Food and Nutrition Security

• Panchayati Raj Institutions should be involved in food and nutrition security efforts in most vulnerable pockets in drought prone and rainfed areas. This can be done by establishing food grain banks with community initiative and supported by the PDS.
• There is a need to stabilise population giving emphasis on family planning to control population explosion which has a bearing on food security. This is a very important determinant of food security at the national, state, village and household levels. Panchayats should be involved in these efforts
• There is a need for strengthening of ICDS programme and mid-day meal programmes for food security of children and women. Awareness about the nutritional aspects may be created at the household and individual level for combating malnutrition related diseases by Anganwadi workers with involvement of SHGs and panchayats. It is also essential to educate people about the nutrition values of locally produced coarse grains/ millets.
• Women have the responsibility of ensuring household food security along with management of households. Therefore, priority should be given on women for ensuring household food security to combat malnutrition.
• To ensure food security of migrant labour, there should be a system of registration and issuance of ration cards by involving local bodies, government and other local agencies.
• Hunger mapping should be done by state government. Mapping of most vulnerable pockets on food security and malnutrition should be undertaken to ensure household food and nutrition security. Monitoring of hunger should be done by district collector, BDO with involvement of local bodies/Institution at every level. Accordingly a food security package can be developed to rush when the circumstances demand in hunger and starvation situation.
• In dry land areas procurement, storage and distribution should be taken up on course cereals.
• For improving food security at village level especially in drought prone areas cultivable fallow should be used optimally to produce food grains including local millets needed by the village community. In addition traditional food storage system based on locational food cultural appropriateness should be devised for participatory technology development. Efforts should be made to build community storage facilities.

Improvement in PDS Management

• PDS should be reformed by decentralising the procurement storage and distribution of food grains across the country particularly in dry land and rainfed areas. This should be the responsibility of state and central government.
• Emphasis on minor millets apart from rice and wheat should be encouraged for distribution in a decentralised manner in PDS giving pivotal role to Panchayati Raj Institutions.
• There is a need for expanding the PDS basket to include cereals, coarse grains with region specific coarse cereals, pulses and other essential commodities in rural areas to be provided at affordable prices.
• For targeting the PDS benefits, identification of BPL households should be done involving Gram Sabha at the village level. There is also need for identification of poverty zones for better targeting in bringing in transparency in identification of needy people.
• Quality of food grains supplied through PDS should be ensured at procurement, storage and distribution levels.
• There is a need to improve delivery system in PDS management at local level involving women SHGs and panchayats. Delivery system should be more sensitive to household vulnerability. It should be participatory to make it cost effective.
• To maintain transparency there is a need to have a food security committee at Gram Panchayat level.
• There is a need for strengthening vigilance and enforcement to check diversion and other deficiencies in PDS system.
• The PDS should maintain sustained supply system through FPS during a month. In a month poor should be allowed to lift his entitled quota in 3 to 4 instalments instead of with one go from fair price shops. This is because he lacks purchasing power and finds difficulty in arranging cash to lift the quota.
• The margin of fair price dealer should be enhanced to make it more viable.
• There is a need to develop decentralised community level food security system through local production, local storage and local distribution system.
• The department of food and civil supplies should be named as food security department at central and state government level to give importance to the food security.

