense and turbulent and the acreage of China's farmlands has declined rapidly during the past decade, so a potential grain crisis cannot be ignored.

His prescription is simple: Private enterprise should be encouraged to improve grain storage facilities and ensure the safety of the crop. In addition, the government should offer farmers favorable terms or increase the number of loans available to private enterprises to make use of their barns, rather than pouring vast amounts of money into repairing State-owned grain depots.

"Compared with the huge investment in agriculture before the grain harvest, the amount the government pours into the post-harvest period is small. The government needs to increase its input into grain circulation, because reducing grain losses just another way of increasing output," he said.


Grain storage is crucial for both the government and farmers. Han Chang'an built a temporary shelter for corn storage last autumn, but found it difficult to keep the grain dry because of the humid climate. He Na / China Daily


A worker uses a spade to encourage corn to dry at a private barn in Yushu city, Jilin province.
This indicates that in China, the shortage of foodgrains is not because of a bad harvest alone. Much of it is man-made due to greed, as also poor storage.

Greed cannot be eradicated and China knows that, but China is moving towards scientific storage, and to that extent, maybe China can ensure the losses are minimal.

Food security is an important aspect that will prevent social unrest.

It is also an aspect that can cause international chaos.

Hence, all nations have to ensure that the loss of foodgrains is minimal.

For a populous country like China it is critical!
 

Ray

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It is most important for China to ensure that food is not wasted.

The last years critical condition should be a wake up call.

I wonder if the El Nino effect has visited China also.

Last year, China was in serious trouble.

*****************************

China's Other Looming Choke Point: Food Production

The Yellow River Basin is the center of a contest over water, energy, and agriculture.


A field in the Anlong Organic Farm —one of China's first organic farms located in Sichuan Province near Chengdu — is no larger than the average American front lawn. Workers patiently hold heavy green woshen in one hand and use a knife to remove thick leaves from the stalk in the other

YINCHUAN, China—Even along the middle reaches of the Yellow River, which irrigates 402,000 hectares (993,000 acres) of farmland north of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region's provincial capital, there is still no mistaking the smell of dry earth and diesel fuel, the abiding scents of a desert province that is also among China's most efficient grain producers.

Ningxia farmers have relied on the Yellow River since 221 BCE, when Qin Dynasty engineers clawed narrow trenches from the sand, introducing some of the first instances of irrigated agriculture on earth. Despite persistent droughts, in each of the last five years irrigation has made it possible for annual harvests to increase by an average of 100,000 metric tons.





The 2010 harvest of 3.5 million metric tons was nearly double what it was in 1990. The 3.9 million people who live and work on Ningxia's 1.2 million farms, most no larger than three-quarters of a hectare (1.6 acres), produce the highest yields of rice and corn in the nine-province Yellow River Basin, according to central government crop statistics.

In sum, the farm productivity of this small northern China region—about the same size as West Virginia and located 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) to the west of the Bohai Sea—reflects the major shifts in geography and cultivation practices over the last generation that have made China both self-sufficient in food production and the largest grain grower in the world.

Yet Chinese farm officials here and academic authorities in Beijing are becoming increasingly concerned that China does not have enough water, good land, and energy to sustain its agricultural prowess. As Circle of Blue and the China Environment Forum have reported in the Choke Point: China series, momentous competing trends—rising energy demand, accelerating modernization, and diminishing freshwater resources—are putting the country's energy production and security at risk.

The very same trends also threaten China's farm productivity. Last year, the national farm sector and the coal sector combined used 85 percent of the 599 billion cubic meters (158 trillion gallons) of water used in China.

Food Supply At Risk Along Yangtze and Yellow
This spring, unmistakable evidence of just how vulnerable China's energy and farm sectors are to moisture shortages has emerged in northern and southern China. Last week, central government and provincial authorities ordered managers at the Three Gorges Dam to release 600 million cubic meters (159 billion gallons) of water to the lower Yangtze River, where authorities began restricting electricity usage by manufacturers. The reason: a severe drought that is dramatically lowering water levels in rivers that generate much of China's 213 gigawatts of annual hydropower capacity and are used to transport coal to power plants.


Workers spread manure by hand in a dry field near Yinchuan in Ningxia, where farmers have relied on the Yellow River since 221 BCE, when Qin Dynasty engineers clawed narrow trenches from the sand, introducing some the first instances of irrigated agriculture on earth.

