Kindly update us on the research on India centric agriculture-nutrition at Tata Cornell Institute ? What is the primary objective behind organizing this event at Delhi in India ?
The Tata Cornell Institute based at Ithaca ( New York ) is an institute very focused on looking at problem of rural poverty and trying to understand the role of agriculture in addressing malnutrition . The TCI-Technical Assistance and Research for Indian Nutrition and Agriculture ( TARINA ) is a new initiative focused on India . Right now we have 12 PhD students who
“ are focused research on Indian agriculture and nutrition issues . They come to India for one year to stay in India and travel to Orissa , Uttar Pradesh , Maharashtra , Bihar and other states . This programme is a long term one and last year we received the grant from Gates Foundation . It is to essentially to scale this work up to create impact at research and policy level plan . This grant has both on ground work involving our partners to look in how do you bring the nutrition and mal-nutrition perspectives into the policy making and then to build capacity of NGOs , civil society .
As part of our efforts on increasing awareness on malnutrition under the same programme , we plan to organize the series of events at national level . The focus of first forum at New Delhi is that how to create more diverse food systems . When we think about food , we think about rice and wheat . Obviously these are important but we need to broaden the basket and include the milk , eggs , fruits and other foods . Even today the food security means rice and wheat security . I want to open up the discussion dialogue on its definition . Food security means diversity of basket .
There has been varying perspectives on the nutrition indices . Even the Food Agriculture Organization ( FAO ) and Indian experts seem to be taking extreme positions . How do you look at these differences ?
I have in past written few papers on some of the issues with FAO indices . The problem with FAO food hunger index is that its main focus is calories and not the balanced nutritious diet . So as a result you are measuring whether somebody has taken enough calories but not really the nutrition or the malnutrition .
When we think about food , we think about rice and wheat . Obviously these are important but we need to broaden the basket and include the milk , eggs , fruits and other foods . Even today the food security means rice and wheat security . I want to open up the discussion dialogue on its definition . Food security means diversity of basket .
Many of us are arguing for a broader indices including many factors . Many countries like India are good at measuring staple diets but not good at measuring diversity . For example , if someone asks you about the rice consumed last month , you might roughly guess it . But if you are asked about the tomatoes , it will be difficult . So this is the problem that we have with the surveys .
Many of us believe that the surveys are not taking overall food consumption into consideration . And not taking these into account creates problem with measurement of nutrition etc . So these are the issues FAO should consider . Overall I think they have come a long way of highlighting the hunger but we are arguing that they must include many other factors such as malnutrition .
There are many reports that suggest that agriculture in India is shrinking . But at the same time we continue to call ourselves agrieconomy yet doing little to correct our basics ?
If you look at any country ’ s overall economic history and the share of agriculture GDP , the latter always witnessed decrease with the overall growth of the
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