Enhance Agricultural Production And Marketing To Ensure Zero Hunger

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Enhance Agricultural Production And Marketing To Ensure Zero Hunger

India has become the most populous country in the world, surpassing China in 2023 with about 1.43 billion population and is expected to reach about 1.5 billion by 2030 as per the estimates of UN Population Division. With only about 2.4% of world’s land area, India has to produce food to feed over 17% of the world’s population. Under such scenario, in order to fulfil the commitments under the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 - Zero Hunger by 2030, it is essential to increase food production and ensure its availability at affordable prices. But, despite a remarkable growth in food production in the country over the past six decades or so, persistence of malnutrition has remained a cause of concern. According to the Sustainable Development Report 2023, prevalence of undernourishment has remained significantly higher at about 16.3% in India compared to any other BRICS nations in 2020 (Chart 1). While there is a notable reduction over the last two decades from about 22% in the early 2000s to about 16.3% in 2020, the extent of undernourishment remained high, causing concerns for achieving the zero hunger by 2030. In this regard, the ‘G20 New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration on Food And Energy Security’ also emphasised the need to focus on enhancing food production and its availability at affordable prices for economically weaker sections of the population. Towards this, it is essential to promote crop diversification for enhancing the output of pulses and nutri-cereals apart from cereals, while also reducing the food loss and wastage from farm to fork with efficient post-harvest management.

Crop diversification for nutritional security

The significant growth in the output of major food crops was largely input driven accompanied by significant expansion in the area under cultivation and more importantly, area under irrigation. The area under foodgrains increased from about 90 million hectares to over 130 million hectares, while the irrigated area rose from about 18% to over 55% during the past 60 years or so, as per the estimates of Ministry of Agriculture. But, the scope for further expansion in area under cultivation is limited and the existing crop area and water resources need to be utilised more efficiently and sustainably to ensure future food security.

Further, the remarkable increase in domestic agricultural production achieved during the past six decades has been largely confined to selected crops like rice, wheat, cotton and sugarcane. There has been a significant shift in cropping pattern from cereal-pulse system to cereal-cereal system, particularly in the irrigated areas across the country. The extent of area irrigated for sugarcane, wheat and rice stood at 97%, 95% and 65% respectively, whereas that of pulses is only about 23% according to the estimates of the Department of Economics & Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture (GoI 2023). As a result, the increase in yields and thereby output of pulses remained mooted. Consequently, the per capita availability of pulses have declined steadily from about 25 kilograms (kg) in 1961 to 16 kg in 2021 due to sluggish growth in their production. At the same time, availability of sugar increased significantly from about 3 kg per capita per annum to nearly 20 kg per capita per annum (GoI, 2023).

Although there was a notable increase in pulses production during the past decade from about 171 lakh tonnes in 2014-15 to about 234 lakh tonnes in 2023-24 (Table 1), domestic supply remained deficit. As a result, India has continued to depend on imports of pulses to meet the domestic consumption demand on an average at about 26 lakh tonnes per annum during the last five years. In addition, with the major portion of cultivated area under rainfed conditions, pulses production is more vulnerable to frequent monsoon aberrations, thereby adversely impacting the domestic supply and prices. Due to deficit rainfall in major pulse producing areas, the output of pulses fell significantly during crop year 2023-24 to about 234 lakh tonnes from about 260 lakh tonnes in 2022-23 that was already lower compared to about 273 lakh tonnes in 2021-22 (GoI, 2024).

As a result, inflation of pulses and products group in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) gained momentum in the recent months and accelerated to over 20% in December 2023 from about 13% in August 2023. With the augmented supplies from imports, fresh market arrivals and stock limits, it has moderated in March 2024 but remained high at about 17% (Chart 2). In order to meet the production deficit, imports of pulses rose to 32.6 lakh tonnes during April 2023 to January 2024 compared to about 20 lakh tonnes in the corresponding months of previous financial year. With the persistent shortages in domestic production, inflation of pulses has remained in double digit or higher for most of the time as evident from Chart 2. Moreover, the scope for augmenting supplies through imports is limited as India is the largest producer as well as consumer of pulses in the world. Hence, it is essential to reduce the dependency on imports and increase the domestic production through appropriate longterm strategies.

