Food Security Ansu Mam

• Today, there is marketable surplus of food grains in India.

• The prevalence of widespread hunger is not due to the non-availability of food in the market, but due to lack of adequate purchasing power amongst the rural and urban poor.

• Inadequate purchasing power, in its turn, is due to insufficient opportunities for gainful employment. • The famine of jobs and of purchasing power is becoming the primary cause for the famine of food in the households of the poor.

• Worldwide, 848 million people suffered from chronic hunger in 2003-05 (FAO 2008). • Of these people, 65 per cent live in only seven countries - India, China, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia. • India has an undernourished population of around 231 million (Figure 3.2.1).

• On the demand side, life expectancy in India has increased from 59 to 63 years since 1990-92. • So the minimum dietary energy requirements had outpaced that of dietary energy supply. • The combination of the declining per capita growth rate in total dietary energy supply and higher per capita dietary energy requirements resulted in an estimated 24 million more undernourished people in India in 2003-05 compared with the base period. • The increased food needs of the ageing population amount to about 6.5 million tonnes per year in cereal equivalent. • However, the prevalence of hunger in India decreased from 24 per cent in 1990-92 to 21 per cent in 2003-05, marking a progress towards meeting the MDG hunger reduction target.

• Hunger in India is not necessarily a function of underproduction, bad monsoons or the fall in buffer stocks. • In fact, India today finds itself in a paradoxical situation of having food grain stocks with the Food Corporation of India (FCI) standing at an all time high of 63.1 million tonnes in July 2002 (Patnaik, 2003). • This exceeds the requirements for food security by about 20 million tonnes, yet above 200 million people go hungry and about 50 million are on the brink of starvation (Goyal, 2004). • The existence of food stocks above buffer requirements has not translated into availability.

PRESSURES

1. Poverty • The National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) constructed three income groups bottom, middle and top; for these groups the per capita expenditure on cereal, non-cereal and total calorie intake for the years 1970 to 1989, 1990 to 1998, 1998 to 2000 was estimated. • For the bottom income group, expenditure on cereals has fallen from 0.10 per cent per annum to -1.38; it is worse for non-cereals where the expenditure has decreased from 2.81 per cent per annum to 0.96 per cent per annum.

• Predictably, the percentage of poor in rural areas is highest amongst the agricultural labour, followed by the self-employed. • According to National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (NNMB) data, 37.4 per cent of adult females and 39.4 per cent of males suffer from chronic energy deficiency. • More than half the children under age five are underweight in Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar.

• Children in rural areas are more likely to be undernourished, but even in urban areas, almost two out of five children suffer from chronic under nutrition. • Girls and boys are equally likely to be undernourished.

2. Food Prices - Main Concern • • • • •

Income growth, climate change, high energy prices, globalization, and urbanization are converging to drive food prices higher, threatening livelihoods and nutrition of poor people in the developing countries, says a new report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

• Surging demand for biofuels as an alternative energy source are further pressurizing food prices.

3. Degraded Land • Permanently degraded lands are growing at an annual rate of 6 Mha. globally, affecting the livelihoods of millions of people, concentrated mainly in the developing and poor countries. • In India, erosion rates are reported to be in the range of 5 to 20 tonnes/hectare (up to 100 tonnes/hectare). • Nearly 150 Mha. are affected by water erosion and another 18 Mha. are affected by wind erosion annually in India.

• At present, approximately 68.35 Mha. of land is lying as wasteland, of this approximately 50 per cent is non-forest land which can be made fertile again if treated properly. • Rajasthan has the highest component of degraded land, followed by Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. • Where land has been subjected to light or moderate degradation, the same level of inputs will give lower outputs. These may be reduced crop yields or lower livestock production.

Fragility of Agriculture • With respect to agricultural production, there are wide fluctuations, but an overall downward trend exists. • Although India accounts for 21.8 per cent of the global paddy production, our yields are less than those in most countries • The yield of food crops and non-food crops over the years depict that crop production in general has suffered. • The dominance of wheat and rice among food crops and lower importance given to other so called coarse cereals has several implications – lower area under these crops, lower production, and shift in consumption to more rice and wheat and the declining importance of traditional coarse cereals in the national policy.

• Rice production shot up from around 20 million tonnes in the early 1950s to almost 90 million tonnes in 1999-2000 and 93.34 million tonnes in 2001-02. • Production of coarse cereals doubled in the five decades. • Commercial crops have recorded a huge increase, most prominently for tea, sugar-cane and to a lesser extent, coffee. • Unfortunately the yield of these export crops is also slowing down and decreasing in the post 2000 period.

Climate Change • Changing rainfall patterns are likely to affect India’s food security. • Extreme events, such as, cyclones and forest fires could become more common. • In the past fifty years, there have been around 15 major droughts, due to which the productivity of rainfed crops in drought years was adversely affected. • Floods are another major cause of food emergencies.

• The overall predictability of weather and climate would decrease, making planning of farm operations more difficult. • The sea level would rise, threatening valuable coastal agricultural land, particularly in low lying small islands. • Climatic and agro-ecological zones would shift, forcing farmers to adapt • Distribution and quantities of fish and sea foods could change dramatically, wreaking havoc in established national fishery activities.

Groundwater exploitation • Groundwater exploitation has increased in the past decade, reaching dangerous levels of over-exploitation in states like Punjab, Haryana and Tamil Nadu. There is an urgent need to control this situation.

