India’s food security needs and associated challenges

Contact Counsellor

Last Updated25/02/2022

Efforts are being made to spur national and regional action to deliver the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through transforming food systems
Recently, the UN Food Systems Summit took place which called for action by governments in five areas: nourish all people; boost nature-based solutions; advance equitable livelihoods, decent work and empowered communities; build resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stresses; and accelerate the means of implementation.
Such a transformation in the Indian context would involve enhancing interfaces between the spheres of science, society and policy, focusing on sustainability, resource efficiency and circularity.

India’s Green Revolution in the 1960s, enabled food security and addressed widespread hunger and poverty.
It was achieved not only through science and technology and the development of improved high-yielding varieties of rice and wheat but also through policy measures and development of institutional structure.
It included a vast agricultural research and technology transfer system at the national, regional, State and local levels.
The Training & Visit (T&V) system introduced in the 1970s with World Bank assistance was key to the science-society interface as it established a cadre of agriculture extension specialists at the local level.

India is now self-sufficient in food grains production in the macro sense. However, it has about a quarter of the world’s food insecure people, a pointer to the amount of food necessary to allow all income groups to reach the caloric target (2,400 kcal in rural and 2,100 kcal in the urban set-up).
Nutrition indicators have marginally improved over the years. However, macro- and micronutrient malnutrition is widespread, with 18.7% of women and 16.2% of men unable to access enough food to meet basic nutritional needs, and over 32% of children below five years still underweight as per the recently released fifth National Family Health Survey (2019-2021) phase 2 compendium.
India is ranked 101 out of 116 countries in the Global Hunger Index, 2021. Not surprisingly, widespread concerns about poverty, malnutrition and the need for a second Green Revolution are being made in tandem. The country faces the dual challenge of achieving nutrition security, as well as addressing declining land productivity, land degradation and loss of ecological services with change in land use.

The siloed approach of ‘agriculture’ serving ‘food security’ needs must give way to ‘food systems’ for ‘sustainability’ and ‘better nutrition’ and
It must embrace the range of activities and actors involved in food production, aggregation, processing, distribution and consumption embedded in their socio-economic and physical context.
In the context of the intensifying economic, environmental and climate challenges and crisis, the need of the hour is a good theory of transition encompassing the spatial, social and scientific dimensions.
It must be supported by policy incentives and mechanisms for achieving a sustainable, resilient and food secure agriculture.

An agro-climatic approach to agricultural development is important for sustainability and better nutrition.
Harnessing the spatial diversity of agricultural production systems adopting the principles of sustainability, resource efficiency and circularity could correct the limitations and unintended consequences of the Green Revolution.
These are the loss of indigenous landraces, soil nutrients depletion, groundwater stress, excessive use of agrochemicals and its residual presence in foods and environment, income gap between large, marginal and small farmers, and the gap between irrigated and rain-fed areas.

Strengthening and shortening food supply chains, reinforcing regional food systems, food processing, agricultural resilience and sustainability in a climate-changing world will require prioritising research and investments along these lines.
A stress status of the natural resource base — soil and water in different agro-climatic zones — will help understand the micro as well as meso-level interventions needed with regard to technologies, extension activities and policies.
Infrastructure and institutions supporting producers, agri-preneurs and agri micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in their production value chain are central to the transition.
This should be aligned to the national and State policy priorities such as the National Policy guidelines 2012 of the Ministry of Agriculture for the promotion of farmer producer organisations, and the National Resource Efficiency Policy of 2019 of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
It would encourage a resource efficient and circular economy for production, processing and storage techniques of food products through renewable energy solutions, reduction of supply chains and inputs (materials, water, and energy).
It would also ensure the efficient use of by-products, thereby creating value while using fewer inputs and generating less waste for long term and large-scale impact.