• 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.