food security.docx

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Food Security

Food Security refers to the availability of food and one's access to it. A household is

considered food-secure when its occupants do not live inhungeror fear ofstarvation.[1]

It is ameasure of resilience to future disruption or unavailability of critical food supply due tovarious risk factors including droughts, shipping disruptions, fuel shortages, economicinstability, wars, etc. Food security assessment is divided into theself-sufficiencyrate (S) andexternal dependency rate (1-S) as this divides the largest set of risk factors. Although countriesmay desire a high self-sufficiency rate to avoid transport risks, this may be difficult to achieveespecially for wealthy countries, generally due to higher regional production costs.[2]Conversely, high self-sufficiency without economic means leaves countries vulnerable toproduction risks.

TheWorld Health Organizationdefines three facets of food security: food availability, food

access, and food use. Food availability is having available sufficient quantities of food on aconsistent basis. Food access is having sufficient resources, both economic and physical, toobtain appropriate foods for a nutritious diet. Food use is the appropriate use based onknowledge of basic nutrition and care, as well as adequate water and sanitation. TheFAOadds a fourth facet: the stability of the first three dimensions of food security over time.[1]

The World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing when all people at all

times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.

Commonly, the concept of food security is defined as including both physical and economicaccess to food that meets people's dietary needs as well as their food preferences. In manycountries, health problems related to dietary excess are an ever increasing threat, In fact,

malnutrion and foodborne diarrhea are become double burden.

Food security is built on three pillars:

Food availability: sufficient quantities of food available on a consistent basis. Food access: having sufficient resources to obtain appropriate foods for a nutritious diet. Food use: appropriate use based on knowledge of basic nutrition and care, as well as

adequate water and sanitation.

Food security is a complex sustainable development issue, linked to health throughmalnutrition, but also to sustainable economic development, environment, and trade. There is

a great deal of debate around food security with some arguing that:

There is enough food in the world to feed everyone adequately; the problem is distribution. Future food needs can - or cannot - be met by current levels of production. National food security is paramount - or no longer necessary because of global trade. Globalization may - or may not - lead to the persistence of food insecurity and poverty in rural

communities.Issues such as whether households get enough food, how it is distributed within

the household and whether that food fulfils the nutrition needs of all members of the

household show that food security is clearly linked to health.
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Agriculture remains the largest employment sector in most developing countries andinternational agriculture agreements are crucial to a country's food security. Some criticsargue that trade liberalization may reduce a country's food security by reducing agriculturalemployment levels. Concern about this has led a group of World Trade Organization (WTO)member states to recommend that current negotiations on agricultural agreements allow

developing countries to re-evaluate and raise tariffs on key products to protect national foodsecurity and employment. They argue that WTO agreements, by pushing for the liberalizationof crucial markets, are threatening the food security of whole communities. Related issuesinclude:

What is the net impact of the further liberalization of food and agricultural trade, consideringthe widely differing situations in developing countries?

To what extent can domestic economic and social policies - and food, agricultural and ruraldevelopment policies - offset the diverse (and possibly negative) impacts of international

policies, such as those relating to international trade?

How can the overall economic gains from trade benefit those who are most likely to besuffering from food insecurity?

Do gains trickle down to enhance economic access to food for the poor? How can food and agricultural production and trade be restrained from the over-exploitation

of natural resources that may jeopardize domestic food security in the long term?

How to ensure that imported food products are of acceptable quality and safe to eat? Food security is defined as the availability of food and one's access to it.

A household is considered food secure when its occupants do not live in

hunger or fear of starvation. Stages of food insecurity range from food

secure situations to full-scale famine.

The World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing whenall people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to

maintain a healthy and active life. Two common definitions of food security come from the United States

Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the UN's Food and Agriculture

Organization (FAO): * Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and

economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their

dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. (FAO) * Food security for a household means access by all members at all

times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food security includes at

a minimum, (USDA): (1) the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods (2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable

ways (that is, without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging,stealing, or other coping strategies).

In 2006 it was reported that globally, the number of people who areoverweight has surpassed the number who are undernourished - theworld had more than one billion people who were overweight, and anestimated 800 million who were undernourished. Worldwide around 852million people are chronically hungry due to extreme poverty, while upto 2 billion people lack food security intermittently due to varying


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degrees of poverty. 17,000 children die of hunger and malnutrritionrelated diseases every day, which equals 6 million children who die of

hunger every year. In the United States of America there are approximately 2,000,000

farmers, less than 1% of the population. A direct relationship exists

between food consumption levels and poverty. Families with the

financial resources to escape extreme poverty rarely suffer from chronichunger; while poor families not only suffer the most from chronic

hunger, but are also the segment of the population most at risk duringfood shortages and famines.

Things affecting food security today include: Global Water Crisis - Water table reserves are falling in many countries

(including Northern China, the US, and India) due to widespreadoverpumping and irrigation.

