Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 32 views

    Food Security in India

    Uploaded by

    Kanika Mohan
    1) While the Green Revolution of the 1960s greatly increased food production in India, it did not ensure access to food for all, and a new approach is needed. 2) India faces challenges of a growing population, limited resources, and failure to provide sustainable food security for all, despite large food stocks that rot due to lack of storage. 3) Simply increasing production through another Green Revolution is not the solution and would exacerbate problems. Instead, India must adopt more sustainable agricultural practices that use resources more efficiently and reduce costs for farmers.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Food Security in India

    Uploaded by

    Kanika Mohan
    32 views2 pages
    1) While the Green Revolution of the 1960s greatly increased food production in India, it did not ensure access to food for all, and a new approach is needed. 2) India faces challenges of a growing population, limited resources, and failure to provide sustainable food security for all, despite large food stocks that rot due to lack of storage. 3) Simply increasing production through another Green Revolution is not the solution and would exacerbate problems. Instead, India must adopt more sustainable agricultural practices that use resources more efficiently and reduce costs for farmers.

    Original Title

    Food security in India

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    1) While the Green Revolution of the 1960s greatly increased food production in India, it did not ensure access to food for all, and a new approach is needed. 2) India faces challenges of a growing population, limited resources, and failure to provide sustainable food security for all, despite large food stocks that rot due to lack of storage. 3) Simply increasing production through another Green Revolution is not the solution and would exacerbate problems. Instead, India must adopt more sustainable agricultural practices that use resources more efficiently and reduce costs for farmers.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    32 views2 pages

    Food Security in India

    Uploaded by

    Kanika Mohan
    1) While the Green Revolution of the 1960s greatly increased food production in India, it did not ensure access to food for all, and a new approach is needed. 2) India faces challenges of a growing population, limited resources, and failure to provide sustainable food security for all, despite large food stocks that rot due to lack of storage. 3) Simply increasing production through another Green Revolution is not the solution and would exacerbate problems. Instead, India must adopt more sustainable agricultural practices that use resources more efficiently and reduce costs for farmers.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    You are on page 1of 2

    Food Security: Is it time for the second green revolution?

    By: Kanika Mohan – 2K15/CE/057

    Back in the 1960’s when mass famines ravaged India, we found a solution in the Green
    Revolution, one of our greatest success stories. Food yields tripled and grain production
    increased over four times. But, does the food production alone secure access of food to all?
    Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize winning economist, in his research on world famines concluded
    that the most important reason for occurrence of famines is not the availability of food but the
    mediocre distribution and the lack of purchasing power of the poor. The point of the matter is
    that we have narrowly focused on increasing production for too long. The time has come to shift
    attention from farms to the holistic development of farmers.

    Reaching food security has been a herculean challenge; but it has now become even more so,
    with the burgeoning world population crossing 7 billion. At the same time, land and water
    resources are getting exhausted in a flash. These 21st century challenges cannot be tackled with
    old methods; we have to innovate new ways that culminate into sustainable food security for all.

    Today, we are in a paradoxical position, where on one hand we have mountains of food stock of
    62 million tons against only 20 million ton required for food security. We do not even have
    storage for such massive stocks, due to which these rot in rain every year and also fatten the
    rodents. On the other hand, about 200 million people are deprived of food and 50 million are on
    the brink of starvation. Above all, an astounding failure has been the suicide of over 1, 00, 000
    farmers in the last decade, most of them faced with crippling debts for expensive seeds and
    chemicals.
    There is a lot wrong with our policy and its implementation and more production is certainly not
    the answer.

    It will be too simplistic to say that the country needs a second green revolution. Second green
    revolution would mean more fertilizers, more water scarcity, more cost of inputs, so more debts
    for the farmers and unaffordable prices for consumer. And a more degraded environment. We
    need an entirely different approach. A UNESCO study shows that India uses 2850 meter cube of
    water to produce one ton of paddy; whereas China uses only 1321, that is less than half the water
    used for same one ton of paddy. Similarly, for wheat India uses 1654 cubic meter of water per
    ton of wheat produce, whereas china uses only 690 cubic meters per ton. This clearly shows how
    much excess of resources we have been using and we need to correct this. Instead of increasing
    our inputs, we need to reduce the amount of water, fertilizers, pesticides that we use and bring
    down cost of cultivation. To all these problems we have as many solutions. Simple things like
    crop diversification, drip irrigation, bio-fertilizers, and bio-pesticides are eco-friendly methods
    we need to follow to bring down cost of farming while achieving sustainable production.

    We also need to go outside the fields and bring about necessary changes. Proper post-harvest
    management, education of farmers, sound public administration, providing adequate health
    facilities, crop insurance, access to loans at affordable rates, storage and marketing facilities;
    these are the essential elements of the holistic revolution the agriculture sector requires as just a
    production revolution would be inadequate.
    A new way of thinking is what we require to fill all gaps in the existing systems to ensure food
    security for the entire world in an eco-friendly and long-lasting way.

    You might also like