Ploughing a new channel for India’s food systems

News: UN Food Systems Summit emphasizes the need to achieve the United Nations-mandated 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). To achieve this, India needs to enhance interfaces between the spheres of science, society, and policy, focusing on sustainability, resource efficiency, and circularity.

How the mix of science and policy can help people?

India’s Green Revolution in the 1960s is a classic example of it. It enabled food security, addressed widespread hunger and poverty, developed improved high-yielding varieties of rice and wheat. This is possible because of the S&T and the right policy at that time which included a vast agricultural research and technology transfer system at the national, regional, state, and local levels.

The Training & Visit (T&V) system introduced in the 1970s with World Bank assistance was key to the science-society interface, as it established a cadre of agriculture extension specialists at the local level.

What is the present status of food security in India?

Although India is now self-sufficient in food grains production, it has about a quarter of the world’s food-insecure people. National Family Health Survey (2019-2021) shows that 18.7% of women and 16.2% of men are unable to access enough food to meet basic nutritional needs, and over 32% of children below five years are still underweight.

India is ranked 101 out of 116 countries in the Global Hunger Index, 2021. India faces the dual challenge of achieving nutrition security, as well as addressing declining land productivity, land degradation, and loss of ecological services with change in land use.

How to bring up-gradation in the Indian agriculture system?

Adopt best practices: Thus, there is a need to adopt the principles of sustainability, resource efficiency, and circularity to correct the consequences of the Green Revolution.

Indian Council of Agricultural Research and the erstwhile Planning Commission of India reveal the enormous potential for crop diversification and precision for enhanced crop productivity based on soil type, climate (temperature and rainfall), and captive water resources.

Infrastructure: Efficient technologies and policies should be adopted to understand the stress status of the natural resource base in different agro-climatic zones. This will help to understand the micro and meso-level interventions required in this area.

Prioritize the policies: There is a need to prioritize the national and State policy priorities, such as the National Policy guidelines 2012 of the Ministry of Agriculture for the promotion of farmer producer organizations.

Another is the National Resource Efficiency Policy of 2019 of the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change. It would encourage a resource-efficient and circular economy for production, processing, and storage techniques of food products through renewable energy solutions, reduction of supply chains and inputs (materials, water, and energy). It would also ensure the efficient use of by-products, thereby creating value while using fewer inputs and generating less waste for long-term and large-scale impact.

Source: This post is based on the article “Ploughing a new channel for India’s food systems” published in The Hindu on 25th February 2022.