Climate Change - Rising global temperatures are beginning to have aripple effect on crop yields, forest resources, water supplies and alteringthe balance of nature.

Land Degradation - Intensive farming leads to a vicious cycle ofexhaustion of soil fertility and decline of agricultural yields.

Greedy Land Deals - Corporations and Governments buying rights tomillions of acres of agricultural land in developing countries to securetheir own long-term food supplies.

Genetically Modified (GM) Food and Food Security Willgenetically modified foodsbe the answer to a crisis in food security?

At present little is known on the consequences and future safety aspectsof GM foods. The movement of genes from GM plants into conventionalcrops in the wild (outcrossing), as well as the mixing of crops derivedfrom conventional seeds with those grown using GM crops, may have anindirect effect on food safety and food security. This risk is real, as was

shown when traces of a maize type which was only approved for feed

use appeared in maize products for human consumption in the UnitedStates of America.

Far from focusing on the needs of the poor in developing countries, GMcrop development is driven by the commercial interests of US and

European companies. The major GM crops currently grown - soya,oilseed rape, cotton and maize are designed to support the food andtextile industries of the developed world. There is currently little GM

research and development by private companies on staple food cropsvital to developing countries.

"Terminator" seeds are modified to produce sterile seeds. This preventsfarmers from saving seeds to plant the following season. 1.4 billion

people, mainly poor farmers in developing countries, depend on saved

seed. Farmers are then forced to buy new seeds every year from thebiotech companies. Despite universal condemnation from farmersmovements all over the world, the technology is still being developedtoday.

Food security is not just a poverty issue; it is a much larger issue thatinvolves the whole food system and affects every one of us in some way.

Issues such as whether households get enough food, how it isdistributed within the household and whether that food fulfils the
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nutrition needs of all members of the household show that food securityis clearly linked to health.

Global Food Security must exist to meet the challenge of providing theworlds growing population with a sustainable, secure supply of goodquality food.

Challenges to achieving food security

"The number of people without enough food to eat on a regular basis remains stubbornlyhigh, at over 800 million, and is not falling significantly. Over 60% of the world'sundernourished people live in Asia, and a quarter in Africa. The proportion of people who arehungry, however, is greater in Africa (33%) than Asia (16%). The latest FAO figures indicatethat there are 22 countries, 16 of which are in Africa, in which the undernourishment

prevalence rate is over 35%."[28]

The agriculture-hunger-poverty nexus

Eradicating hunger and poverty requires an understanding of the ways in which these twoinjustices interconnect. Hunger, and the malnourishment that accompanies it, prevents poorpeople from escaping poverty because it diminishes their ability to learn, work, and care forthemselves and their family members. Food insecurity exists when people are undernourishedas a result of the physical unavailability of food, their lack of social or economic access toadequate food, and/or inadequate food use.[29]Food-insecure people are those whose foodintake falls below their minimum calorie (energy) requirements, as well as those who exhibit

physical symptoms caused by energy and nutrient deficiencies resulting from an inadequate orunbalanced diet or from the body's inability to use food effectively because of infection ordisease. An alternative view would define the concept of food insecurity as referring only tothe consequence of inadequate consumption of nutritious food, considering the physiologicaluse of food by the body as being within the domain of nutrition and health. Malnourishmentalso leads to poor health hence individuals fail to provide for their families. If leftunaddressed, hunger sets in motion an array of outcomes that perpetuate malnutrition, reducethe ability of adults to work and to give birth to healthy children, and erode children's abilityto learn and lead productive, healthy, and happy lives. This truncation of human developmentundermines a country's potential for economic development for generations to come.

Improving agricultural productivity to benefit the rural poor

There are strong, direct relationships between agricultural productivity, hunger, poverty, andsustainability. Three-quarters of the world's poor live in rural areas and make their livingfrom agriculture. Hunger and childmalnutritionare greater in these areas than in urbanareas. Moreover, the higher the proportion of the rural population that obtains its incomesolely from subsistence farming (without the benefit of pro-poor technologies and access tomarkets), the higher the incidence of malnutrition. Therefore, improvements in agricultural
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productivity aimed at small-scale farmers will benefit the rural poor first. Food and feed cropdemand is likely to double in the next 50 years, as the global population approaches ninebillion. Growing sufficient food will require people to make changes such as increasingproductivity in areas dependent onrainfed agriculture; improvingsoilfertility management;expanding cropped areas; investing inirrigation; conducting agricultural trade between

countries; and reducing gross food demand by influencing diets and reducing post-harvestlosses.

