Food worth $6.8bn rots in India each year

New Delhi - Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar said on Friday that food grains, fruits and vegetables worth $6.8bn go to waste in India every year because of inadequate storage facilities.

Pawar said the country's storage requirement was 61.3 million tons against the current capacity of around 29 million tons, citing a report commissioned last year.

"The present gap is around 32 million tons," he said in the upper house of the parliament, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.

Pawar said the government had initiated various steps to encourage the creation of new storage capacity, which is in focus as the ruling Congress party rolls out a massive new food programme to feed the poor.

The Food Security law, which the government is attempting to steer through parliament, will offer subsidised grains to nearly 70% of the population, or more than 800 million people.

Nearly two-thirds of India's 1.2 billion population still depends on agriculture for their livelihood and the government is the country's biggest purchaser of produce through its centralised procurement system.