Drought in northern China is also reducing spring wheat harvests and starting to limit coal production, thus accelerating the rising prices for food and energy and putting more inflationary pressure on the entire economy. Grain production on 870,000 hectares (2.15 million acres) of farmland has been affected in Hubei Province—one of China's largest rice producers—and about 400,000 people have no ready supply of drinking water.

Zheng Shouren, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told the Xinhua News Agency that the emergency water releases from Three Gorges have been a lifesaver. "If there was no Three Gorges Dam, the drought would be worse and shipping on the Yangtze would be very hazardous," Zheng said.

The Yellow River Basin is another pivotal place where energy, water, and growth trends converge in damaging ways. The nine desert provinces, including Ningxia, now produce more than 20 percent of China's annual grain harvest, which last year amounted to 546 million metric tons. Four of the Yellow River provinces are also the largest suppliers of coal, China's primary source of energy.

A 1987 plan to allocate and enforce specific allotments of water to each of the nine provinces in the Yellow River Basin is based on an estimated river volume of 58 billion cubic meters (15 trillion gallons). Of this, Ningxia's annual allotment for all uses is 4 billion cubic meters (1.1 trillion gallons). The 1987 estimate, however, has proven faulty: last year, the river volume fell to 53 billion cubic meters (14 trillion gallons), and, in 2003, it dropped below 45 billion cubic meters (12 trillion gallons).

Arguably, in fact, in no other region of China is the competition for water between the energy and farm sectors more fierce than along the Yellow River, where available water for agricultural, industrial, and municipal uses—based on the 1987 agreement—amounts to roughly 37 billion cubic meters (9.8 trillion gallons) a year, and where persistent drought caused by climate change is steadily causing water supplies to drop.

The Situation in Ningxia
From 2004 to 2009, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics, total water reserves in Ningxia alone fell an average of 30 million cubic meters (7.9 billion gallons) a year; 150 million cubic meters (39.6 billion gallons) over five years, or 15.1 percent. Similar declines have occurred in nearby Inner Mongolia and Shanxi.

Of the province's total water use, the percentage devoted to agriculture is steadily dropping, according to provincial records. Last year, Ningxia's farms used 3.72 billion cubic meters (983 billion gallons), 6 percent less than the 3.97 billion cubic meters (1.05 trillion gallons) that farmers used in 1988.

North of this provincial capital of 1.5 million, where the Yellow River heads into Inner Mongolia, the contest for water is plainly evident. Dry fields—most around half a hectare (just over one acre)—await planting in wheat, corn, and other crops. In the distance, white smoke pours into the sky from coal-fired power plants, most of which use 75,000 cubic meters (20 million gallons) of water a day.

The sand-bottom irrigation trenches were empty when Circle of Blue and the China Environment Forum visited in April. Gray metal irrigation pipes and sprayers sat idle. Unlike mainstream American agriculture, in which the largest 46,000 farms produce half of the food and cultivate hundreds of hectares each, Chinese agriculture is made up of 200 million farms, each of which oversees an average of a few mu, a Chinese land measurement, or generally about half a hectare, or roughly one acre.

Almost 200 hectares (494 acres) of ground in Ningxia are farmed by 300 families that belong to the Nan Liang Farm Water User Association, a cooperative that also manages an irrigation district that supplies Yellow River water for cultivation.

Kou Guojiang, the 46-year-old chairman of the Nan Liang Water User Association explains that because of competition from Ningxia's expanding coal sector and industrial base, along with steadily drying conditions, his association's annual water allotment is 30 percent less than it was in 2008.

Because of the technical assistance provided by the World Bank and other groups, Nan Liang farmers have learned to produce more food with less water. Harvests are steadily increasing, but there is a point, Kuo says, where water scarcity will affect yields.


Harvesting organic woshen, a leafy green with a thick stalk, at the Anlong Organic Farm near Chengdu. As incomes and lifestyles improve, Chinese consumers are showing a greater interest in a more varied diet and are cooking with a wider variety of products.

The solution, he says, is to modernize this farm district's irrigation network, the largest of five in the province, which provides water to 402,000 hectares (993,000 acres) of arable land. The sand-bottom canals waste a lot of water, Kou says. They need to be lined with concrete or plastic. The system also needs to be better managed with up-to-date digital controls and gates so that water is delivered when farmers need it, saving huge amounts of water—not to mention the energy to move it.

