FOOD SECURITY

FOOD SECURITY Defined as a condition in which all people have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and preferences, food security is considered by the United Nations a basic human right. The current world food system normally functions efficiently, at least in an economic sense, though not a moral one. It provides at reasonable prices adequate food of their choice to those who can afford to pay for it.

Thus food security is a problem of the poor, in poor countries. The hungry of the world are hungry because they are poor. They are poor because they own too few resources of land, capital, or skills. Poverty can also be a most vicious circle, since from lack of food the poor may not be physically or mentally productive enough to earn adequate income, thus perpetuating their poverty. Hunger is primarily a problem of poverty, not of food production. If all the world's poor were given sufficient income, more food would be demanded and produced. But if more food were produced because farmers were given higher prices, the poor, whose incomes would not have changed, would remain hungry.

Food security for a country is also a matter of under-development. A poor country deficient in food production is vulnerable to transient influences that reduce domestic production or increase world market prices, as it cannot import the food it needs. While it is conceivable—for example, in some nuclear winter scenarios—that global food production could fall so much below the demand that even rich nations would not find enough food, such supply shortages are very unlikely. The technological food production potential of the world, even without exotic technologies, is so great that the inability to produce food at any cost is not likely to threaten the food security of wealthy nations.

What constitutes "adequate" food intake is still a matter of contention among nutritionists. The general approach is to consider the basal metabolic rate, the number of calories that a person needs while lying down but wide awake, and take some multiple of that as the norm for adequate caloric intake. Metabolic rates vary, of course, across similar individuals (in height, weight, gender) and also across time for a given individual. Individuals learn to live with fewer (or more) calories over time. Yet, no matter how one measures hunger and poverty, one finds that hundreds of millions of persons suffer from hunger and poverty in the world and in India.

In addition to the millions who suffer from persistent hunger, many others who normally get enough to eat live precariously on the margin of subsistence. They are vulnerable to all manner of external influences, which can easily reduce their food consumption and bring them into the ranks of the hungry. A major threat to the already inadequate food consumption of the poor is from any temporary drop in real income. The real income of the poor can also fall because food prices rise.

When India's monsoon rains fail, the poor not only lose employment but food prices rise as well. Even when the rains fail in a remote, prosperous country, the price of food for the poor may increase. The rich country would then either export less food grains or import more grains, and the world market prices of food grains would go up. A country's booming domestic economy could aggravate the hunger of the poor if their incomes do not rise as rapidly as do increases in food prices. Apart from such sudden drops in real income, a creeping loss may occur if employment opportunities do not keep pace with the growth in the labor force.

Both persistent hunger and transient hunger, the extreme form of which is famine, have underlined the fact that to deal with chronic hunger is to deal with poverty and underdevelopment. Amartya Sen (1981) and Jean Drèze and Sen (1989) have extensively examined how to deal with the extreme case of transient hunger, namely, famine. Famines have led to large-scale deaths since World War II in some countries but not in India. The question is why some governments fail to take effective action in time to prevent mass deaths due to famine. Drèze and Sen stress the role that freedom of the press and media plays in mobilizing timely and effective action against famine.

The State of Food Security in India

India's national level of food security is reflected in the availability of food, whose net availability at the aggregate level in per capita terms has been maintained at reasonable levels and has been increasing over the years, though since 1997 it has been coming down a bit for two reasons. Diversification due to better quality food (milk, edible oils, etc.) has reduced demand for grains; and high levels of minimum support prices for wheat and rice set by the government reduced the demand and increased output and led to net accretion of nearly 40 million tons of buffer stocks from 1997 to 2001.

Domestic production of food grains, dependent to a large extent on India's rains, fluctuates from year to year. The government thus holds buffer stocks of food grains to ensure that availability does not suffer. The size of the buffer stock should be adequate to fill the gap of any fall in production caused by a sequence of poor monsoons, keeping prices at reasonable levels.

The state of food insecurity at the individual level is reflected in the number of persons who do not get adequate food to eat and who show signs of malnutrition. The poverty line in India is defined as the level of consumer expenditure at which people in rural areas will consume 2,400 calories per person per day and those in urban areas 2,100 calories per person per day. Based on household consumption surveys carried out by the National Sample Survey Organization the estimated number of persons below the poverty line has been coming down. Transient hunger, however, can throw almost 10 percent of India's rural population into poverty from one year to the next.

Government programs, such as buffer stock policy, to provide food security have not been very effective. Another indicator of food insecurity is the level of malnutrition in India. In 1997–1998 the percentage of stunted children (height-for-age) was 57.1 percent among the rural poor and 49.6 percent in urban areas, very high proportions indeed.

