The Hindu Business Line : Farm prescription for malnutrition

India has experienced unprecedented growth of more than 9 per cent per annum in the last three years, becoming one of the fastest growing economies in the world, perhaps next only to China. India’s booming services sector (IT, banking, construction, etc.) implies that it can sustain 8-9 per cent growth over a long period.

Threat to economic productivity

But what does not bode well with India’s economic performance is the health of its mammoth population, especially pre-school children.

Seventy-five per cent of Indian pre-schoolers suffer from the iron deficiency, anaemia. Perhaps as many pre-schoolers are zinc-deficient, and one-half are Vitamin A-deficient.

These nutritional deficiencies impair children’s growth and physical and mental development, reduce their resistance to infections, and curtail their intellectual and reproductive performance and economic productivity.

This damage is largely irreversible unless addressed early in life. It is also a threat to India’s long-term economic development.

The Lancet series on under-nutrition (published in January 2008) estimated that the prevalence of stunting among children under five years in India is more than 50 per cent, among the highest in the world, along with Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Nepal; India’s rates are almost double those of sub-Saharan Africa and five times higher than China’s.

Thirty four per cent of all stunted children under the age of five in the world are Indian.

The NFHS 2005-2006 survey found that stunting is especially high in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Meghalaya. Most would agree that the current situation is unacceptable, especially given India’s rapid economic growth.

Underlying problem

The underlying problem is rooted in low incomes of the masses and the failure of the food system to deliver sufficient nutrients for healthy, happy and productive lives. Yet, most interventions (such as nutrient supplements) aimed at reducing micro-nutrient malnutrition, although necessary until more sustainable solutions are implemented, ignore agriculture as a potential permanent solution. The current interventions incur high annual costs, year after year and, yet, they do not attack the root of the problem, namely poor diets.

India needs lower-cost and more sustainable interventions to combat this issue. In the long run, rural incomes must be increased and food prices lowered through gains in agricultural productivity so that poor can afford better and more diversified diets. But achieving this may take decades.

However, there is a complementary agricultural approach which can be implemented much more quickly — improving the quantity/levels of minerals and vitamins in basic food staples eaten widely by the poor.

This is done through conventional plant breeding, using existing varieties of food crops such as rice, wheat, and pearl millet, that have naturally higher levels of nutrients, and crossing them to existing high-yielding varieties.

This strategy was first advocated by HarvestPlus, a programme of the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

At present, HarvestPlus is in the early stages of breeding and testing bio-fortified crops. Just last year, it signed an MoU with the Government of India to collaborate on developing bio-fortified crop varieties.

Bio-fortified crops

Bio-fortified crops offer a rural-based intervention that, by design, initially reach the more remote populations that comprise a huge majority of the poor in India. Bio-fortified seeds can be easily grown and, replanted, year after year, by Indian farmers.

The benefits then extend to urban populations as production surpluses are marketed; in this way, bio-fortification complements fortification and supplementation programmes, which work best in centralised urban areas and then reach into rural areas only in areas with good infrastructure.

Importantly, in India, the bio-fortification strategy targets poor women and female children, who eat relatively large amounts of food staples to stave off overt hunger, but who receive a disproportionately lower share of the more expensive, nutritious, non-staple foods than the male family members.

Finally, initial investments in agricultural research at a central location can generate high recurrent benefits at low cost as adapted bio-fortified varieties become available in the food system across time.

With continued support, a one-time investment of tens of millions of dollars in agricultural research could reap the benefits of tens of billions of dollars through improved nutrition and well-being of India’s poor, which ultimately will lead to greater economic productivity.

(The author is Director of HarvestPlus, a Challenge Programme of the CGIAR.)

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