The Hindu : Food security

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 23, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Food security

By C.H.Hanumantha Rao

The policy framework, while safeguarding the foodgrain security already achieved, has to encourage diversification of agriculture for meeting the growing demand for the non-cereal items of food.

THERE HAS been a significant decline in the incidence of poverty in the country since the mid-1960s. Even then, according to the latest official estimates, at least 26 per cent of the population or 260 million people were still below the poverty line in the year 1999-2000. This implies that despite the availability of foodgrains for meeting the requirements of the entire population, we are still far from generating the necessary purchasing power or effective demand from the poor to satisfy their needs. Since effective food security means achievement of both physical and economic access to food, a large section of our population can still be considered to be suffering from food insecurity despite the bulging stocks of foodgrains with the Food Corporation of India.

Moreover, we cannot equate `food security' with `foodgrain security' because the food basket in the country has become considerably diversified with a much greater share being occupied now by non-foodgrain items such as edible oils, sugar, milk, meat, eggs, vegetables and fruits. These non-foodgrain items now account for over 60 per cent of the consumer expenditure on food. Therefore, even if we are within easy reach of enabling every Indian to buy enough foodgrains, we need to move quite far for ensuring physical as well as economic access to many of these non-foodgrain items of food, especially for the poor.

While recommending the Minimum Support Prices for crops, the Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) is guided by its mandate to ensure that such prices are fair to the producers as well as the consumers. The CACP, therefore, takes into account a number of factors, apart from cost of production, while recommending support prices. However, the prices actually fixed by the Government have been much higher than those recommended by the CACP. Consequently, the domestic consumption of foodgrains has been severely restricted in the last couple of years. However, the per capita consumption of foodgrains is unlikely to increase much even when their relative prices get moderated. This is because there has been a long-term trend of a decline in the per capita consumption of foodgrains in the country.

This decline has been revealed by the data from the National Sample Surveys. The decline in per capita consumption was gradual at the rate of about 0.5 per cent per annum during the 1970s and 1980s.There was a rise in per capita income in the country in this period. Also, there was a decline in the relative prices of foodgrains during a greater part of the 1980s. These two factors taken together should have led to increased consumption. Despite this, if there has been a decline in the per capita consumption of foodgrains, it must be due to certain long-term factors operating in the economy.

In the last few decades, there has been a decline in the amount of manual labour applied in rural areas because of the increasing mechanisation of agricultural operations and transportation. This would have resulted in a reduction in the biological requirement of grain for energy. It is interesting that the decline in per capita consumption of foodgrains is greater in the richer States such as Punjab, Haryana, Mahashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, and among the large and middle income groups in the rural sector, which shows that the decline is not driven by distress conditions. In fact, the decline in the consumption of foodgrains has been associated with increasing diversification of the food basket, where non-foodgrain items have been gaining importance.Further, the development of roads and electrification has meant greater urbanisation of the rural areas. A variety of urban goods and services have penetrated rural areas, changing the traditional lifestyles. As a result, rural-urban differences in consumption pattern have narrowed down over a period of time, implying a somewhat reduced preference for foodgrains in rural areas, especially among the upper and middle income groups who can otherwise afford to consume more grain, if they so desire.

Eventually, as the purchasing power of the poor rises, their per capita consumption of foodgrains may rise to the average level for the whole population. On this basis, their consumption is unlikely to rise by more than 10-12 per cent. The demand for foodgrains in the country will, therefore, rise for quite some time basically on account of population growth until the demand for foodgrains as animal feed picks up. Experience shows that it should be possible to increase supplies to meet this emerging demand.

But foodgrain security, though essential, cannot be equated with food security. The share of consumer expenditure on cereals now accounts for a little less than 40 per cent of the total consumer expenditure on food in the country, the remaining 60 per cent being incurred on items such as edible oils, sugar, milk, eggs, meat, fish, vegetables and fruits. Even for the poor or bottom 30 per cent of the population, these non-foodgrain items account for as much as half the total expenditure on food. Since raising the consumption of such items by the poor to the level enjoyed by the top 30 per cent of the population has to be the ultimate goal, the per capita consumption of these items by the poor has to increase three-fold for achieving this level. The demand for these items of food will, therefore, rise at a high rate due to population growth as well as the rise in per capita income. We have, therefore, to go very far for attaining food security in the sense of physical as well as economic access, especially for the poor.

The experience of the Green Revolution in the country has demonstrated that achieving self-sufficiency or physical access to these non-cereal items of food is quite feasible in the foreseeable future. Given the appropriate price signals, availability of the requisite infrastructure and technology, our farmers have shown great resilience in reallocating the available resources as well as stepping up fresh investments to meet the emerging demand for new products. The policy framework, while safeguarding the foodgrain security already achieved, has to encourage diversification of agriculture for meeting the growing demand for the non-cereal items of food.

But, achieving the necessary economic access to these items of food by raising the purchasing power of the poor is going to be far more challenging than ensuring the necessary supplies. Diversification of agriculture into non-cereal products will itself raise employment and increase the purchasing power of the poor, to a considerable extent. This is because the potential for employment generation in dairying, horticulture, etc. is much greater than in cereals. Moreover, these activities require new and better skills and so the wage rates for such enterprises are going to be much higher. Development of agro-processing and non-farm enterprises in general in rural areas is going to be the most promising source for employment generation and for achieving effective food security in the country.

(The writer is a former Member of the Planning Commission)

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