Policies for Food Security

Once adequate food is available at the national level, providing food security to all is to provide adequate real income to all. The government has followed a variety of policies to do so. Poverty removal has been the main objective of all of India's five-year plans and all political parties. The policies have included transfers of food, such as public distribution of food at subsidized prices through ration shops, Midday Meal programs, Mother and Child Nutrition programs, and income-enhancing programs, such as employment guarantee plans, Food for Work, and other employment programs, and many other antipoverty programs, described briefly below.

Public distribution

Under the public distribution system, selected items of mass consumption, such as wheat, rice, other cereals, sugar, oil, and kerosene, are provided at subsidized prices to ration card holders in limited quantities. People are free to buy additional quantities in the open market. Ration cards are now issued to everyone. This program is now considered one of the government's most significant antipoverty initiatives. In 2004, under the Targeted Public Distribution System, each family below the poverty line is entitled to a quota of 22 pounds (10 kg) of food grains at subsidized prices (about 50% of cost). Families above the poverty line received a lower subsidy (90% of cost). However, the large difference between the issue price to the poor and the open market price provided incentives for diversion of considerable amounts of grain into the open market, and such leakage, coupled with exclusion errors in targeting, implied that very little subsidy reached the poor. The objective of providing adequate food to all has not as yet been realized.

Antyodaya Anna Yojana

This program was introduced in early 2001 for the poorest of the poor, as identified by gram panchayats (village leaders) and gram sabhas (village councils). Antyodaya households are entitled to 77 pounds (35 kg) of grain a month at highly subsidized prices (Rs. 2 per kg for wheat, and Rs. 3 per kg for rice). A survey of destitution in five states indicates that the program is doing well. The selection of Antyodaya households appears to be quite fair. In some areas, however, the survey found that many households had been deprived of their entitlements by ration shop dealers. The program covers only about 5 percent of the rural population. If these limitations are overcome, the Antodaya program holds much promise.

Food security through ICDS

Malnutrition among children and women is severe in India. Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), perhaps the largest of all food supplementation programs in the world, was initiated in 1975 to: improve the health and nutrition of children in the 0–6 year age group by providing supplementary food; to provide early stimulation and education to preschool children; to provide pregnant and lactating women with food supplements; and to enhance mothers' abilities to provide proper child care through health and nutrition education.

A World Bank and Government of India review in 1997 found that ICDS services were much in demand, but there are problems in delivery, quality, and coordination. The program might perhaps be improving food security at the household level, but has failed to effectively address the issues of prevention, undernourished child/mother detection, and management.

Food security through midday meals to school-children

The provision of free midday meals to schoolchildren encourages enrollment and retention, in addition to providing food security to children. School feeding programs often double enrollment within a year and can produce a 40 percent improvement in academic performance in just two years, the World Food Program has found in its study of a number of states in India.

The program, first introduced in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in 1956, has proved remarkably successful in improving school enrollment in that state. With modest cost, the benefit has been dramatic, increasing school enrollment in the state: in primary schools, up 31 percent, from 5.04 million in 1985–1986 to 6.59 million in 2002–2003; in middle schools, dropouts decreased from 24 to 13.85 percent during the same period. Apart from boosting school attendance and child nutrition, midday meals have an important social value. As children learn to sit together and share meals, there may be an erosion of caste prejudices; the gender gap may also be reduced as female school attendance increases.

The Supreme Court of India in November 2001 directed all of India's "State Governments/Union Territories to implement the Mid-Day Meal Scheme" in every government and government-assisted primary school, offering every child a midday meal of no fewer than 300 calories and 8–12 grams of protein each day of school, for at least 200 days.

Food security through employment programs

The best-known employment program is Maharashtra's Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS), started on 26 January 1979, guaranteeing employment to all adults eighteen years and above who are willing to do unskilled manual work. The act bestows a right to work on every adult person residing in rural areas of Maharashtra. Only the needy offer themselves for work, and the supply of employment has to adjust to demand, so that fluctuations over seasons and over years are automatically taken into consideration. It is also self liquidating. When economic growth provides opportunities for better paying jobs, people would automatically stop coming for work in EGS programs. Though EGS has not eliminated rural poverty in Maharashtra, there is some evidence of decline in the depth of poverty there. Another important benefit of EGS is that by providing an alternative opportunity for employment to rural workers, it increases their bargaining power and increases rural wages.

The many programs to provide food security have surely made some impact and have been extremely important as short-term measures. However, perhaps the best long-term measure for food security is economic development that provides enough income for all Indians to buy as much food as they need.

Kirit Parikh

See alsoEconomic Development, Importance of Institutions in and Social Aspects of ; Famines ; Poverty and Inequality ; Subsidies in the Federal Budget

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