North and South
The national coal sector already uses 138 billion cubic meters (36.5 trillion gallons), or 23 percent of the nation's freshwater reserves. By 2020, according to government estimates, the coal sector will use 188 billion cubic meters (49.7 trillion gallons), making up 28 percent of the nation's total water use.

Meanwhile, agricultural water use—371 billion cubic meters in 2010, or 62 percent of total use—is expected to drop to 360 billion cubic meters (95.1 trillion gallons), or 54 percent of the 670 billion cubic meters (177 trillion gallons) that China is expected to use in 2020.

At first glance, that may not seem like a big reduction for farmers. And it wouldn't be if the geography of China's grain production were the same as it was in the 20th century. It's not, though.

In 1980, almost 60 percent of China's grain production occurred in 14 provinces south of the Yangtze River. Since then, policy changes, market adjustments, and land availability have prompted an important shift in production patterns. Today, 13 provinces contribute nearly 80 percent of the country's total grain output, and seven of them are in China's north.

Last year, provinces south of the Yangtze River produced about 40 percent of China's grain. Meanwhile, the proportion of the 546 million metric tons of grain produced last year by northern provinces amounted to 325 million metric tons, or nearly 60 percent.

Modernization of the Farming Sector
In an April meeting with Circle of Blue, Dr. Yangwen Jia, a chief engineer of the Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research—a think tank of China's Ministry of Water Resources—said the nation will need to increase domestic grain production by 50 million metric tons annually by 2020, or 10 percent more grain than was produced in 2010.

"We know," he said, when asked to confirm the 10 percent figure, "that's a big increase from today."


Dusty streets near farmlands outside Yinchuan, Ningxia.

Yangwen said China is prepared to invest $US 60 billion (RMB 400 billion) over the next decade in irrigation and other water production and transport measures. And northern China's contribution to the national food supply will grow even more significant over the next decade.

According to the 12th Five-Year Plan, China's master development strategy that was made public in March, much of the new grain production will come from Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning provinces, which are already important farming regions but where new irrigation networks will need to be constructed.

Certainly, China is capable of increasing its food supply to meet demand. The country's grain production has increased an average of 12.6 million metric tons annually since 2004, when growers produced just under 470 million metric tons. But dwindling water supplies, along with obsolete and leaky irrigation networks—most of which waste billions of cubic meters of water annually—are an impediment, said Yangwen.

It's not that China doesn't know how to supply crops with water. About half of China's arable land is irrigated by 40,000 small- and medium-sized irrigation networks, according to the Ministry of Water Resources. Most, however, were built more than half a century ago, are unlined, and are too old, too small, and too inefficient to perform well in an era of increasing competition for water supplies, according to government studies. The Ministry estimates that less than 40 percent of the irrigation networks are in good condition.

China does not yet have an estimate of how much money it will take to modernize the country's irrigation system, which also consumes significant amounts of electricity to supply pumping stations. But during their visit to Ningxia in April, Circle of Blue and the China Environment Forum toured one of the province's three irrigation districts, visited a small pumping station, and gained insight on the magnitude of the challenge facing all of Chinese agriculture.

Ningxia's irrigation network, divided into five districts, supplies almost 1 billion cubic meters (264 trillion gallons) of water annually to 1.3 million hectares (3.3 million acres) of cropland. Five pumping stations draw water out of the Yellow River and lift it to big supply canals on higher ground that transfer the water to successively smaller canals and channels.

All of this engineering takes a lot of people—2,588 staff members, according to provincial figures—and a lot of energy. The five pumping stations collectively use 730 gigawatt-hours of annually, or roughly the same amount generated in a year by a 100-megawatt coal-burning power plant. In short, irrigation is a large consumer of electricity in Ningxia.

Ningxia's farmers, as well as managers of the irrigation network, say they are prepared to cultivate their crops using less water, which may help to reduce electricity demand. Last year—as part of a stepped-up modernization project, much of which was financed by the coal and chemicals sector—almost $US 37.5 million (250 million RMB) was spent on engineering and construction to line the province's main and branch irrigation canals.


Irrigation improvements have been installed at the Anlong Organic Farm. However, most networks — built more than half a century ago — are unlined and are too old, too small, and too inefficient to perform well in an era of increasing competition for water supplies.

The irrigation districts assert that the construction saved 58 million cubic meters (15 billion gallons) of water last year. By 2015, irrigation districts plan to spend $US 59 million (395 million RMB) annually on modernization and canal lining to save 90 million cubic meters (23.7 billion gallons) annually. The water saved is being transferred from agriculture to Ningxia's growing industrial base—much of it focused on coal production, power generation, and coal-to-chemical conversion. (See sidebar.)