According to theComprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, a majorstudy led by theInternational Water Management Institute, managing rainwater and soilmoisture more effectively, and using supplemental and small-scale irrigation, hold the key tohelping the greatest number of poor people. I t has called for a new era of water investmentsand policies for upgrading rainfed agriculture that would go beyond controlling field-level soiland water to bring new freshwater sources through better local management of rainfall andrunoff.[30]Increased agricultural productivity enables farmers to grow more food, whichtranslates into better diets and, under market conditions that offer a level playing field, into

higher farm incomes. With more money, farmers are more likely to diversify production andgrow higher-value crops, benefiting not only themselves but the economy as a whole." [31]

Researchers suggest forming an alliance between the emergency food program andcommunity-supported agriculture, as some countries' food stamps cannot be used at farmer'smarkets and places where food is less processed and grown locally.[32]

I f you are one of those who believe that the shortage of food is to blame for India's rampantmalnutrition problem, it is time to do a rethink. Food and trade policy analyst DevinderSharma who was in Mumbai on Friday carefully cut through the maze of data to explain theroot of India's food security issues.

He explained that we live in paradoxical times, and that it wasn't the shortage of food but thelack of a proper food distribution network that was to blame. In America he pointed out, foodwas currently the biggest killer with 62% of people diagnosed as being clinically obese, whileIndia lay at the other end of the spectrum with 62% of people remaining hungry. "There aremoreweight lossclinics in America than ration shops in India," he said.

India is the second largest country so far as population is concerned. But in the fieldof food production it is a backward country. Although the country men dependchiefly on agriculture, they are not able to meet the requirements of life thereby.

Food problem has become very in India.

There are many reasons of this problem. Rise of Population is the chief factor.Population increases in geometrical proportion while food production increases inarithmetical proportion. Illiteracy of farmers in our country is the second reason.They seldom apply modern instruments in cultivation. Most of the Indian farmersbelieve that Goddess Earth will be angry if machines, fertilizers and pesticides areused in land. Ignorance and superstitions of the farmers in our country combiningaffect our food production. Apart from it, nature is very often hostile. Farmersdepend upon rain for agriculture. In recent years, the monsoon rain is very scanty.

Farmers have little capacity to fight famine. So food production is greatly affected.
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Above all, a lethargic attitude is shown by the Government towards cultivation. Theprice of everything in market rises. But the price of food grains does not rise.

If the above mentioned points are attended to properly, then food production will goup in our country. The first and foremost step is to check the rise of population. Allsteps should be taken to convince the people of the merits of small family with only

one or two children. They should be acquainted of different methods of birth control.

The farmers must be given all kinds of facilities to increase food production. Ruralbanks and Co-operative societies must finance them. They must be given necessarytraining about the use of modern tools and fertilizers in cultivation. Above all, theattitude to exploit them must cease. Methods of cultivation should improve. Ifirrigation facility is provided, our farmers can produce two to three crops in a yearin their land. Uncultivated land should be brought under cultivation.

Recently, the Government of India has provided insurance facility to the backwardfarmers. Our farmers are also gradually changing their old methods of farming.They are getting adequate encouragement for poultry and dairy farms. There arestrict laws against hoarders and black- marketers who create artificial shortage of

food grains. Food problem can be solved if all the country men develop art awarenessfor it.

Although man does not live by bread alone, yet without bread, man cannot live at all.Earning his bread has always been man's principal occupation. He may have to earnit by the sweat of his brow, or by employing his brains or, by living upon the labourof others, or by consuming ancestral property, but he must earn it all the same.

In the past when men were nomadic tribes, roving from one place to another with nosettled habitation, they hunted animals for food. But as they settled down toagriculture and developed communal life, they began to cultivate the soil and make-the earth yield food for their livelihood.

They, however, depended more on willing co-operation of Nature, and they relied onfate, rituals of religion, to bring about this co-operation. When the soil proved fertile,and the supply of water was sufficient and the rainfall steady, their trouble was notgreat. But sometimes these were insufficient; the supply of water failed, and theresult was failure of crops, and starvation.

They then submitted to their misfortune patiently and tried to appease an angry godand waited for better days. Will the growth of knowledge, of science and technology,confidence and mastery in man's power over Nature increased? Yet there was a beliefthat man was bound by certain fixed laws.

The Malthusian doctrine, that 'population increased faster than food'became abasic concept in political economy. These were looked upon as biological necessities;

life has to be destroyed, in order to preserve life.

Then another period came:trade developed; science developed. Men learnt to bringfood from other countries to make up for deficiencies. They also learnt to improveagriculture by scientific processes. The incidence of famine was controlled.

Flood was both a curse and a blessing,curse while it lasted, but a blessing thereafter as it left the soil richer than before with silt. But now there were two other

forces which could yet create troubles. First, there was the capitalist; he would


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appropriate food crops, hoard it in days of plenty, to sell it at a high price in times ofdistress. The burden of high prices oppressed the poor. It increased poverty andwant.

Secondly, there was war. War holds up import of food grains; diverts labourers fromagriculture to factories; makes larger demands on the agricultural population for

the benefit of the armies. When the needs of the profiteer and the military combined,disaster was bound to ensue. Bengal had bitter experience of this during the last war,leading to an appalling famine that took the toll of 35 lakhs of lives in 1943.

