CIDA saving Indian food

A McGill professor will soon be heading off to southern India to help implement a program that will help farmers keep their produce from going rotten in the tropical climate. Professor Vijaya Raghavan, chair of the department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at McGill’s Macdonald campus, says the need for food security is pressing in a country where a large number of the population survives on subsistence farming.

“Post-harvest losses are a global problem, totalling about $15-billion each year,” says Raghavan. “From the Indian government point of view, they are very keen to take on this project.” The two states to be targeted in the project are Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
A 1999 World Bank report notes that India loses some 12- to 16-million metric tons each year of post-harvest food grains. The project’s ultimate goal, Raghavan says, is “to apply the right knowledge base to reduce loss. We are using newer techniques to teach the farmers methods of storing food.”

Raghavan’s five-year project, in partnership with three other Indian universities, several South Indian non-governmental organizations and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), will get $5-million in federal funding.
CIDA minister Maria Minna’s office announced the project officially on Tuesday, the same day, funnily enough, she got turfed from the federal Cabinet, supposedly because of hanky-panky involving a friend, a municipal election, government resources and votes. :

—Patrick Lejtenyi