Preparing the ground for food security

It remains to be seen whether the current monsoon session of Parliament will see the Food Security Bill passed. This legislation, which has caught the imagination of everyone, is already in place as an ordinance that the government has enacted because of the delay in its passage in the two Houses.

This legislation which aims to address the most crucial aspect of food security, that is, affordability or the price at which staple cereals are made available, would cover over two-thirds of the country’s population.

The sheer complexity of the coverage and the mind-boggling expenditure of the scheme easily make it the single-most important intervention in making essential food such as rice and wheat available to the vast multitude of people at a substantially subsidised rate. It is crucial that the public distribution system (PDS) plugs the loopholes and strengthens the delivery for the scheme to be successful.

What are the other aspects of food security? The first is availability, which relates to production strategies, including resource management. On the foodgrains front, India will be relatively secure, primarily because of its dietary habits and the fact that the country’s production has been going up and looks poised to achieve the targeted output of 280 million tonnes by 2020.

Resource management

The focus, however, would shift from yield per hectare to yield per litre of water. It would be incumbent to use the most critical resource — water — in a judicious manner. With just 45 per cent of the arable land under irrigation, the country still relies heavily on the monsoon for its overall agricultural output.

According to the International Water Resources Group, by 2030, water shortage could reach alarming proportions. It is, therefore, imperative that the country invests heavily on creating the requisite infrastructure and the governments take a holistic view to arrest misuse of water.

Questions like whether India should import close to half its edible oils, while exporting seven million tonnes of rice would arise. It is estimated that close to 3,000-5,000 litres of water are required to produce a tonne of rice, which is akin to saying that India exports billions of litres of water!

Available estimates also reveal that nearly 120.72 million ha of land in the country is degraded due to soil erosion and about 8.4 million ha has soil salinity and water-logging problems. Besides, huge quantities of nutrients are lost during crop production cycle.

Annually, India is losing nearly 0.8 million tonnes of nitrogen, 1.8 million tonnes of phosphorus and 26.3 million tonnes of potassium — deteriorating quality and health of soil is something to be checked. Problems are further aggravated by imbalanced application of nutrients (especially nitrogen, phosphorus and potash), and excessive mining of micronutrients, leading to deficiency of macro- and micronutrients in the soil. The research and development challenge would be to stop further degradation and go in for rehabilitation of degraded lands and water resources in a cost-effective manner.

Affordability, nutrition

The second aspect is that of affordability which India seeks to address through the Food Security Act. The third aspect of food security relates to the stability of the food systems to sustain systemic shocks.

The buffer stocks and the trading system in the country should be in a position to ensure a steady supply of food in a drought situation or when struck by other calamities. The fourth aspect is that nutrition is often neglected in any debate on food security. Like any economy on a growth curve, the consumption pattern of the Indian population is undergoing change.

With increasing prosperity, the shift is towards fruits, vegetables and protein-rich foods such as meat and fish. More and more people are moving away from cereals. Today, India’s biggest agricultural crop is no longer rice. There is a shifting preference to milk, fruits and vegetables.

The challenge for policy-makers is to strike a balance between higher foodgrains production and the changing consumption pattern. It is somewhat ironical that the Madhya Pradesh is the highest producer of protein-rich soyabean, but ranks low in the nutritional indicators, as the crop is grown purely as a cash crop.

It will thus require both vision as well as political will to take hard decisions to ensure that the farmer uses resources judiciously and invests in land and in right crops. It is estimated that 80 per cent of India’s agricultural investments come from the private sector and mostly from its small farmers.

Farmers’ holdings

To sustain such investments, it is crucial to have well-functioning markets for farmers’ produce. Issues such as export controls, levies and restrictions on stock holdings and inter-state movement of food would come into focus.

Indian agriculture is dominated by small farmers, having small landholdings for cultivation. The average size of the landholdings declined to 1.32 ha in 2000-01 from 2.30 ha in 1970-71, and the absolute number of operational holdings increased from about 70 million to 121 million.

If this trend continues, the average size of holding in India would be mere 0.68 ha in 2020, and would be reduced further to a low of 0.32 ha in 2030. This is a very complex and serious problem. When the share of agriculture in gross domestic product is declining, the average size of landholding is contracting (also fragmenting) and the number of operational holdings is increasing.

The research focus would be to evolve technologies and management options to suit the needs of smallholders’ agriculture and involve them in agri-supply chain through institutional innovations.

(The author is Vice-President — Commercial Acceptance and Public Policy, South Asia, Syngenta India Ltd. The views are personal.)

COMMENT NOW