If the shortage of food had been the log of India, nothing would have happened. But itoccurred on a wide scale. Russia managed to live and live fairly well. They hadwanted of food but no famine.

In our country "Grow more food" became an empty slogan; while the war lasted,land must be examined, classified and plotted out; fertilisers must be distributed;labour must be pooled and organized and supplemented by machinery; where

possible a permanent source of water-supply must guard against the incidence ofdrought. Science, not chance, must regulate agriculture. An all out drive is needed.

This is the implication that underlies a "Grow more food" policy.

The Multi-purpose River Valley Schemes are steps in the right direction. These haveminimised the incidence of floods and ensured storage of water in artificial Jakes.The nationalisation of land and instruments of production have a twofold effect. Inthe first place, it dispenses with the fragmentation of land, which is economicallyunsound. The giant fertiliser factories are now working at full blast

Food security in India

The focus on accelerated foodgrains production on a sustainable basis and free trade in

grains would help create massive employment and reduce the incidence of poverty in rural

areas.

INDIA AT present finds itself in the midst of a paradoxical situation: endemic mass-hunger

coexisting with the mounting foodgrain stocks. The foodgrain stocks available with the Food

Corporation of India (FCI) stand at an all time high of 62 million tonnes against an annual

requirement of around 20 million tonnes for ensuring food security. Still, an estimated 200

million people are underfed and 50 million on the brink of starvation, resulting in starvation

deaths. The paradox lies in the inherent flaws in the existing policy and implementation

bottlenecks.

Challenges ahead

India's food security policy has a laudable objective to ensure availability of foodgrains to the

common people at an affordable price and it has enabled the poor to have access to food

where none existed. The policy has focused essentially on growth in agriculture production

(once India used to import foodgrains) and on support price for procurement and

maintenance of rice and wheat stocks. The responsibility for procuring and stocking of

foodgrains lies with the FCI and for distribution with the public distribution system (PDS).


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Minimum support price: The FCI procures foodgrains from the farmers at the government

announced minimum support price (MSP). The MSP should ideally be at a level where the

procurement by FCI and the offtake from it are balanced. However, under continuous

pressure from the powerful farmers lobby, the government has been raising the MSP and it

has now become higher than what the market offers to the farmers. Also, with quality norms

in the procured grains not strictly observed, farmers pressurise the FCI to procure grainsbeyond its procurement target and carrying capacity. The MSP has now become more of a

procurement price rather than being a support...

TheGlobal Hunger Indexreleased byInternational Food Policy Research Institute(IFPRI) places India67th in rankings with a score of 24.1, far belowChinaand belowSri Lanka,PakistanandNepal.

The Global Hunger Index is calculated as an average of (1) proportion of the population thatis undernourished (in %), (2) prevalence of underweight in children under five (in %) and (3) proportion

of children dying before the age of five (in %). For India, the respective numbers are 22, 43.5 and 6.9.

According toFAO,about 25% of worlds undernourished live in India.The World Bank has joined the chorus warning the world of an impending food

crisis with damaging food price inflation. In its late-August edition of its Food

Price Watch the Bank reported that global prices for food as reflected by its Food

Price Index rose 10 per cent in July 2012 alone. The prices of staples such as corn

and soya bean were at an all-time high that month, with the increase in corn

prices amounting to 25 per cent and that in soya bean to 17 per cent over a single

month. Earlier, the FAO had reported that its Food Price Index (FPI) rose by 6 per

cent in July 2012, driven by grain and sugar prices. Cereal prices had risen by 17

per cent in June relative to the previous month, maize prices by close to 23 per

cent and wheat prices by around 19 per cent

FOOD SECURITY: CHALLENGES AND ISSUES IN INDIA

ABSTRACT:Food security in India has to be understood as a distress phenomenon, as with marginal increasein their incomes over time they are forced to cut down on their food consumption to meet otherpressing demands of health and education that were not considered important in the past. High

economic growth rates have failed to improve food security in India leaving the country facing acrisis in its rural economy. If food security is a complex objective, pursued with others (shelter,safety, health, self-esteem), in a world where individual households face diverse, complex anddifferent livelihood opportunities, what role can policy possibly play? Can governments ever knowenough to act? This paper is focused on the several foods security issues prevalent in the Indianscenario. Data are taken from relevant sources to analyse the gravity of the food security issues inIndia. I t also covered the several development programmes taken up by the Indian government tocounter various food security issues including several schemes and yojanas.
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INTRODUCTION: Food security refers to the availability of food and one's access to it. Ahousehold is considered food-secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation.According to the World Resources Institute, global per capita food production has been increasingsubstantially for the past several decades. In 2006, MSNBC reported that globally, the number ofpeople who are overweight has surpassed the number who is undernourished - the world had morethan one billion people who were overweight, and an estimated 800 million who wereundernourished. According to a 2004 article from the BBC, China, the world's most populouscountry, is suffering from an obesity epidemic. In India, the second-most populous country in theworld, 30 million people have been added to the ranks of the hungry since the mid-1990s and 46%of children are underweight.In developing countries, often 70% or more of the population lives in rural areas. In that context,agricultural development among smallholder farmers and landless people provides a livelihood forpeople allowing them the opportunity to stay in their communities. In many areas of the world,land ownership is not available, thus, people who want or need to farm to make a living have littleincentive to improve the land.Two commonly used definitions of food security come from the UN's Food and AgricultureOrganization (FAO) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA):

Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access tosufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an activeand healthy life.

