Food security: Getting it right
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COMMENTS 
All three pillars of food security -- food availability, food access, and food absorption -- have to be addressed to make the country food secure. Unfortunately, India’s draft food security bill is a package of piecemeal measures that fails to address all of them, says RV Bhavani
The Draft Food Security Bill that is to be placed in the public domain soon is reportedly a much watered down version of the United Progressive Alliance government’s initial proposal on the matter in mid-2009, not to mention the more holistic draft that the Right to Food Campaign and other civil society groups from across the country have campaigned for.
This is a matter of some concern at a time when the World Food Summit (WFS) held in Rome in November 2009 admitted that targets to reduce hunger worldwide were unlikely to be met. The WFS target was reducing the number of undernourished people by half to no more than 420 million by 2015. The UN Millennium Development Goal No 1, which calls for reducing hunger and poverty by half by 2015, is also unrealisable, its target made more difficult by the rise in food prices and the global economic crisis, not to mention the challenges posed by climate change.
The WFS was preceded by a meeting of the High Level Expert Forum on How to Feed the World in 2050, which estimated that “to feed a world population expected to surpass 9 billion in 2050, agricultural output will have to increase by 70% between now and then”.
The leaders who met at the WFS came out with a declaration that committed them to the ‘Five Rome Principles for Sustainable Global Food Security’. The five principles broadly emphasise the need for investment and support for country-owned plans for food security, fostering strategic coordination at different levels, having a twin track approach addressing immediate hunger and having longer-term strategies for sustainable food and nutrition security, strengthening the role of multilateral institutions and lastly, ensuring investment in agriculture and food security and nutrition. The last point should be particularly noted and emphasised because it holds the key to addressing the core issues of food availability (production and productivity), food access (employment and distribution) and health (ability to absorb the food consumed). These are the three pillars of food security.
The WFS Declaration stated as one of its strategic objectives: “Reverse the decline in domestic and international funding for agriculture, food security and rural development in developing countries, and promote new investment to increase sustainable agricultural production and productivity, reduce poverty and work towards achieving food security and access to food for all.”
This has been echoed in FAO’s report ‘State of Food Insecurity in the World’, which estimates that there are currently 1.02 billion undernourished in the world. “Past experience of economic crises suggests that investment in agriculture may soon decline. This must be avoided so that agriculture can play its role as an engine of growth and poverty reduction and act as the longer-term pillar of the twin-track approach to fighting hunger. Indeed, increased investment in agriculture during the 1970s and 1980s helped reduce the number of undernourished,” the report says.
It is clear from these declarations and deliberations that a holistic and comprehensive legislation is required to address food security. The draft bill as it stands is a package of piecemeal measures that cannot really ensure food security or guarantee the right to food for all. This is a serious matter given our poor record on the food and nutrition security front over the years, further aggravated in recent years by the rise in food prices and the challenges to production posed by climate change.
Awareness of the prevailing situation in India today and understanding the dimensions of food security can help drive home this point better. India bears the ignominy of housing the largest population of malnourished in the world. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), in 2004-06, 29% of the 872.9 million undernourished people in the world were in India. The 2009 UN Millennium Development Goals Report stated that “Southern Asia has the highest incidence of low birth weight in the world — a quarter of newborns weigh less than 2,500 grams — as well as the highest prevalence of underweight children”.
Low weight at birth affects an individual’s growth and life cycle and is a major public health challenge. Some of the national statistics on health indicators should make us hang our heads in shame; for instance, as per the latest National Family Health Survey Report, 81% of children between 6-35 months in rural India suffer from anaemia; almost half of children under five years of age or 48% are stunted -- an indicator of chronic malnutrition -- and 43% are underweight. Lack of access to safe drinking water and toilets further aggravates morbidity.