Kou Guojiang, the chairman of the Nan Liang Water User Association, shrugged when asked about the water transfer occurring in his irrigation district.

"We learn to produce more with less water," he said. "That's what we're doing."

China's Other Looming Choke Point: Food Production | Circle of Blue WaterNews
 

Ray

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When Cities Replace Farmland



Water isn't the only critical resource becoming scarce in China—so is farmland, as sprawling cities are replacing arable land.

Last year, authorities reported that China's farmers cultivated and grazed a total of 121 million hectares (299 million acres), or 8.5 million hectares (20.8 million acres) less farmland than was used in 1998. In other words, China lost nearly as much farmland as exists in all of Illinois within a span of 12 years.
"For China, which has a population of 1.3 billion, the food bowl for our people must be in our own hands," Ding Shengjun, a professor at the Academy of State Administration of Grain, told the Beijing Review in March. "Right now, the mainstay of Chinese food security is not at all solid, and, actually, it's likely to weaken."

"Our country is facing great pressure in the supply of agricultural products," added Chen Xiaohua, China's vice minister for agriculture, during a speech to farm industry representatives in January in Shanghai.

China's Other Looming Choke Point: Food Production | Circle of Blue WaterNews
 

Ray

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What is happening in China is an eyeopener.

India, too, is on this reckless pursuit of growth forsaking the needs of the rural people and the agricultural sector.

Our storage facilities are abysmal and short.

We must learn from the problems faced by China and take remedial action FAST!

Or else, we will be up a gum tree!
 

nimo_cn

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As Grain Piles Up, India's Poor Still Go Hungry

RANWAN, India — In this north Indian village, workers recently dismantled stacks of burned and mildewed rice while flies swarmed nearby over spoiled wheat. Local residents said the rice crop had been sitting along the side of a highway for several years and was now being sent to a distillery to be turned into liquor.

Just 180 miles to the south, in a slum on the outskirts of New Delhi, Leela Devi struggled to feed her family of four on meager portions of flatbread and potatoes, which she said were all she could afford on her disability pension and the irregular wages of her day-laborer husband. Her family is among the estimated 250 million Indians who do not get enough to eat.

Such is the paradox of plenty in India's food system. Spurred by agricultural innovation and generous farm subsidies, India now grows so much food that it has a bigger grain stockpile than any country except China, and it exports some of it to countries like Saudi Arabia and Australia. Yet one-fifth of its people are malnourished — double the rate of other developing countries like Vietnam and China — because of pervasive corruption, mismanagement and waste in the programs that are supposed to distribute food to the poor.

"The reason we are facing this problem is our refusal to distribute the grain that we buy from farmers to the people who need it," said Biraj Patnaik, who advises India's Supreme Court on food issues. "The only place that this grain deserves to be is in the stomachs of the people who are hungry."

After years of neglect, the nation's failed food policies have now become a subject of intense debate in New Delhi, with lawmakers, advocates for the poor, economists and the news media increasingly calling for an overhaul. The populist national government is considering legislation that would pour billions of additional dollars into the system and double the number of people served to two-thirds of the population. The proposed law would also allow the poor to buy more rice and wheat at lower prices.

Proponents say the new law, if written and executed well, could help ensure that nobody goes hungry in India, the world's second-most populous country behind China. But critics say that without fundamental system reforms, the extra money will only deepen the nation's budget deficit and further enrich the officials who routinely steal food from various levels of the distribution chain.

India's food policy has two central goals: to provide farmers with higher and more consistent prices for their crops than they would get from the open market, and to sell food grains to the poor at lower prices than they would pay at private stores.

The federal government buys grain and stores it. Each state can take a certain amount of grain from these stocks based on how many of its residents are poor. The states deliver the grain to subsidized shops and decide which families get the ration cards that allow them to buy cheap wheat and rice there.

The sprawling system costs the government 750 billion rupees ($13.6 billion) a year, almost 1 percent of India's gross domestic product. Yet 21 percent of the country's 1.2 billion people remain undernourished, a proportion that has changed little in the last two decades despite an almost 50 percent increase in food production, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute, a research group in Washington.

The new food security law could more than double the government's outlays to 2 trillion rupees a year, according to some estimates.

Much of the extra money would go to buy more grain, even though the government already has a tremendous stockpile of wheat and rice — 71 million tons as of early May, up 20 percent from a year earlier.