Food security for a household means access by all members at all times to enough food for anactive, healthy life. Food security includes at a minimum (1) the ready availability of nutritionallyadequate and safe foods, and (2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in sociallyacceptable ways (that is, without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, orother coping strategies). (USDA)

Those who are around the poverty line, this has to be understood as a distress phenomenon, aswith marginal increase in their incomes over time they are forced to cut down on their foodconsumption to meet other pressing demands of health and education that were not consideredimportant in the past, India's malnutrition figures are not coming down despite a number ofgovernment programmes, says a new report released by World Food Programme. The researchpoints out the need for a revamped public distribution system and greater public investment toaddress the wants of rural population.OBJ ECTIVES:The main objective of this study is to analyze the various issues prevalent in Indiarelating to Food Security. The other objectives are:

India.

FOOD SECURITY ISSUES IN INDIA: Food security has been a major developmental objective

in India since the beginning of planning. India achieved self-sufficiency in food grains in the1970s and has sustained it since then. But the achievement of food grain security at the nationallevel did not percolate down to households and the level of chronicfood insecurity is still high. Over 225 million Indians remain chronically under nourished. In2000-01, about half of the rural children below five years of age suffered from malnutrition and40% of adults suffered from chronic energy deficiency. Such a high level of wasting away ofhuman resources should be a cause for concern.


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In recent years, there has been a shift in policy focus towards household level food security andper capita food energy intake is taken as a measure of food security. The government has beenimplementing a wide range of nutrition intervention programmes for achieving food security atthe household and individual levels. The Public Distribution System (PDS) supplies food items,such as food grains and sugar, at administered prices through fair price shops. There have been arange of food-for-work and other wage employment programmes. Another approach adopted bythe government is to target women and children directly; this includes mid-day meal programmefor school going children and supplementary nutrition programme for children and women.High economic growth rates have failed to improve food security in India leaving the countryfacing a crisis in its rural economy, warns the latest report released by the World FoodProgramme and the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF). According to the GOIEconomic Survey, foodgrain production in India has declined from 208 kg per annum per capitain 1996-97 to 186 kg only in 2009-10, a decline of 11 per cent. Despite reduced production, Indiahas been exporting on an average 7 million tonnes of cereals per annum, causing availability todecline further by 15 per cent from 510 gms per day per capita in 1991 to 436 gms in 2008.Launched in the Indian capital on February 20, 2009, State of Food Insecurity in Rural Indiatriesto give a broad indicative picture of the level of food insecurity in different states of the country

and the operation of the nutrition safety net programmes. The report says that the number ofundernourished people is rising, reversing gains made in the 1990s. Slowing growth in foodproduction, rising unemployment and declining purchasing power of the poor in India arecombining to weaken the rural economy.FOOD SECURITY CHALLENGES IN INDIA: The most important challenge is to increase theenergy intake of the bottom 30% of the population and at the same time facilitate dietdiversification to meet micronutrient deficiency. The food gap can be met from the existingfoodgrain stocks in the medium term and by increasing their purchasing power in the long runthrough increasing job opportunities. The micronutrient deficiency can be rectified throughsupplementary nutrition and supply of fortified food. There is also a need to improve the efficiencyof the various food schemes initiated by the government and make it more available and free ofcorruption and urban bias.

However for those who are around the poverty line, this has to be understood as a distressphenomenon, as with marginal increase in their incomes over time they are forced to cut down ontheir food consumption to meet other pressing demands of health and education that were notconsidered important in the past. Food is still needed, but not demanded for lack of money.Endemic hunger continues to afflict a large proportion of Indian population. Internationally,India is shown to be suffering from alarming hunger, ranking 66 out of the 88 developingcountries studied by IFPRI in 2008. India as part of the world community has pledged to halvehunger by 2015, as stated in the Millennium Development Goal 1, but the present trends show thatthis target is unlikely to be met.India is a poignant example of how food sufficiency at the aggregate level has not translated intofood security at the household level. The revised thrust of the World Food Programme will be to

bring the hungry, malnourished, and vulnerable within the ambit of human development.Today, on the threshold of 60 momentous years of Independence, the nation is justifiably proud ofits myriad achievements. Among these is the remarkable success in eliminating widespreadfamines and the impressive increases in food production. Nonetheless, there is a long road to betravelled before the vision of a truly food secure India is achieved. As the world's leadinghumanitarian agency and the food aid arm of the United Nations, the World Food Programme(WFP) has been privileged to work with the Government of India in its efforts to eliminate hungerand ensure food security to the poor. Although its assistance is small compared to the scale of theGovernment's own programmes, yet with its international outreach, and the experience gained


