Revamped food system of India
Context:
- We observed World Food Day (October 16) earlier this week, but we don’t often see food as a system. India, which provides food for the majority of the world’s population, is the nation most qualified to comprehend the difficulties facing a food system.
The connectivity of security in nutrition:
- While ensuring everyone has access to healthy food is the main objective of a food system, this objective can only be met in a sustainable manner if the food’s producers generate fair profits that hold up over time.
- Since soil, water, and climate are the main inputs in agriculture and are all but natural resources, this resilience is closely related to the resilience of our natural ecosystem.
- To make our food system really sustainable, we must recognise the connections between livelihood, environmental security, and nutrition security.
Security of the environment, livelihoods, and nutrition:
- In terms of nutrition, malnutrition affects India twice as much. On the one hand, a significant fraction of Indians still show signs of nutritional inadequacies even after years of significant progress.
- According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2019–21, anaemia affects 25% of men and 57% of women, while 35% of children are stunted. On the other hand, 24% of adult women and 23% of adult males are now obese as a result of unbalanced meals and sedentary lives.
- India has been making more of an effort to combat malnutrition; in fact, the Prime Minister has called for a widespread campaign to end it. Farm incomes are not enough to support marginal and small farmers on the production side.
- The slack is being filled by the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and other forms of temporary work, which suggests a lack of chances for income diversification or skills.
- Furthermore, India’s food supply is extremely fragile due to climate change and the depletion of natural resources. Similar to the 2023 soil health study, the lack of organic carbon, a crucial sign of healthy soil, has spread over nearly half of India’s arable land.
- The main irrigation source, groundwater, is running out quickly. Over 75% of the groundwater assessment locations in states like Punjab are overfished, endangering the stability of farm revenues.
The next step is to take a three-pronged approach:
- In order to address these interrelated problems, a three-pronged strategy including producers, consumers, and middlemen is required.
- The first step is to change consumer demand so that it favours sustainable and healthful diets. We must switch to a diet that is better for the environment and for individuals. The aspirational purchasing patterns of over a billion people in India are driven by the private sector.
- Locally grown millets can benefit from corporate actions that have revolutionised the Indian market for imported quinoa and oats. In order to influence millions of people’s purchase habits towards sustainability and health, civil society and the health sector might collaborate with social media influencers.
- In addition, the public sector can contribute to improving the diets of at least 70% of Indians through its numerous touchpoints, including the Public Distribution System (PDS), midday meals (MDM), train catering, urban canteens, and public and institutional procurement.
- Second, we need to help farmers make the switch to remunerative and regenerative agricultural practises in order to guarantee sustainable incomes. A beginning in the right direction is the National Mission on Natural Farming, yet less than 1% of the agricultural budget is allocated to sustainable agriculture overall.
- These programmes must be expanded and scaled up to include more agroecological techniques including precision farming, conservation agriculture, agroforestry, and much more.
- Additionally, direct financial support for farmers per hectare of production should replace input subsidies in agriculture support programmes. It would encourage the effective use of inputs and create an environment where agroecological practises could flourish on level playing fields.
- Sustainable farming practises should also be the primary emphasis of agricultural research and extension agencies’ respective budgets.
- Third, move value chains from farm to fork in the direction of more inclusive and sustainable ones. Enhancing the value addition of agricultural produce in rural areas is a crucial strategy for improving farm incomes in these areas.
- Middlemen—that is, companies who sell consumers raw and processed food—should prioritise buying directly from farmers, provide incentives for buying sustainably farmed goods, and adopt tried-and-true strategies like fair trade.
- These farmtobuyer connections are made possible by a number of up-and-coming agritech companies, including DeHaat and Ninjacart. Furthermore, as certain farmer producer organisations (FPOs) in Odisha have demonstrated, facilitating produce trade amongst FPOs is another approach to guarantee a higher value share for farmers, as all farmer families within an FPO are consumers of other farming items.
Way Forward:
- But changing a whole food system is no easy task. But we shouldn’t let the difficulty of the task stop us from aiming high. India has a rare opportunity to demonstrate to the rest of the world how to properly implement its food system if we move quickly.