On the food availability front, gone are the days of self-sufficiency ushered in by the Green Revolution; the rate of growth of foodgrain production during 1990-2007 at 1.2% was lower than the annual rate of growth of population at 1.9%. There has been a decline in investment in agriculture and agriculture research since the 1990s, which has impacted production and productivity. On the employment front, according to the report of the National Commission on Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector, the annual growth rate of employment declined between the decades 1983-1993/94 and 1993-94 and 2004-05, and 86% of those employed were in the informal sector. All the three pillars of food security viz Food Availability, Food Access, and Food Absorption have to be addressed to effectively make the country food secure.
The National Commission on Farmers (NCF) chaired by Professor M S Swaminathan, in its five reports to the Government of India submitted between December 2004 and October 2006, had repeatedly emphasised the need for greater attention to and investment in agriculture and rural development. India is characterised by farmers with small landholdings practising rain-fed agriculture. The thrust of research and technology and infrastructure support therefore has to be on increasing the production and productivity of small farm holdings and rain-fed farming and market support. Unlike industrialised countries where only 2-4% of the population may be dependent on farming for a livelihood, agriculture is the backbone of the livelihood security system for two-thirds of India’s population. Farmers therefore also constitute the largest proportion of consumers, and it has to be understood that their well-being is a crucial determinant of market demand. The challenges posed by climate change make this group the most vulnerable in terms of having to confront greater uncertainty and risk, the first manifestation perhaps being the suicides by farmers in rain-fed farming areas of the country. There can be no progress towards food security unless the problems of this majority group are addressed.
The FAO report ‘State of Food Insecurity in the World’ also highlights this aspect: “Experience of countries that have succeeded in reducing hunger and malnutrition shows that economic growth does not automatically ensure success, the source of growth matters too. Growth originating in agriculture, in particular the smallholder sector is at least twice as effective in benefiting the poorest as growth from non-agriculture sectors. This is not surprising since 75% of the poor in developing countries live in rural areas and their incomes are directly or indirectly linked to agriculture. The fight against hunger also requires targeted and deliberate action in the form of comprehensive social services, including food assistance, health and sanitation, as well as education and training; with a special focus on the most vulnerable.”
On the food assistance and distribution front, India has a number of schemes including the public distribution system (PDS) which is the largest distribution network of its type in the world. From 1997 it was made a ‘targeted’ system which led to the exclusion of a large number of deserving people, as established by many reports. A return to the universal PDS is clearly called for and the cost towards the same is within manageable limits, as worked out by economists like Professor Madhura Swaminathan and Professor Jayati Ghosh.
The Integrated Child Development Services and the Midday Meal Scheme are two other flagship programmes, specifically addressing children in the 0-6 age-group and school-going children. The functioning of both programmes has improved in recent years and they continue to be spruced up for better outreach and delivery thanks to orders of the Supreme Court in response to public interest litigations. The budgetary allocations for the schemes are however insufficient to meet the stated objective of universal coverage, bringing into question our priorities and genuine intent.
The Food Security Act should ideally be an opportunity for the government to show its seriousness of purpose and commitment. For that, however, it should go beyond piecemeal measures to comprehensively ensure that food is a basic human right, addressing both immediate hunger and, in the longer term, all the three aspects of availability, access and nutritional outcomes. This calls for a life-cycle approach, starting with addressing the rights of the child, continuing through to old age, adopting an inclusive approach, greater coordination between departments and ministries, making the necessary investments and budgetary allocations to ensure both adequate production and mechanisms to cope with climate change, and greater vigilance in ensuring effective distribution and utilisation of allocations made.
Besides the state, political parties, people’s movements, civil society, corporate India, academia, the educated upper and middle classes, who are often unaware of the larger realities beyond their secure worlds, and the media, all have a responsibility in this endeavour. Food security must be on the national agenda and the Food Security Act that eventually comes to be, must be a comprehensive mandate towards this end. A piecemeal effort will be an opportunity lost, with dire consequences for the future.
(R V Bhavani is director, Food Security, M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai)
Infochange News & Features, April 2010
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