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globally, the WFP has a special niche in complementing and sharpening government efforts toeliminate hunger.Recent years have seen the economy booming and growth rates have been among the highest inthe world. The flip side, however, is that one in every five Indians suffers from overt or coverthunger. "Hunger," as stated by Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze, is "intolerable in the modernworld" in a way it could not have been in the past, because it is "so unnecessary andunwarranted." India is a poignant example of how food sufficiency at the aggregate level has nottranslated into food security at the household level. A staggeringly large number ofundernourishedabout 214 million peopleis chronically food insecure. Many more,varyingly about 40 million, are exposed to natural disasters. About 50 per cent of children (mostlytribal and rural) are undernourished and stunted, 23 per cent have a low birth weight and 68 outof 1000 die before the age of one year. There is a high prevalence of anaemia and othermicronutrient deficiencies.The challenge before the WFP is to help the country attain the critical Millennium DevelopmentGoal on eradicating hunger. The Draft Approach Paper to the Planning Commission's EleventhFive-Year Plan articulates a "vision of growth that will be much more broad-based and inclusive."These priorities of the Government match the WFP's own goals and will guide future initiatives.

As part of the U.N. system, the WFP also works within the U.N. Development AssistanceFramework to achieve synergy and, at the same time, avoid costly duplication of efforts.Committed to the vision of a hunger-free India, the WFP set itself twin goals. The first is to be acatalyst for change in the country's effort to reduce vulnerability and eliminate food insecurity.The second is to leverage policy and resources to demonstrate models that provide immediate andlonger-term food security in the most food insecure areas.The WFP seeks to achieve its strategic objectives through three major initiatives. The first is thesupport it extends to the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS). India is home to thelargest number of children in the world. But what distinguishes India is not the numbers but whathas been called its "silent emergency": astonishingly high child malnutrition rates. As part of itsassistance to the ICDS, the WFP has successfully piloted Indiamixa nutritious fortified foodwidely recognised as an innovative nutrition intervention

Secondly, the WFP complements the Government of India's mid-day meal scheme in somedistricts with a mid-morning snack that is fortified with vitamins and minerals and enhanceslearning by children, many of whom go to school on an empty stomach. This has proved to be aneffective means to increase enrolment and retention, especially that of young girls.With increasing degradation of resources, the livelihoods of poor tribal communities are underthreat. In collaboration with the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the WFPassists food-for-work activities in tribal development programmes undertaken by Governments inselect States. This has led to empowerment of tribal communities and sustainable use of naturalresources.In addition to the core programmes, the WFP has proposed significant capacity-buildinginitiatives that relate to food fortification, grain banks, and strengthening of the Government's

food-based programmes. The Ending Child Hunger and Undernutrition Initiative is an alliancebetween UNICEF and the WFP at the global level as well as in India that holds great promise.The WFP takes pride in the analytical rigour it has imparted to the conceptualisation of foodsecurity. The Food Insecurity Atlases, prepared in collaboration with the M.S. SwaminathanResearch Foundation, were a landmark. Extending the earlier work to the regional and districtlevels, the WFP proposes to prepare, in partnership with the Government, food insecurity atlasesfor several States.


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The future beckons! As India surges ahead to take its rightful place in the comity of nations, we inthe WFP look forward to the coming years with renewed faith and optimism and a firm belief thathunger and undernourishment can be banished.The revised thrust of the WFP endeavours will be to bring the hungry, malnourished, andvulnerable within the ambit of human development, to change the course of their destiny andunleash their potential through opening a new world of opportunities.THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS: The global financial crisis drew international attention away fromthe food crisis, but this continues to fester and even grow. When the global food crisis first hitinternational headlines in 2008, international bureaucrats referred to the current problems in theworld food situation as a silent tsunami, but the truth is that it was not a sudden andunexpected crisis: the signs have been around for some time now and it could easily have beenseen to be coming. Even so, its impact has been powerful and already quite devastating, as foodshortages and high prices of food have adversely affected billions of people, especially the poor inthe developing world.It is also very much a man-made crisis, resulting not so much from ineluctable forces of globalsupply and demand as from the market-oriented and liberalising policies adopted by choice orcompulsion in almost all countries. These policies have either neglected agriculture or allowed

