Food grain stocks hit record high
Paper: III
For Prelims: Food Corporation of India (FCI).
For Mains: Major Crops – Cropping Patterns in various parts of the country.
Context of News:
- According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer’s Welfare, as on January 16, 2020, wheat has been sown this rabi season in 330.20 lakh hectares — 33.23 lakh ha more than last year (296.98 lakh ha) and the highest ever since 1950-51, the year from which data is available. Earlier, the highest area under wheat was recorded 314.70 ha during 2014-15.
- While retail food inflation soared to a six-year high of 14.12 percent in December last year posing a challenge amid slowdown in the economy, the government faces a challenge managing its surplus food grain stock.
About Food Grain Production:
- The latest data available on the Food Corporation of India (FCI) website shows the total food grains stock (including unmilled rice) in the central pool as on January 1, 2020 is about 75.51 million tonnes which is highest ever. It is more than three times the 21.4 million tons stock required to maintain operational stock as well as strategic reserve as on January 1 each year.
- The area under coarse cereals, too, has reported a substantial increase — from 46.88 lakh ha last rabi season to 53.19 lakh ha now. However, the area coverage of oilseeds is just marginally up, from 79.17 lakh ha in the last rabi season to 79.25 lakh ha now.
- This substantial increase suggests higher production which will add to the existing surplus food grain stock. The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution is struggling to manage the overflowing granaries. It has even written to the Ministry of External Affairs to take the surplus food grain and donate it as humanitarian aid to other countries.
Food Corporation of India (FCI):
- The Food Corporation of India is an organization created and run by the Government of India and also run by state Governments. It is a statutory body under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Government of India.
- Food Corporation of India (FCI) is a Public Sector Undertaking, under the Department of Food & Public Distribution, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution.
- FCI is a statutory body set up in 1965 under the Food Corporations Act 1964. It was established against the backdrop of major shortage of grains, especially wheat.
- It has primary duty to undertake purchase, store, and move/transport, distribute and sell food grains and other foodstuffs.
Purpose of FCI:
- To provide remunerative prices to farmers.
- To help in transforming the crisis management oriented food security into a stable security system to ensure availability, accessibility and affordability of food grains to all people at all times so that no one, nowhere and at no time should go hungry.
- Ensuring food security of the nation by maintaining satisfactory level of operational buffer stocks of food grains.
- Distribution of food grains throughout the country for Public Distribution System.
- Effective Price Support Operations for safeguarding the interest of farmers.
GSAT-30 gives India a communication boost
GS Paper III
Topic: science & technology -recent developments and their applications and effects in everyday life
Prelims: GSAT-30, KU and C-band
What’s the News?
India’s “high power” communication satellite GSAT-30, aimed at providing high-quality television, telecommunications and broadcasting services, was successfully launched onboard Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana.
Ku-band and C-band:
While Ku-band transponders would provide coverage to Indian mainland and islands, the C-band would allow two-way communication and enable television broadcasters to beam their programs over India, Gulf countries, a large number of Asian countries and Australia.
Foreign launch:
- ISRO hired a foreign launcher as GSAT-30 is much heavier than the 2,000-kg lifting capacity of its geostationary launch vehicle GSLV-MkII.
- ISRO in recent years has been taking the support of a cluster of mid-sized industries to speed up building routine spacecraft at its premises.
EUTELSAT KONNECT:
A European communication satellite called EUTELSAT KONNECT was the co-passenger of GSAT-30.
Arianespace:
- It is European launch service operator which has now sent 24 Indian communication satellites to orbit over the last 30 years; the APPLE experimental satellite of 1981 was its first Indian contract.
- It last launched another replacement satellite, GSAT-31, in February 2019.
Significance:
- It will provide DTH television services, connectivity to VSATs (that support working of banks’) ATMs, stock exchange, television uplinking and teleport services, digital satellite news gathering and e-governance applications.
- The satellite will also be used for bulk data transfer for a host of emerging telecommunication applications.