Food security is a complex challenge that will require an integrated and multi-disciplinary response and synergy of efforts of various stakeholders and policy interventions. Siloed approaches and solutions will certainly not be adequate as other exogenous and endogenous realities such as climate change, desertification and urbanisation add to the intensity and complexity of the food security challenge not just in an additive but in an exponential manner. In this article, we look at some of the critical aspects that need to be addressed for achieving the goal of food security.

It is estimated that agricultural output will have to increase by 60% to feed the world population beyond 2050. It is therefore a given that the per acre productivity of land needs to improve drastically to cater to the rising demand. The imperative is even graver considering that the increased demand has to be met from even less land than is being cultivated today as competitive uses take over agricultural land. The silver lining to this challenge is that a diverse portfolio of technologies for increasing agri-productivity for various agro-ecological zones exist and have been verifiably demonstrated. Technologies such as the system of rice and wheat intensification (SRI and SWI), organic agriculture and aquaponics have demonstrated quantum leaps in productivity that are also environmentally benign and in some cases even regenerative. However, scaling of these technologies for definitive impact calls for an integrated approach based on building farmers’ capacities, enabling access to modern technologies through both financial support and extension services, improving market infrastructure, public and private investment and cooperation for knowledge and technology transfer.

Efforts and initiatives for increasing food production in India have for too long had a largely blinkered focus on the production of major grains. Both research investment and financial instruments made available to the farmers have narrowly focused on improving the productivity of rice and wheat. This is quite ironic because malnutrition due to inadequate availability of proteins and micro-nutrients in the diet is a reality for large sections of the populace. Moreover nearly 80% of the agricultural land in India is rain-fed and therefore more amenable to the production of pulses and oilseeds rather than water intensive crops such as the major cereals. Traditional minor grains such as jowar, bajra and finger millets that were suited to the rain-fed conditions have been abandoned in favour of the major cereals as an outcome of the short-sighted policies and farm subsidies that encouraged this shift.

It is a pressing need to redirect investments, research and extension services into pulses and oilseeds production that not only are more suited to the rain-fed agro-ecological conditions, but also have a lower water and carbon footprint and offer more sustained productivities. This will also restore to a significant extent the nutritional balance in the food production of the country.

In a rapidly urbanising India, land available for agriculture is shrinking by the day. This makes it imperative to reclaim our large tracts of wasteland for productive agricultural purposes. Some of Development Alternatives’ experiments in Bundelkhand, a drought prone region in Central India, on reclaiming severely degraded land simply by recreating the conditions for nature to take its own course have yielded astonishing results that indicate that relatively small interventions and investments are adequate for converting wastelands into productive agricultural land assets. What is required is strategic investment in improving the water harvesting potential of these lands, coupled with building capacities of the local farmers and pastoralists to sustainably manage these land and water resources.

With climate change impacts becoming increasingly frequent and thereby undeniable, it is extremely important to shift to more sustainable and climate adapted forms of agriculture that are more resource efficient, less polluting and do not endanger the production systems themselves in the long term. Specifically, the availability of water is slated to become a major limiting factor and so the approaches and technologies to reduce the water footprint of crop production (more crop per drop) need to be scaled.

The ongoing global dialogue for the development of sustainable development goals (SDGs) that are expected to replace the millennium development goals (MDGs) that expire in 2015 also underscores the critical importance of sustainable agriculture in achieving food security goals. In fact one of the key proposed SDG goals is titled ‘food security, nutrition and sustainable agriculture’.

Putting the farmer at the core of efforts to optimise production systems will necessarily have to be a key principle on which to operate. Farmers need to be recognised and engaged, not just as passive recipients of subsidies, technologies and knowhow but also as active co-developers of locally adapted approaches and methods and as sources of traditional and grassroots knowledge. The collectivisation of farmers is a crucial step in effectively linking them to extension services and markets and for dissemination of new technologies and approaches through peer to peer knowledge exchange. Investment in the building of farmers’ capacities to assess, adapt and adopt modern technologies and to better interact with the market and the scientific community are called for if the policy and research efforts for food security are to effectively translate into sustainable on-ground action.

While this article has touched upon some of the key aspects that need to be addressed to meet the food security challenge, it is important to reiterate that this is not a comprehensive list and there are other equally important aspects such as social security systems, reforms in the public distribution system, fair pricing economic instruments, market enabling policy frameworks and policy coherence within and across sectors that also need to be addressed in tandem in a synergistic manner. This will require efforts of multiple stakeholders, from the farmer to the scientist and the policy maker to converge and collaborate across disciplines. q

Endnotes
¹Aquaponics refers to a food production system that combines aquaculture (usually fish farming) with hydroponics (growing crops in water and without soil) in a symbiotic equation.
² Vertical farming refers to cultivation of plants on a vertically inclined surface in a stacked manner, usually employing greenhouse techniques.