shifts in global prices to determine both cropping patterns and the viability of farming, and alsogenerated greater possibilities of speculative activity in food items. Cultivators in developingcountries have been ravaged by the fearsome combination of exposure to import competition fromhighly subsidised agriculture in developed countries, removal of domestic protection of inputs andreduced access to institutional credit - to thepoint that even the global increase in agriculturalprices after 2002 did not compensate sufficiently to alleviate the pervasive agrarian crisis in muchof the developing world.It is also clear that the global food crisis is not something that can be treated as discrete andseparate from the global financial crisis. On the contrary it has been intimately connected with it,particularly through the impact of financial speculation on world trade prices of food.This is not to deny the undoubted role of other real economy factors in affecting the global foodsituation. While demand-supply imbalances have been touted as reasons, this is largely unjustifiedgiven that there has been hardly any change in the world demand for food in the past three years.In particular, the claim that food grain prices have soared because of more demand from Chinaand India as their GDP increases, is completely invalid, since both aggregate and per capitaconsumption of grain have actually fallen in both countries. Supply factors have beenand arelikely to continue to bemore significant. These include the short-run effects of diversion of bothacreage and food crop output for biofuel production, as well as more medium term factors such asrising costs of inputs, falling productivity because of soil depletion, inadequate public investmentin agricultural research and extension, and the impact of climate changes that have affectedharvests in different ways.Two policy factors affecting global food supply require special note. The first is the biofuel factor:the impact of both oil prices and government policies in the US, Europe, Brazil and elsewhere that

have promoted biofuels as an alternative to petroleum. This has led to significant shifts in acreageto the cultivation of crops that can produce biofuels, and diversion of such output to fuelproduction. For example, in 2007 the US diverted more than 30 per cent of its maize production,Brazil used half of its sugar cane production and the European Union used the greater part of itsvegetable oil seeds production as well as imported vegetable oils, to make biofuel. In addition todiverting corn output into non-food use, this has also reduced acreage for other crops and hasnaturally reduced the available land for producing food.


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The irony is that biofuels do not even fulfil the promises of ensuring energy security or retardingthe pace of global warming. Ethanol production is extremely energy-intensive, so it does not reallylead to any energy saving. Even in the most efficient producer of ethanol Brazil - where sugarcane rather than corn is used to produce ethanol, it has been argued that the push for suchproduction has led to large-scale deforestation of the Amazon, thereby further intensifying theproblems of global warming. Indeed, recent scientific research suggests that the diversion of landto growing bio-fuel crops can produce an enormous CO2debt from the use of machinery andfertilisers, the release of carbon from the soil and the loss of CO2sequestration by trees and otherplants that have been cleared for cultivation (Beddington 2008). Yet, as long as governmentsubsidies remain in the US and elsewhere, and world oil prices remain high, bio-fuel production islikely to continue to be encouraged despite the evident problems. And it will continue to havenegative effects on global food production and availability.The second factor is the policy neglect of agriculture over the past two decades, the impact ofwhich is finally being felt. The prolonged agrarian crisis in many parts of the developing worldhas been largely a policy-determined crisis. Inappropriate policies have several aspects, but theyall result from the basic neo-liberal open market-oriented framework that has governed economicpolicy making in most countries over the past two decades. One majorelement has been the lack of

public investment in agriculture and in agricultural research. This has been associated with low topoor yield increases, especially in tropical agriculture, and falling productivity of land. Greatertrade openness and market orientation of farmers have led to shifts in acreage from traditionalfood crops that were typically better suited to the ecological conditions and the knowledge andresources of farmers, to cash crops that have increasingly relied on purchased inputs.But at the same time, both public provision of different inputs for cultivation and governmentregulation of private input provision have been progressively reduced, leaving farmers to themercy of large seed and fertiliser companies, input dealers. As a result, prices for seeds, fertilisersand pesticides have increased quite sharply. There have also been attempts in most developingcountries to reduce subsidies to farmers in the form of lower power and water prices, thus addingto cultivation costs. Costs of cultivation have been further increased in most developing countriesby the growing difficulties that farmers have in accessing institutional credit, because financial

liberalisation has moved away from policies of directed credit and provided other more profitable(if less productive) opportunities for financial investment. So many farmers are forced to opt formuch more expensive informal credit networks that have added to their costs.In addition, there is the impact of recent climate change, which has caused poor harvests indifferent ways ranging from droughts in Canada and Australia to excessive rain in parts of theUS. Scientists are projecting that warmer and earlier growing seasons will increase cropsusceptibility to pests and viruses, which are expected to proliferate as a direct result of risingtemperatures. Some more arid regions are already more drought-prone and in danger ofdesertification. The rapid melting of glaciers in Asia is of huge consequence to China and India,where important rivers such the Yangtze, Yellow and Ganges are fed by such glaciers. This willdeprive the hinterland of much-needed irrigation water for wheat and rice crops during dry

seasons. This is of global significance since China and India together produce more than half theworlds wheat and rice. Once again, official policy has been tardy in considering such problems,much less in addressing them.The lack of attention to relevant agricultural research and extension by public bodies has deniedfarmers access to necessary knowledge. I t has also been associated with other problems such asthe excessive use of ground water in cultivation; inadequate attention to preserving orregenerating land and soil quality; the over-use of chemical inputs that have long run implicationsfor both safety and productivity. Similarly, the ecological implications of both pollution andclimate change, including desertification and loss of cultivable land, are issues that have been


