Invest in R&D for transformation in food systems

The UN Food Systems Summit 2021 has emphasised on food systems transformation to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to the reduction in poverty, hunger, and undernutrition; efficient use of natural resources; and coping with climate risks, which appear to be off the track in most developing countries. Food systems comprise a chain of activities including production, processing, distribution, governance, and consumption, and their outcomes for nutrition, health, equity, and environment. The rationale for the food system transformation is that the problems of nutritional insecurity, poverty, natural resource degradation, and climate change are interlinked and require multiple interventions to alter the dynamics of food systems. 

India’s food systems, fuelled by technological change and supported by investments in irrigation, markets and infrastructure along with incentives in terms of price support and subsidies, experienced a gradual but visible transformation from upstream to downstream during the past five decades. Between 1970-71 and 2020-21, food production increased tremendously — foodgrains from 99.5 to 308.7 million tonnes, fruits and vegetables from 52.5 to 303 million tonnes, milk from 22 to 210 million tonnes, and fish from 1.8 to 14.2 million tonnes. Downstream, the consumption basket experienced a gradual shift towards the nutrient-rich horticultural and animal-source foods.  

Confronting challenges 

Nevertheless, the need to produce more diverse foods remains as urgent as ever due to the growing population, rising per capita income and changing lifestyles.  On the other hand, food systems have been confronting several challenges from the demand and supply sides the demand side, the biggest challenge for the food systems is to ensure nutritional security for all. According to the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2019-21, more than 32 per cent of children below five years of age are underweight, 35 per cent are stunted, and 19 per cent are wasted. Iron deficiency is all-pervasive — 67 per cent of children (6-59 months), 57 per cent of women (15-49 years), and 25 per cent of men suffer from anaemia. The poor nutritional outcomes, amidst the plenty of food supply, are often attributed to the lack of dietary diversity, especially among the poor households which cannot afford costly nutrient-rich commodities in their regular diets.  

On the supply side, the technological gains in rice and wheat realised during the initial decades of the Green Revolution have started diminishing despite the increasing use of irrigation and fertilisers. The yields of oilseeds and pulses have not experienced significant technological gains, compelling the country to import these commodities. India imports 55-60 per cent of its edible oil requirement.  

Significant threat 

Climate change has emerged as a significant threat to food production systems, and the threat is likely to be severe in plausible future climate scenarios. By 2050, the yields of food crops, depending on their sensitivity to the changes in climate variables, are likely be 10-20 per cent less. The sudden rise in temperature in March 2022 leading to a significant loss in wheat production in Punjab and Haryana is a pointer of the threat of climate change to food production. The threat will be aggravated by climate-induced changes in pest infestations and the growing scarcity of water and energy. Such impacts never remain confined to the food production system, but transcend downstream the food supply chain, affecting the livelihoods of all the stakeholders, including non-agricultural workers, traders, processors and consumers.  

Technology has the power to transform food production systems to overcome these challenges. Inter alia, crop breeding has been found to be a more cost-effective and sustainable means of improving the resilience of crops to climate change compared to other mitigation strategies, such as irrigation, which are capital-intensive and create pressure on scarce water resources. So is the bio-fortification of staple food crops for combating undernutrition. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has developed more than 1,500 varieties of different crops that are resilient to different stresses, including droughts, floods, and heat waves; and also nutrient bio-fortified varieties of several food crops. These efforts will be severely affected in the absence of adequate investment in research.  

Need for investment  

Future agricultural research has to address the multiple challenges of food and nutrition security and climate resilience; and the need for more investment in food systems research cannot be undermined. However, agricultural research in India has remained under-invested — only 0.54 per cent of the agricultural gross domestic product is spent on agricultural research and education, which is much less compared to 1.8 per cent in Brazil, 1.05 per cent in Mexico, 0.99 per cent in Malaysia and 0.62 per cent in China. In developed countries it is 2-3 per cent. The returns on investment in agricultural research and education have been quite attractive, 40 per cent or more.  

In the past, India, or, for that matter, other developing countries, immensely benefited from the knowledge and technological spill-overs of public-funded research in developed countries. For achieving the SDGs related to food and nutrition security, natural resource management and climate change through the food systems transformation, India must raise spending on agricultural research and education to at least 1 per cent of the agricultural gross domestic product by 2030, and to 2 per cent by 2047 when it will be completing a century of its Independence. In a couple of years, India will surpass China in population, and ignoring agricultural research in resource allocation may endanger self-sufficiency in food.  

Birthal is Director, ICAR-National Institute of Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, and Mohapatra is former secretary, Department of Agricultural Research and Education, and Director-General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research.

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