Editorial 1 : Food that doesn’t Feed
Context: What India can do to reduce food wastage
Introduction: United Nations has designated September 29 as the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste (FLW) with events jointly convened by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) because the issue has important implications for food security and saving our environment.
Food Wastage: Global Scenario
- According to FAO food lost between harvest and retail amounts to 13.2 per cent of the global food production.
- UNEP estimates that 17 per cent of food is wasted between retail and feeding people.
- Together, the food loss and waste (FLW), amounts to about 30 per cent of the global production.
Benefits of reducing wastage and saving food
- Even if half of wasted food in the world is saved and used, it could easily feed all the hungry people in the world.
- It could also help reduce at least 8 to 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and 38% of total energy usage, making our planet breathe better.
- It is important to be aware of these potential benefits and commit ourselves to reducing FLW by at least 50%, thus contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.
Food Loss in India
- The all-India post-harvest loss survey by NABCONS, 2022, reveals that the country suffers staggering food losses worth Rs 1.53 trillion with a loss of 12.5 million metric tons (MMT) of cereals, 2.11 MMT of oilseeds and 1.37 MMT of pulses.
- Around 49.9 MMT of horticultural crops are lost annually due to poor cold chain infrastructure, reducing both the availability of fresh produce and the income potential for farmers.
- According to a study by ICRIER-ADMI that soybean has the highest post-harvest loss at 15.34%, followed by wheat at 7.87 per cent, paddy at 6.37 per cent, and maize at 5.95 per cent including quantity and quality losses.
- The study shows that food loss largely occurs during harvesting, threshing, drying and storage stages, predominantly due to low levels of mechanisation and inadequate logistics infrastructure.
Farm Mechanisation reduce the Losses
- Farmers who use combine harvesters see a marked reduction in paddy losses compared to those relying on traditional manual methods.
- Overall loss in paddy drops to just 2.84 per cent if mechanisation in harvesting and drying is adopted at the farm.
- Small and marginal farmers, who constitute over 86% of Indian agricultural households, often cannot afford to buy the costly machines for farm mechanisation.
- To promote farm mechanisation, Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) and Custom Hiring Centres (CHCs) can play a crucial role through group leasing arrangements and the uberisation of farm machinery.
Storage Infrastructure
- The availability of proper drying and storage infrastructure plays an important role in reducing food losses.
- Traditional sun drying methods are fraught with risks, including the addition of foreign matters, uneven drying, and exposure to moisture, which can lead to mycotoxin contamination.
- Solar dryers and dehydrators offer a solution to reduce losses and extend the shelf-life for perishables.
- These green technologies are cost-effective for small-scale farmers, they are climate-friendly and need to be encouraged by appropriate policy formulation.
- But storage infrastructure remains inadequate in India.
- Post-harvest losses account for approximately 10% of total food grain production due to poor and inadequate storage infrastructure.
Policy Support
- Beyond technological solutions, policy support is critical to ensure that small and marginal farmers can access these technological changes.
- Government of India has launched a major grain storage plan. This initiative is part of a broader strategy aimed at modernising the agricultural system of India. The plan entails the expansion of storage capacity by 70 MMT over the next five years.
- There is a need, to re-visit the Jute Packaging Material Act (JPMA, 1987) for an expansion in the use of airtight bags which can lower storage and transit losses.
- Even though jute is biodegradable, it is a water guzzler and a labour-intensive crop, and its use leads to frequent rodent attacks and pilferage in tropical climates.
Conclusion: Reducing post-harvest losses is not just a matter of improving economic efficiency, but also providing food security to people while building resilience in the food systems.
Editorial 2 : The Rankings Trap
Context: The trap of global rankings
Introduction: Developing global indices and rankings has turned into a minor industry. Year on year think tanks specialise in creating different indices and get increased funding and publicity. Some governments boast of improved rankings, while others rant about the methodology.
Issues With the Indices
- Strange anomalies in the indices.
- Example: In Global Gender Gap Index, India ranked 26th on educational attainment in 2023 but mysteriously dropped to 112th rank in 2024.
- Challenges in getting accurate country-level data.
- Example: Human Development Index is well thought out and carefully constructed but finds it hard to get accurate country-level data.
- Hastily put together and excludes perspectives from the Global South.
- Example: The now-abandoned World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index focused on limited liability companies, covering only 14% of Indian businesses and excluding sole proprietorships, the mainstay of Indian businesses.
Holding the Indices Accountable
- An index should contain a methodological appendix that justifies why specific indicators were chosen to be a part of the index and the rationale underlying the differential weights given to these indicators.
- The publications must include links to source data.
- Index authors must cite the original sources for each indicator for each country.
- Where primary data is presented, sample sizes, sampling methodology and confidence intervals must be presented.
- Those who cover the release of various indices must find a way of fact-checking the results.
- An editorial moratorium of coverage for 48 hours after the release of the index will give time to critically examine the results and consult experts.
- The rankings that do not provide citations to source data and methodology should not be covered.
- Governments must stop taking these results seriously.
- Countries are well aware of their priorities and try to ensure that appropriate data are available to monitor their progress.
- These efforts have little to do with how a country is ranked globally.
Conclusion: Amartya Sen, one of the originators of the Human Development Index, has suggested it may be time to move beyond rankings. If we can’t get away from these rankings, at a minimum, we should set up parameters under which they are accurate and sensibly used.