Food , Food, Food!

Recently I read a news article on food shortage in India. It seems we are back to 1970s level in terms of per capita food availability.

• In 1979 per capita availability of cereals and pulses had gone up to 476.5 grams per day. The corresponding figure in 2006 was 444.5 grams per day, according to provisional government statistics.
• In the eight years between 1996 and 2004, when agriculture was growing at a low 2%, there was, in fact, zero growth in foodgrains.
• China per capita availability is almost double that of India

The big question is why this is the case when:

• China has lesser arable land (124 million hectares) compared to India 162 million hectares.

• India has the second largest arable land after USA

I think these are some of the major reasons:

• In India, net irrigated area has just grown from ~ 50 million hectares in 1990s to ~ 55 million hectares currently.
• China’s around 45% land is irrigated while for India that number is 34%.
• India’s crop yields are less than half of many regions. India’s wheat yield at 2600 kg / hectare is well below that of china (4100 kg / hectare) and Europe (5000 kg / hectare).
• Most of the land holding (more than 60%) is fragmented at 1-2 acres/farmer.
• Fertiliser use in China is 279 kg/hectare as against 103 kg/hectare in India.

Using fertilizers to the tune of China’s is not the best solution to increase yield because of externalities like diseases due to use of fertilizers. We should start looking at options like drip irrigation since 90% of the water use in India is in agriculture and we can save water by as much as 100 times by drip irrigation. Also we should look at organic farming to increase yield which is more sustainable in the long run. Other option is to go for GM crops but that becomes controversial in lot of ways.

-Manoj