The concept of Food and nutrition security implies that every individual has the physical, economic, social and environmental access to a balanced diet that includes the necessary macro & micro nutrients, safe drinking water, sanitation, environmental hygiene, primary health care and education so as to lead a healthy and productive life.
A sustainable national nutrition security system should address the three issues of Availability, Access and Absorption. The decline in per capita food grain availability and its unequal distribution have serious implications for food security in both rural and urban areas.
Rural Food Insecurity: Several Studies have shown that the poverty is concentrated and food deprivation is acute in predominantly agriculture and rural areas with limited resources. In India of the 310.7 million rural workers, 103.12 million are agricultural labourers. Of these, about 48.37 million are females. Female Agricultural labourers are especially vulnerable to food insecurity on account of lower wages as well as the effects of migration.
Urban Food Insecurity: It is often presumed that, since urban areas are covered by the PDS, food security is not a major issue in urban areas. This is not true. During the 1990, the PDS has been weakened both by repeated increases in the issue prices of food grains and by the switch to a system of targeted PDS. People should be able to access grains from PDS whenever they want, wherever they want and any quantity they want, subject to a few ground rules to prevent purchase for hoarding and subsequent sale at high prices,
Action Plan:
A. Reform of the Delivery System: Restructure the delivery systems relating to all nutrition support program on a life cycle basis, starting with pregnant women and 0-2 infants and ending with old and infirm persons.
A. Community Food Security Systems: Promote the establishment of Community grain and water banks, involving Panchayats and local bodies. This program should be based on the principle “Store grain and water everywhere”.
B. Eradicate hidden hunger: Nutrition literacy should be promoted at the school level. High priority should go to the elimination of iron deficiency anemia among pregnant women through fortification of salt and kitchen gardens.
C. Designing and introducing a Food Guarantee Act: A National Food Guarantee Act should lead to a decentralized network of grain storage structures and thereby help to prevent panic purchase of food grains during periods of drought of flood.
D. Every Village a knowledge centre: 21st century Agriculture will be knowledge intensive. Knowledge connectivity should there be a key component of Bharat Nirman, designed to provide a new deal for Rural India.
E. Convergence and Synergy among Public, Private and Academic Sector initiatives: There is a need for convergence and synergy among numerous initiatives of Central and State Governments in the area of ICT for good governess and development.
Strategies to address micronutrient malnutrition: Three of the main strategies for addressing micronutrient malnutrition are dietary diversification, fortification (including bio fortification) and supplementation.
Supplementation: It is a technical approach in which nutrients are delivered directly by means of Syrup or Pills. Supplementation is most appropriate for targeted population with a high risk deficiency or under special circumstances such as during pregnancy or in an acute food shortage.
Fortification: This strategies utilize widely accessible, commonly consumed foods to deliver one or more micronutrients. The most widespread effort to date has been fortification of Salt with Iodine. However, many other foods may be used as vehicles for a variety of micronutrients.
Governments often assisted by International Agencies for many decades taken steps to eliminate or reduce micronutrient deficiencies. Building on the impressive results of the reduction iodine deficiency disorders (IDD) through the fortification of table salt with Iodine.
Bio-fortification: Bio-fortification, or plant breeding for the specific purpose of enhancing the nutritional properties of crop varieties, reflects the new application of an ancient technique. Recently breeding trials have been undertaken for the specific purpose of enhancing the nutritional value of crops with the specific objective of improving human nutrition. There have been some reported successes, including high protein maize, high carotene sweet potato and cassava and Iron enhanced rice (IFPRI 2002)
Dietary Diversification: Dietary diversity can be augmented by variety of foods by expanding the production, processing, marketing and consumption of a wide variety of foods. This information needs to be disseminated to the public through traditional information channel.
Factors for Success: Increased food collaboration and political commitment: Complimentary public health interventions that can help reduce micronutrient malnutrition including de-warming, Malaria prophylaxis, improved water and sanitation facilities and childhood immunization. Holistic strategies using mixture of direct and indirect interventions and public health measures as well as education and awareness campaign have proved to be the best successful in reducing micronutrient malnutrition (Underwood, 1999)
First, there is a need for the FFS programs to link crop choice and diversification to food consumption, nutritional needs and dietary practices within local communities.
