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Combating Hunger and Achieving Food Security
The issues that need to be addressed in combating hunger and achieving food security are highlighted in this book by a great Indian geneticist. It also discusses the major causes of chronic and hidden hunger and emphasises the need to redesign the farming system based on nutritional considerations. The role of an effective monsoon management programme to maximise its benefits is examined. There are chapters that analyse the importance of biodiversity conservation and enhancement and farmer skill development. Important issues to increase agricultural production including investment by financial institutions in agriculture and rural development, women's role in agriculture and youth employment in rural livelihoods are discussed in great detail in the text. The book concludes that there must be synergy between scientific knowledge, political will and farmers' active participation to achieve the goal of overcoming chronic and hidden hunger in the populations of developing countries.
183 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2016
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November 24, 2022
Pioneering the agricultural growth in the 60s and 70s with the aid of High Yielding Varieties (HYV) that made the country self-sustaining in the production of food grains, MS Swaminathan is known as the Father of India’s Green Revolution. The PL480 scheme to import food grains from the United States came with certain obligations in the cold war era. Hence, this ushered in the introduction of varieties with higher productivity and crop yield leading to the phenomenal growth of agricultural grains production, now filling the storage facilities whose volume exceeds the buffer stock norms. Yet, the prevalence of nutritional deficiencies, undernourishment, and hunger in India poses an imminent threat to food security. In this book, Dr. MS Swaminathan provides us with the roadmap to achieve nutritional security. His suggestions are:
1. Introduction of Nutri-cereals like millets into the PDS scheme by enhancing the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for coarse cereals.
2. Diversifying the food platter in national intervention programs by incorporating bio-fortified cereals, eggs, millets, and pulses to overcome hidden hunger.
3. Universal Public Distribution System (PDS) to keep the prices at check on par with global pricing.
4. Discouraging cash disbursals instead of grains. This might lead to reduced procurement from the Food Corporation of India (FCI) further impacting the PDS.
5. Adopting GMOs into the food systems.
6. Encouraging women’s entitlements to land, credit, and water resources.
7. Setting up pulse panchayats to achieve self-sufficiency in pulse production. E.g.: Pudukottai district in Tamil Nadu.
8. Reviving the farms to move away from water-intensive crops (rice-wheat cropping system) towards arid crops like millets.
9. Adopting climate action strategies by cultivating salinity tolerance varieties of rice in coastal areas given the rising sea levels.
10. Encouraging cross-breed varieties in cattle farming to enhance dairy productivity.
Overall, this was an excellent book to understand what constitutes the Indian agrarian crisis. Prescribing a bottom-up approach, Dr. Swaminathan makes a pertinent point in his analysis that, when 60% of the Indian population is directly or indirectly involved in food production/agricultural systems, it is important to target the low-income, underfed and malnourished population within this group residing in rural India to achieve food security and sustainability, instead of focusing too much on the rest of urban population with higher purchasing power.
1. Introduction of Nutri-cereals like millets into the PDS scheme by enhancing the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for coarse cereals.
2. Diversifying the food platter in national intervention programs by incorporating bio-fortified cereals, eggs, millets, and pulses to overcome hidden hunger.
3. Universal Public Distribution System (PDS) to keep the prices at check on par with global pricing.
4. Discouraging cash disbursals instead of grains. This might lead to reduced procurement from the Food Corporation of India (FCI) further impacting the PDS.
5. Adopting GMOs into the food systems.
6. Encouraging women’s entitlements to land, credit, and water resources.
7. Setting up pulse panchayats to achieve self-sufficiency in pulse production. E.g.: Pudukottai district in Tamil Nadu.
8. Reviving the farms to move away from water-intensive crops (rice-wheat cropping system) towards arid crops like millets.
9. Adopting climate action strategies by cultivating salinity tolerance varieties of rice in coastal areas given the rising sea levels.
10. Encouraging cross-breed varieties in cattle farming to enhance dairy productivity.
Overall, this was an excellent book to understand what constitutes the Indian agrarian crisis. Prescribing a bottom-up approach, Dr. Swaminathan makes a pertinent point in his analysis that, when 60% of the Indian population is directly or indirectly involved in food production/agricultural systems, it is important to target the low-income, underfed and malnourished population within this group residing in rural India to achieve food security and sustainability, instead of focusing too much on the rest of urban population with higher purchasing power.
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