Pulses, being a rich source of protein at relatively lower cost than that of animal protein, are crucial for ensuring nutritional security particularly for economically vulnerable sections. Besides, pulses are an indispensable part of Indian meal among the rich and poor alike. But, the persistent deficit in domestic production and frequent rise in their prices are making them unaffordable for poor, thereby leading to malnutrition. Moreover, pulses play a vital role in improving soil fertility, conserving water and contributing for sustainable agricultural production. Considering the importance of pulses for nutritional security as well as their positive environmental externalities of improving soil fertility and water conservation, pulses based cropping pattern may be promoted instead of cultivation of water guzzling crops like sugarcane with market at remunerative price.

Reduce post-harvest losses

While there has been a remarkable growth in the domestic food production front, the progress in post-harvest management has remained muted resulting in supply chain inefficiencies and substantial loss and wastage of food. The inadequate post-harvest management is resulting into a substantial loss and wastage of food during its journey from the point of production to the point of consumption. The extent of loss and wastage of food from farm to fork is estimated at over 40% according to a study by Singh et.al. (2023). Further, estimates from the study by NABARD Consultancy Services (NABCONS) in 2022 also indicate significant post-harvest losses in major agricultural commodities as presented in Table 2.

Under such scenario, there is an urgent need for measures to promote strategies for bringing efficiency in post-harvest management that can minimise the wastage of food and enhance its availability. Towards this, it is essential to ensure adequate infrastructure and logistics facilities are made available for efficient and seamless movement of produce from farm to consumer. Such infrastructure must ensure minimal or no loss of the produce both qualitatively as well as quantitatively reaching out to the consumers. Further, these measures can also help farmers to get a better price for their produce with direct market linkages and enabling their role in agricultural commodity value chain.

Towards this, the advances in digital or electronic commerce (e-commerce) can play a catalytic role by providing platforms to connect the farmers and agricultural commodity value chain participants like processors, traders, exporters, etc. In this regard, to provide a level playing field for all the entities particularly the small enterprises, thereby democratising the use of e-commerce space, the Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has taken initiative to promote the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), a not-for-profit company.

Nevertheless, in order to facilitate the widespread use of electronic national agricultural market (eNAM) and e-commerce space through ONDC network by farmers, it is a prerequisite to ensure the availability of requisite basic physical market infrastructure and logistics. Towards this, it is essential to develop and upgrade Gramin Agricultural Markets (GrAMs) at villages with adequate market infrastructure facilities for ensuring quality standards and certification along with requisite regulated warehousing. Subsequently, these upgraded GrAMs with supporting ICT infrastructure can be integrated with eNAM along with major mandis, thereby connecting farmers to value chain participants across the country.

To promote the development of requisite post-harvest infrastructure, the Union government had established Agriculture Infrastructure Fund of Rs. 1 trillion in May 2020. The Fund provides financing for the projects relating to post-harvest management Infrastructure and community farming assets through incentives and financial support. Under this scheme, so far a total amount of Rs. 26689 crore was disbursed as of end of April 2024, according to the National Agriculture Infra Financing Facility portal.

Thus, in view of the persisting high prevalence of undernourishment and the commitment to achieve zero hunger by 2030, there is an urgent need to enable India’s agricultural production and marketing system to ensure food and nutritional security of the growing population. With limited scope for expanding cultivable land and water resources, it is essential not only to devise suitable strategies for enhancing production with efficient use of resources through sustainable production, but also need to minimise post-harvest losses and wastage of food from farm to fork, thereby enhancing its availability at affordable prices. Further, it is essential to promote crop diversification to include pulses in cropping systems to ensure nutritional security with balanced diet.

References

GoI (2023): Agricultural Statistics at A Glance 2022, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, GoI, April 2023.

GoI (2024): The Second Advance Estimates, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India, February 29, 2024.

NABCONS (2022): Study to determine post-harvest losses of agri produces in India. Ministry of Food Processing Industries, Gov

ernment of India, 2022.

Sachs, J.D., Lafortune, G., Fuller, G., Drumm, E. (2023): Implementing the SDG Stimulus. Sustainable Development Report 2023,

Paris: SDSN, Dublin: Dublin University Press, 2023.

Singh Ruchika, Shweta Lamba, Liz Goodwin, Murli Dhar, Devyani Hari, Nitya Sharma, Jayahari KM (2023): ‘Reducing Food Loss

and Waste: Enabling Action through the Target-Measure-Act Approach’, T20 Brief May 2023, https://c4rb.org/wp-content/up

loads/2023/06/T20_PolicyBrief_TF3_FoodLossWaste.pdf

Reddy Amarender • 2 months ago

Environment & Climate Change • 2 months ago

Enhance Agricultural Production And Marketing To Ensure Zero Hunger

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