agri review
Forget masses, have we ensured
food security for our farmers yet?
The small land holding farmers in India are under tremendous pressure due to
their dependence on agriculture as a single source of livelihood. Forget feeding
others, few a times they even struggle to harvest enough food grains for survival
I
BY SACHIN ARYA
ndians mostly sing songs in
praise their motherland and
a country devoted to
agriculture with huge respect
for farmers. But does that actually
translate into our attitude
towards them in reality is a big
question. The public perception
towards farming in India
especially Uttar Pradesh, Bihar,
Orissa, Jharkhand and more
importantly in Maharashtra, is
fast changing especially among
the younger generation.
Given the fact that the
landholdings have declined from
2.3 hectares (ha) in the ‘70s to
1.32 ha in 2000-01 and with the
average size being predicated to
be mere 0.68 ha in 2020 and 0.32
ha in 2030, experts feel that the
focus should be on the
smallholder agriculture and
agriculture innovations.
As per Prof Ramesh Chand,
member, Niti Aayog, the top
government policy think tank is in
process of developing a multidimensional indigenous food
security index. He terms the
methodology used by the Food
and Agriculture Organisation
(FAO) of the United Nations to
measure the extent of food
security in India as wrong.
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BioVoiceNews | July 2016
Earlier this year, during his
address at the roundtable
conference on ‘Addressing
Challenges of Food Security,’
organised by The Associated
Chambers of Commerce and
Industry of India (ASSOCHAM),
Prof Chand said that in order to
show the achievements, the UN
and FAO, rather than expanding
the norm of food security, they
have been narrowing the norm of
food security from 2,400 kilo
calories and 2,100 kilo calories as