Hacked  By  r4dBlack

THIMPHU: The agriculture ministry (MoA) is recommending tripling the country’s national food reserve from the current 1,658 metric tonnes (MT) to at least 5,850 MT, mainly in cereals, to cope with emerging food security challenges. The current reserves will not meet the needs of vulnerable communities, if natural calamities affect large parts of the country, according to MoA. A reserve of 5,850 MT would meet the needs of vulnerable communities for three months at least.
“Bhutan is faced with decreasing agricultural production, increasing erratic weather and natural disasters affecting agriculture, outbreak of food diseases, increasing food prices and a global food crisis, so it’s important to revisit our food stock,” said the agriculture director, Chencho Norbu.

The 2008 global food crisis was also a wake up call, with several developing countries not having enough reserves to control prices and Bhutan even saw rice exports being briefly stopped from India. The food reserve would have two main roles of maintaining a stock of essential food commodities in the country at all times and also ensuring a reliable supply of food to affected areas during disasters.

The director said that the new food stock would also give the government a say in controlling food prices by releasing food from stocks if prices rose too high. “Right now the government has no real say or involvement in controlling food prices,” he said.

Though the buffer stock will mainly be purchased from India, it could also purchase from domestic farmers, when there is excess production. “This reserve can allow the government to come up with a minimum support or purchase price to buy excess production, so that farmers don’t have to sell at a loss, and will thus encourage them to produce more and enhance food security,” said the director. This minimum support price would be slightly more then the cost of its production.

However, the food corporation of Bhutan (FCB), which keeps reserves in Thimphu, Phuentsholing, Trongsa, Samdrupjongkhar, Trashigang and Mongar is facing difficulty maintaining the current stocks due to maintenance costs.

In fact, FCB, given the resource constraints, is proposing reducing rice stocks, which constitutes the chunk of the food reserves from 1,400 MT to 900 MT. Another problem is that FCB is not able to sell the old stock to replenish it with new stock, since some reserve sites do not have a strong market.

In terms of storage capacity, FCB can store 12,858 MT of foodstock. According to FCB, 167 MT of food stocks have been used in emergencies since 1986 to 1993.

The other option supported by the MoA proposal is that the government provide for the cost of maintenance. It has been estimated that, to hold a food stock of 5,850 MT, it would incur an estimated Nu 85.99m in grain purchase and Nu 12.89m annually for maintenance costs.

The director said that the people, who would suffer most in case of a food crisis or blockage, would be people in urban areas like Thimphu, since villagers would make do with what they grow.

MoA has advocated a flexible policy in future for maintaining food reserves saying that, in case of bad rains, flooding or disaster, indicating food shortage, there should be more kept in reserve and vice versa for years with good harvest.