The pangs of India's food production, policy

There is something familiarly disquieting about the manner in which the Union Government has discounted India’s low ranking in the Global Hunger Index (GHI), released earlier this month. The Ministry of Women and Child Development, in an official response, said that the methodology used in the peer-reviewed report, which ranked India at 107 among 121 countries, is flawed.

The argument over the technicalities – how do you quantify something as complex as a nation’s hunger based on its children’s health, for instance? – is familiar too. This is an important question, but it also serves as a point of digression from larger discussions related to policy, poverty, social exclusion and access to food, hidden hunger (deficiency of micronutrients), and gaps in the systems of procuring and distributing agricultural produce.

Union Health Ministry officials, following a review of the GHI, led by minister Mansukh Mandaviya, said the report “exaggerated” the measure of hunger. Experts believe these deflections are in line with the policies adopted by successive governments at the Centre that have failed to push zero-hunger goals, even in their vision documents. “It is defending the indefensible,” said food and agriculture policy expert Devinder Sharma, on the attempts to disregard the GHI.

Also Read | Ranked 107, India slams 'erroneous' Global Hunger Index citing methodological issues

“Why should hunger persist in a democracy? Why are we left with surplus stocks and how can we export grains when we cannot feed our own? We aspire to be a $5 trillion economy, with the largest population of the hungry. This is a result of priorities that were not aligned with inclusive growth,” Sharma added.

India scored 29.1 in the 2022 GHI; the index categorises scores between 20 and 34.9 as denoting a “serious” level of hunger. The report has sourced two of its key findings from India’s National Family Health Survey 5 (2019-21). The country’s child wasting rate (share of children under age five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition), 19.3%, is the highest in the world. Its child stunting rate (share of children under age five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition) is at 35.5%. Undernourishment in the total population (16.3%) and child mortality (3.3%) are the two other indicators the GHI uses.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, India is the world’s largest producer of milk and pulses, and the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnut, vegetables and fruit.

According to the FAO’s 2022 report on food security and nutrition in the world, 70.5% of Indians were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2020. The report puts the cost of a healthy diet in India at $ 2.97 (per person per day).

In the scope of policy, a large number of those unable to afford a healthy diet are covered as beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) of 2013, which provides for the distribution of subsidised foodgrains. The Act, which draws on a “life-cycle approach” has special provisions for pregnant women, lactating mothers, and children aged between six months and 14 years to receive free nutritious meals through anganwadis.

The shift in a critical policy guideline – from an emphasis on welfare to entitlement – is significant, but it is not built on a holistic approach to address hunger and malnutrition.

Beyond the numbers, Arun Maira, former member of the Planning Commission, traced India’s misaligned response to malnutrition to the problem of thinking and working in silos, when the subject demanded a coordinated, multi-disciplinary approach.

“Firstly, malnutrition is a systemic problem, caused by a combination of factors. It cannot be solved by only providing more nutrition to children. Diarrhoea from polluted water and bad sanitation wastes nutrition in the body," he said.

Further, the health of pregnant mothers determines the health of babies at birth which affects their future health, he added.

Also read | A state of denial: India's response to global reports

Food distribution systems

In March 2020, the government announced the distribution of an additional 5 kg of foodgrains (rice/wheat) to about 80 crore NFSA beneficiaries, free of cost, under the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PM-GKAY), in addition to their monthly ration-card entitlements. Under the PM-GKAY scheme, about 1,121 lakh MT foodgrains have been distributed to the states and UTs so far.

Mass cancellation of ration cards over non-compliance to Aadhar linkage adds a dimension to the problem.

The GHI, compiled by Ireland-based humanitarian agency Concern Worldwide and German non-profit Welthungerhilfe, has taken note of India’s subnational context in efforts to target child stunting. It refers to research that found stunting declining in four states – Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Odisha and Tamil Nadu – between 2006 and 2016, mainly because of improved coverage of health and nutrition interventions, household conditions (including food security), as well as maternal health and education.

While public schemes provide access to a few basic foodgrains, Kavitha Kuruganti, from the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture, explained that tackling malnutrition based on a two-grain approach, that centres the most widely-produced crops, is inherently flawed. “It is not only about availability. There is a solid body of evidence that should encourage us to approach nutritional security and access to food differently. Within the scope of entitlement, we need to bring in crops that have been neglected all through, like millets. Promoting iron-fortified rice (contra-indicated for thalassemia patients) as a solution is indicative of problems in the present approach,” Kavitha said.

The undermining of cultivation patterns has also persisted as a policy gap. “Factors like soil deficiency are crucial – the way forward is in an interlinked approach, in measures that ensure soil, plant, human and planetary health, but there is no political will to get it going,” she added.

The broken chains

There is proof of concept that validates the significance of local food supply chains in ensuring wider access, an idea that has not found endorsement with policymakers.

T N Prakash Kammardi, former chairman of the Karnataka Agricultural Prices Commission, agreed that “an apparent failure” in establishing efficient distribution systems has led to serious gaps in access. In theory, the Public Distribution System and the organised agriculture markets should have worked, but these are also systems that allow external interventions.

The FAO report mentions state measures in India that enable farmers, through digital innovations, to transport their produce to the markets. The entry of farm produce aggregators, along with tech-driven packaging and storage innovations, has created new channels between farmers and agri-retailers, translating to better access to the market.

A critical point is the efficiency with which distributors are able to address challenges of location and seasonality for produce with a short shelf life. “Take the tomatoes grown in Kolar, for instance. How do you ensure that these are stored and distributed across seasons and locations? This is where transportation and warehousing facilities come into play,” said Kammardi, who formerly headed the Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bengaluru.

Across various levels of the supply chain, storage issues play a major role in food losses. Indian Council of Agricultural Research – Central Institute of Post Harvest Engineering and Technology, in a 2016 national study, found that harvest and post-harvest losses in cereals were in the range of 4.65% (maize) to 5.99% (sorghum). In pulses, the losses ranged between 6.36% (pigeon pea) and 8.41% (chickpea).

Citing losses in vegetables between 4.58% (tapioca) and 12.44% (tomato) and fruits between 6.7% (papaya) and 15.88% (guava), the study underlined the importance of multi-crop cold storage in offsetting the losses. Storage issues contributed considerably to vegetable losses, the study found. It also estimated a 7.19% loss of eggs and a 10.52% loss of marine fish, both due to inadequate cold storage in the market.

The procurement and distribution systems are also susceptible to traders and middlemen who operate in organised networks. Kammardi pointed out how a “minor disturbance” created at a state boundary could hold onion trucks coming in from other states for a day, resulting in a price hike in the local markets.

Emphasising the significance of local production, procurement and distribution chains, Devinder Sharma pointed to a state initiative taken up in Brazil that links food security with social empowerment. “Markets are installed every 20 km. The state buys whatever produce the farmers bring to these markets but on a condition – the farmers will have to send their children to school,” Sharma said.