Food Minister K V Thomas on Monday said that state-run Food Corporation of India (FCI) has been asked to hire private godowns to store the new crop. Speaking to reporters in New Delhi, he termed foodgrains storage as a challenging task in view of the record output. Mr. Thomas said that efforts are on to create additional storage capacity for storing new wheat crop being procured currently by FCI. The government currently has capacity to store 66 million tonnes of wheat and rice. He said the FCI has also been asked to enhance its capacity utilisation beyond the existing 85 per cent. He also said that the government could consider releasing wheat and rice in the open market and through ration shops. Food Secretary B C Gupta said, to ease pressure on storage, the Food Ministry is taking a proposal before the panel of Ministers to allocate extra 8 million tonnes of foodgrains to families below poverty line. He said the situation is being constantly monitored.According to the latest data released by the Agriculture Ministry, the country is estimated to have harvested record rice crop at 103.41 million tonne and wheat crop at 90.23 million tonnes in the 2011-12 crop year.