"India is paying the price of an unexpected success — our production of rice and wheat has surged and procurement has been better than ever," said Kaushik Basu, the chief economic adviser to India's Finance Ministry and a professor at Cornell University. "This success is showing up some of the gaps in our policy."

The biggest gap is the inefficient, corrupt system used to get the food to those who need it. Just 41.4 percent of the grain picked up by the states from federal warehouses reaches Indian homes, according to a recent World Bank study.

Critics say officials all along the chain, from warehouse managers to shopkeepers, steal food and sell it to traders, pocketing tidy, illicit profits.

Poor Indians who have ration cards often complain about both the quality and quantity of grain available at government stores, called fair price shops.

Other families do not even have ration cards because of the procedures — and often, bribes — required to get them. Some are denied because they cannot document their residence or income. And critics say more people would qualify if the income cutoff were raised; in New Delhi, it is 2,000 rupees ($36) a month, regardless of family size, a sum that many poor families spend on rent alone.

Ms. Devi, who lives in the Jagdamba Camp slum in south Delhi, said she was denied a ration card four years ago. She said her family's steadiest income is a disability pension of 1,000 rupees a month she gets because of burns suffered in an accident a few years ago. While her husband sometimes earns up to 3,000 rupees a month as a laborer, she says she should be entitled to subsidized grain since they must often get by on 2,000 rupees or less.

"Sometimes, we just have to sit and wait," she said. "My mother-in-law gets subsidized food and she gives me some when she can."

Indian officials say they are addressing the system's problems. Some states, like Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh, have made big improvements by using technology to track food and have made it easier for almost all households to get ration cards. Other states, like Bihar, have experimented with food stamps.

Reformers argue that India should move toward giving the poor cash or food stamps as the United States, Mexico and other countries have done. That would reduce corruption and mismanagement because the government would buy and store only enough grain to insure against bad harvests. And the poor would get more choices, said Ashok Gulati, chairman of the government's Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices.

"Why only wheat and rice? If he wants to have eggs, or fruits, or some vegetables, he should be given that option," Mr. Gulati said. "You need to augment his income. Then, the distribution, you leave it to the private sector."

But most officials say they are worried that if India switched to food stamps, men would trade them for liquor or tobacco, depriving their families of enough to eat.

"It has to improve, I have no doubt about it," said K. V. Thomas, India's minister for food, consumer affairs and public distribution. "But this is the only system that can work in our country."

Officials say Parliament is likely to vote on a new food policy at the end of the year. In the meantime, the government is working on temporary solutions to its grain storage problems, putting up new silos and exporting more rice.

Still, much of it is likely to keep sitting on the side of the road here in Punjab.

"It's painful to watch," said Gurdeep Singh, a farmer from near Ranwan who recently sold his wheat harvest to the government. "The government is big and powerful. It should be able to put up a shed to store this crop."


Neha Thirani contributed reporting from Mumbai and Karishma Vyas from New Delhi.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/b...prompts-an-intense-review.html?pagewanted=all

No need for Indians to learn problems from China, you guys just focus on your own problems, since there are already too many.
 

Ray

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Sure there are problems in India.

Are you mentally challenged that you append India's problem.

Do you think we are such fools as we do not know our problems and not seek solutions by observing others?

But let me tell you that there are fewer idiots in India who feel that they know everything and know the solutions to all problems, as some people of other countries feel that they do not require to study others since they know all.

Thank heavens we are not fools like them!
 
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Ray

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It is so unfortunate that China which is a totalitarian State suffers so badly when all they have to do is order around and set the Public Security goons to implement their diktats.

And if the people don't behave set up kangaroo courts and have them jailed!

check the thread of Bo Xilai's wife!

Got that Chinese Pack Leader?
 

Ray

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Huh, I thought we were talking about food storage.

As I have pointed out before, Indians are the most unfortunate people in the world. They live in a democracy where no one gives a damn about them.

A high-rank Indian poster here would rather dedicate more threads to Chinese food storage issues than Indian food storage issues, although we all know Indian food storage system is the one which needs to be taken care of.
Nimo,

Quite posting irrelevant OT stuff.

My post was to your irrelevant and OT post.

Your post on India was OT.

Like it or not, the problems of China are very pertinent to India and we should wake up to it since it will happen to us too if we don't wake up.

Any more OT stuff, it will be deleted and you will be shown the door!

Please understand, I am patient, but when I act I act swift and fast.
 

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