MEASURES TO ENSURE FOOD SECURITY

• India's food security policy was crafted with an aim to attain food self-sufficiency by making basic food grains available to all its citizens at affordable prices. • To make this possible and to oversee its implementation, the Food Corporation of India (FCI) was set up under the Food Corporations Act 1964. • The FCI procures food grains from farmers at the government declared Minimum Support Price (MSP), which is a long-term guarantee to ensure minimum production, stocks them in its warehouses, and then makes them available at affordable rates to the people through the Public Distribution System (PDS), which was restructured into the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) in 1997, at an issue price, which is different for those above and below the poverty line.

• Besides the TPDS, the government has implemented numerous other programmes aimed at food security, which include the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) for providing nutrition and healthcare services to children and pregnant women, the Antyodaya Anna Yojana for providing affordable food to Below Poverty Level (BPL) households, and the Midday Meal Scheme

• Over the years following independence, India has successfully been able to transform itself from a foodgrain importing country to a food self-sufficient country with adequate buffer stocks to see itself through a year or two of drought.

• The challenge that stares the government in the face is fully implementing the TPDS and making it accessible to the deserving groups. • It also has to develop effective social security nets for vulnerable population groups, especially during moments of crisis such as droughts, earthquakes or cyclones. • Food security implementation can also be tied to other development projects on health, employment and education.

• Food security is an important step towards national economic development as no country can prosper if one-fourth of its people have to worry about where their next meal will come from.

National Food Security Mission • • • • • •

The National Food Security Mission has been launched recently as a centrally sponsored scheme. The objective is to increase production and productivity of wheat, rice and pulses on a sustainable basis so as to ensure food security of the country. The approach is to bridge the yield gap in respect of these crops through dissemination of improved technologies and farm management practices. It is envisaged to focus on districts which have high potential but relatively low level of productivity performance at present. There will be a series of programmatic interventions, efforts to reach resource-poor farmers and continuous monitoring of various activities. Panchayati Raj institutions will play a central role, not only in selection of beneficiaries and identifying priority areas but also in the entire gamut of activities of the Mission. A

The National Food Security Mission has three components : • (i) National Food Security Mission - Rice (NFSM-Rice) • (ii) National Food Security Mission - Wheat (NFSM-Wheat) • (iii)National Food Security Mission - Pulses (NFSM-Pulses)

The National Food Security Mission (NFSM) is currently running in 17 States of the country including Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.

The SAARC Food Bank • The Agreement on Establishing the SAARC Food Security Reserve came into force on 12 August 1988. • It had a Reserve of 2,41,580 tonnes of food grains (a combination of rice and wheat) (Table 3.2.7). • However, the Reserve was not utilized despite the SAARC member states suffering food emergencies. • As such, the question of the non-operationalization of the Reserve remained a subject of concern for the Association. • It was, therefore, felt necessary to evolve mechanisms to make the SAARC Food Security Reserve operational.

In view of the emerging global situation of reduced food availability and a worldwide rise in food prices, a meeting of the Agriculture Ministers of the SAARC member states was held in New Delhi, India in November 2008, to evolve and implement people-centred short to medium term regional strategy and collaborative projects that would, among others, lead to: • Increase in food production; • Investment in agriculture and agro-based industries; • Agriculture research and prevention of soil health degradation; • Development and sharing of agricultural technologies; • Sharing of best practices in procurement and distribution; and • Management of the climatic and disease-related risks in • agriculture.

• Scope of the Food Bank has been expanded beyond emergencies. • The Bank would act as a regional food security reserve for the SAARC member countries during normal time food shortages and emergencies.

Organic Farming - A Possible Solution to ensure Economically Sustainable Agriculture

• Organic agriculture is one among the broad spectrum of production methods that are supportive of the environment. • Organic production systems are based on specific standards

• It is based on minimizing the use of external inputs through the use of on-farm resources efficiently, as compared to industrial agriculture. • Thus, the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides is avoided. • The strongest feature of organic agriculture is its reliance on fossil-fuel free and locally-available production assets and working with natural processes, which increases cost effectiveness and resilience of agro-ecosystems to climatic stress.

• As per a Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) study of mid 2003, India had 1,426 certified organic farms producing approximately 14,000 tonnes of organic food/products annually. In 2005, as per the Govt. of India figures, approximately 1,90,000 acres (77,000 hectares) were under organic cultivation.

• In India, a common problem faced by organic farmers is the lack of a ready market and often unremunerative prices for their produce. • In many cases, the farmer does not receive timely payments from middlemen, including organic food traders. • Buyers of organic food, on the other hand, face difficulty in sourcing organic produce, at least at reasonable prices. • Supplies are often erratic or unreliable, and in some cases, buyers cannot be sure whether the produce is indeed organic.

Can organic farming leads to food security?

• The spread of organic and agro-ecological farming (OF) methods in developing countries has raised a debate on whether its large scale adoption will increase or decrease global food security. • Yields depend on a number of agro-ecological factors and the characteristics of farming systems before conversion. • In areas with intensive high-input agriculture, conversion will most often lead to a reduction in crop yields per ha by 20-45 per cent in crop rotations, integrated with leguminous forage crops. • In many areas with low input agricultural systems, farmers have little incentive or access to use the chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and yields may increase when agro-ecological principles are introduced.

RECOMMENDATIONS for food security

1. Population stabilization 2. Boosting agriculture science and technology. 3. Access to finance 4. Encouragement of child-friendly village/town movement 5. Land resources conservation and enhancement

6. Establishment of a water security system 7. Management of forests and preservation of biodiversity 8. Atmosphere and climate management 9. Administration of common property resources 10. Sustainable intensification and diversification of farming systems and value-addition 11. Formation of a State Coalition for Sustainable Food Security 12. Accountability and transparency in public institutions and the rule of law to empower the vulnerable members of society.