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highlighted by analysts but largely ignored by policy makers in most countries. Reversing theseprocesses is possible, and of course essential. But it will take time, and also will require not onlysubstantial public investment but also major changes in the orientation and understanding ofpolicy makers.All this mean that the number of hungry people actually increased for the world as a whole, andparticularly for certain developing regions. Far from halving, or even decreasing, the number ofmalnourished people globally increased by more than 50 million between the early 1990s and mid-2000s.This was entirely because of increasing hunger in the developing world, as the numbers declinedin developed countries. East and Southeast Asia also showed good performance interms of fallingnumbers of malnourished people, but such numbers increased quite sharply in South Asia (by 50million) and Sub-Saharan Africa (by 44 million). The surprise is that the growing prevalence ofhunger and food insecurity was associated with relatively high GDP growth in several regions,such as India and countries in Latin America. The contrast with East and Southeast Asia is astark one, and points to the role of public policy in ensuring that aggregate income growthtranslates into better provision of basic needs such as food for the general population.FOOD SCHEMES IN INDIA : India has the largest food schemes in the World

Entitlement Feeding ProgrammesICDS (All Children under six, Pregnant and lactating mother)

MDMS (All Primary School children) Food Subsidy Programmes

Targeted Public Distribution System (35 kgs/ month of subsidised food grains

Annapurna (10 kgs of free food grain for destitute poor)

Employment Programmes

National Rural Employment Scheme (100 days of employment at minimum wages)

Social Safety Net Programmes

National Old Age Pension Scheme (Monthly pension to BPL)

National Family Benefit Scheme (Compensation in case of death of bread winner to BPL

families)

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS: Food insecurity and hunger is caused by a large numberof factors and hence solutions too have to be multi-sectoral in nature. First, revamp small holderagriculture. Because of stagnating growth in agriculture after the mid-1990s there has beenemployment decline, income decline and hence a fall in aggregate demand by the rural poor. Themost important intervention that is needed is greater investment inirrigation, power, and roads in the poorer regions. I t is essential to realize the potential forproduction surpluses in Central and Eastern India where the concentration of poverty isincreasing. Second, launch massive watershed development programmes in central India, wheremost tribes live. In a successful watershed programme the poor benefit in three ways. First, as thenet sown area and crop intensity increases more opportunities for wage employment are created,which may also increase the wage rate besides the number of days of employment. Second,increased water availability and reduced soil erosion increases production on small and marginalfarmers lands. And last, the higher productivity of Common Property Resources improves access

of the poor to more fodder, fuelwood, water and NTFPs. NREGA assets should be monitored forat least five years to establish their links with drought proofing and enhanced availability of water.Third, start a drive to plant fruit trees on degraded forests and homestead lands that belong to orhave been allotted to the poor. This will not only make the poor peoples diet more nutritious, but

will also diversify their livelihoods and reduce seasonal vulnerability. Fourth, create more job


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opportunities by undertaking massive public works in districts with low agricultural productivity.The upper limit of work guarantee of 100 days per worker should be enhanced to 150 daysthrough an amendment in the Rules in the poorest 200 districts. F ifth, improve the skills of thepoor for market oriented jobs, so that they are absorbed in the sunrise industries such ashospitality, security, health, and construction.Sixth, launch a drive in collaboration with civil society to cover the poorest, as a large number ofhomeless and poor living in unauthorised colonies in urban areas have been denied ration cards,and are thus not able to avail of PDS, on the ground that they do not have an address! In RangpurPahadi, a slum area just two kms away from Vasant Kunj (Delhi), people living since 1990 havenot been given even voter ID or any ration card. Thus their very existence is denied by the DelhiGovernment!Seventh, give shops to panchayats, womens self-help groups, or to those who already have a shopso that it remains open on all days. Making it obligatory for dealers to sell non-cereal items willensure better communication between the dealer and the card holders. Eighth, prepare acomprehensive list every two years of all destitutes needing free or subsidized cooked food. Openup mid-day meals kitchen to these old, destitutes and hungry in the village. This is already beingdone in Tamil Nadu, and its replication in other states should be funded by the GOI. Establish

community kitchens across cities and urban settlements to provide inexpensive, subsidisednutritious cooked meals near urban homeless and migrant labour settlements.Last, India requires a significant increase of targeted investments in nutrition programmes,clinics, disease control, irrigation, rural electrification, rural roads, and other basic investments,especially in rural I ndia, where the current budgetary allocations are inadequate. Higher publicinvestments in these areas need to be accompanied by systemic reforms that will overhaul thepresent system of service delivery, including issues of control andoverseas. Outlays should not beconsidered as an end in itself. Delivery of food based schemes requires increasing financial

resources, but more importantly the quality of public expenditures in these areas. This in turn

requires improving the governance, productivity and accountability of government machinery.

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