Irony can’t get bigger than this. Neither can it get more tragic. Even as drought and food scarcity loom large, India’s granary, Punjab, is losing a staggering 18 lakh metric tonnes of wheat to wastage. It’s a quantity that can feed 15 lakh families for 365, or weight of entire wheat produced in Australia in a year.

Mountains of wheat are rotting in the fields of Punjab, strewn across soggy land, with government agencies either unable or unwilling to move it out of the state into move it out of the state into the mouths of the country’s hungry millions…..

In Punjab, which produces a total of over 150 lakh-mt of wheat, a whopping 99.92 lakh-mt is stored in the open while only 30 lakh – mt is covered. Agriculturists have cried themselves hoarse at the lack of government infrastructure in the country’s food basket.

— The Times of India, August 21, 2009