Meeting the New challenge of world food security

“Achieving food security in times of crisis”. This is the theme for this year’s World Food Day being celebrated on October 16. This is as aptly relevant for India, grappling with drought this year, as for the world reeling under economic crisis that has hit the poor harder than the rich, jeopardising their livelihood and food security.

India has, no doubt, won the battle against famines and starvation deaths, which have become the thing of the past, thanks to spectacular upswing in foodgrain production since the green revolution of the late 1960s. The country’s grain coffers are brimming over, holding nearly 53 million tonnes of wheat and rice on July 1, 2009, as a result of consistent rise in foodgrain output in past few years. The food output has grown annually, on an average, by 1.98 per cent between 2004-05 and 2008-09, which is higher than the estimated population growth of 1.5 per cent during this period. Yet, there is rampant disguised hunger and malnutrition. More than one-fifth of the country’s population is reckoned to be undernourished in terms of energy and protein intake.

Globally, too, the picture is not too different. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reckons that nearly 105 million people have been added to the list of hungry in 2009 itself, swelling the total number of malnourished people in the world to whopping 1.02 billion. Simply stated, this means that almost one-sixth of all humanity is suffering from hunger.

This is the state of food intake alone. But the modern concept of food security goes far beyond the availability and accessibility of staple food. It includes the man’s need for safe drinking water, clean surrounding environment and health cover. Livelihood security, essential for ensuring economic access to food, is intricately related to food security. Sanitation and shelter are also part of the broad new concept of food security.