LOST IN MAIZE

Ethanol-blending programme and its spiralling impacts on food inflation, nutrition availability

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IN AN unpredictable turn of events, India, the breadbasket of maize for Asian countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Malaysia and Vietnam, found itself scouring global markets for the high-protein grain last year. In 2024, the country imported 0.9 million tonnes of maize—a mammoth 7,940 per cent more than what it imported in 2023, as per data with Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The figure is, in fact, much more than the combined import of maize in the last seven years. The culprit was not weather anomaly or pest attack—but diversion of maize for ethanol production, say industry insiders.

Poultry and cattle farmers and the feed industry, already squeezed by volatile soymeal prices and an avian influenza outbreak, found themselves bidding for maize against ethanol distilleries. And they lost. Energy security took precedence over other priorities, quite literally fuelling the tank and starving the trough.

During the initial years after the National Policy on Biofuels was rolled out in 2018, molasses were the main feedstock of ethanol. In fact, until ethanol supply year (ESY) 2021-22 (November 2021 to October 2022), maize was not used as a feedstock. Then in ESY 2022-23, some 315 million litres of ethanol was produced from maize alone, which increased to a massive 2.86 billion litres in ESY 2023-24. That year, ethanol from maize accounted for 42 per cent of the total ethanol produced. Poultry and cattle feed industry, which consumes 60-70 per cent of the maize produced in the country, was the worst hit.