Production, livelihood system and food security

• Food security goes beyond the supply and availability of grains. It should therefore, embrace associated securities like livelihood security, employment security, fodder security, fuel wood security and ecological security all of which are taken care in traditional farming systems which need to be encouraged.
• More than 80% of farmers are small and marginal farmers having small holdings. Their economic viability can be ensured only through integrated farming which diversified crop cultivation and live stock rearing. This would enhance employment and income levels of poor farmer and there by the food security will be ensured. This can be achieved by revival of agricultural extension system with agriculture, R&D systems, NGOs and community initiative.
• Dryland farming and wasteland development should become the focus of agricultural extension as an instrument of food security. Suitable input, credit, insurance, technology and marketing support must be a part of this package.
• Cultivation and marketing of minor millets should be encouraged on priority as it has the twine advantage of reducing pressure on water, which happens with water guzzling crops like paddy as well as providing better food security at the local level. It also offers the advantage of reducing the overall cost of cultivation especially when it is taken up in conjunction with animal husbandry and mixed cropping strategy.
• There is a need to encourage farmers to develop local seed variety in their areas rather than using hybrid seeds. There is a need to establish gene banks at village level and to promote organic farming to improve soil conditions in order to ensure food security.
• Watershed development approach is appropriate for integrating multi agency role in improving farm productivity, integrated farming system along with environment development will ensure sustainable food security in rural area.
• Rural credit system should not be viewed just as agricultural credit. It should be designed as a livelihood base credit system which includes both farm credit as well as credit for social consumption. To ensure proper flow of credit to the small and marginal farmers and most vulnerable groups, SHG approach has been found useful. In order to enhance the credit flow these SHGs can be federated into cooperative on small cluster basis to be supported by NABARD to ensure food production and food security.
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  In addition to food security, equally important is water security particularly in areas where people are totally dependent on ground water. The experience shows that no effective regulatory mechanism has been evolved to control over exploitation of ground water by the rich. Ground water being a natural resource should be shared by all, whether they possess land or not. It is therefore, necessary to evolve both legislative measures as well as community watch dog system to ensure optimum use of ground water and its proper distribution.
• In drought prone and water scarce areas cultivation of wet crops (like paddy and sugarcane) should be completely prohibited.
• Forests are also important source of providing livelihood to the tribals. The existing conservation laws restrict their access to minor forest produce thus affecting their livelihood system. It is therefore, necessary that forest conservation of laws should be designed in such a manner which will help in conservation as well as access to minor forest produce as a source of livelihood for tribals. In this regard JFM system with adequate awareness and capacity building of tribals and other forest dwellers should be improved.
• Market access to the small producers is one of the major constraints in the recent times, contract farming/ contract marketing and direct marketing have come up in some parts of the country. However, these systems have their own strengths and weaknesses. As an alternative marketing of agriculture and other commodities produced by the poor can be done through organising cooperative marketing system with involvement of SHGs.
• There are good number of people who are landless, assetless and their livelihood is based either on wage employment, or village community resources or on both. In order to strengthen their livelihood system the community resources, such as land, water bodies, village commons should be developed and be made accessible to poor landless families.
• In the wake of WTO and liberalised economy trade in agricultural commodities is likely to affect land market, cropping pattern, tenancy system and small landholders. In order to meet the challenges it is necessary that the small landholders be provided technology to produce high value crops, so that their income levels are enhanced and they derive benefit from the emerging scenario.

Awareness and capacity building

• Awareness and capacity building should focus on four important issues.
• Food & Nutritional security
• Awareness about optimal utilisation of natural resources to optimise their use for enhancing production and livelihood option for the poor within the overall environmental limitation.
• Awareness about WALTA Act prevalent in AP, Maharashtra & MP. Awareness about various government programmes which are for the benefit of the poor and their ability to get benefit from this.
• Awareness about emerging international trade in farming and farm based commodity under WTO regime. Farmers and other rural producers should have access to market information system, quality consciousness about their produce and opportunities available to them in the national and international market.

Important Measures required by the Government

• State & region specific welfare programmes with focus on food and nutritional security for the poor should be evolved and promoted.
• The Government extension network should be revamped to help small farmers for post harvest management of food grains, storage godowns at village level and processing so that wastage of agriculture produce which is nearly one fifth of the total produce could be minimised to ensure food security to the poor.
• Food for work programme and SGSY should be focussed on dry land and drought prone villages and other vulnerable areas with proper targetting of village poor.
• Establishment of national, state and district level food security management centres to monitor hunger and malnutrition and enforce food security measures.
• Programmes like Antyodaya Anna Yojana, Annapurna needs to be targetted properly.
• A stakeholder approach needs to be adopted by Governments in handling the issue of food security with participation of local community (Grama Sabha), PRIs, NGOs, departments of Agriculture, Civil Supplies and Health departments. Convergence and collaboration between various players within and outside government must be the strategy for the new policy.
• Coordination between various food-security schemes like PDS, Mid-day meal scheme, ICDS, etc., to be ensured through suitable coordinating mechanisms by the States

Dr. A.C. Jena
Seminar Co-ordinator