Incorporating nutrition in Former Field Schools (FFS): In many developing countries food insecurity in combination with the high incidences of infection continuous to have detrimental effect on the nutrition and health status of poor households. However there are a large number of Agricultural Extension Activities including large scale Former Feed School Programs in more than 50 countries. The FFS are participatory and hand on Adult education courses that focus on topics ranging from Pest Management and Dairy Production to food security.
Demand Projections and Constraints: In the next 10 years we have to add 55 million tones of food grains, 5 million tones of edible oil, 65 million tones of vegetables and fruits, 70 million tones of milk, 1 million tones of fish, 3 million tones of meat & chicken and 100 billion eggs. As 80% of the estimated addition has to come from vertical growth, productivity has to be 64% 120% and 136-157% respectively.
The major problems are rapid decreasing production – productivity growth of food grains :shrinking water resources; declining soil health and soil productivity; over two-thirds of the area remaining rain-fed with very low and inconsistent productivity; declining farm net-return; shortage of farm labor due to mass migration of rural folk to urban areas; increasingly limiting but badly required genetic variability; continued reservation against genetically modified crops; and unfolding adverse effects of climate change.
Technological and Development Interventions for Advances in Sustained Production: Integrated Crop Management (ICM) Modified form of System of Rice Intensification (SRI) designed and promoted by the Food and Agricultural Organization is an effective strategy to realize the maximum of the potential yield of a crop variety. Designed with two broad objectives of (i) maximizing productivity by narrowing the yield gap and (ii) maximizing sustainability by optimally using natural and monitoring inputs, the ICM is site and farmer-specific.
Sustaining the natural endowments: Conservation and optimal utilization of natural resources – soil, water and plant genetic resources hold the key to sustainable future growth of agriculture. Yet another natural resource that has not been receiving due attention for long is conservation of genetic resources, which are crucial for progressive improvement of crop plants and farm animals. Indian subcontinent is one of the gene rich regions of the world. Sadly, not even 15% of the available diversity could be utilized for crop improvement and hardly any variability of value, known to occur in the native breeds, has been taken advantage of for desired improvement of our livestock.
Climate change is a real and it is bound to adversely impact all our life-supporting systems and mainly Agriculture, given the size of crop losses being experienced due to unusually erratic monsoon behavior and / or rising temperature.
Favorable Policy Environment for maximizing the benefits from Technological and Developmental Interventions: The following are some of the issues and areas, where clear and pro-growth policy directions are important to sustain farming and the farmer.
(1)Enhanced Investment on Agriculture; (2) Credit Facilities and Crop Insurance are very important for the availing of government extended credit, subsidy and crop insurance facilities. Significantly in such group forming, land ownership will remain with the farmer concerned and land consolidation though desirable, would be optional.
Underutilized human capital in rural areas: Over one-half of our population is in the age group of 20 – 35. Youth in rural India accounts for 296 million as against 131 million in urban India. Majority of this human resource remains under utilized. Our failures to create rural bio-resources based employment opportunities and develop appropriate skill in them continued to be the reason for mass exodus of young people from rural areas to urban areas.
Spiraling Food Prices: The most challenging problem now, the world-over is unaffordable and escalating food prices. Food inflation at an all time high of 18-20% during the last few years, leaving many more lakhs to go to bed hungry is of great concern. Of the many factors that contribute such price raise, the more important are; demand-supply gap in food commodities, high economic growth, triggered raise in the income level of poor, unfolding globalization factors and lack of checks on speculative trade in food commodities
Thanks & regards,
Prof.(Mrs) Vijaya Khader, PhD
Former Dean, Acharya N G R A University, Hyderabad & Principal Investigator, Food Technology, e-PG Pathshala
9848054853||040-27052759
www.vijayakhader.info
Vijaya Khader