Broken wheat: A byproduct of the milling industry towards nutrition security

Abstract

India at present finds itself in the midst of a paradoxical situation: endemic mass-hunger coexisting with the mounting food grain stocks. The food grain stocks available with the Food Corporation of India (FCI) stand at an all time high of 62 million tonnes against an annual requirement of around 20 million tonnes for ensuring food security. Still, an estimated 200 million people are underfed and 50 million on the brink of starvation, resulting in starvation deaths. The paradox lies in the inherent flaws in the existing policy and implementation bottlenecks. India's food security policy has a laudable objective to ensure availability of food grains to the common people at an affordable price and it has enabled the poor to have access to food where none existed. The policy has focused essentially on growth in agriculture production (once India used to import food grains) and on support price for procurement and maintenance of rice and wheat stocks. The responsibility for procuring and stocking of food grains lies with the FCI and for distribution with the public distribution system (PDS).