The state of Indiaâ s food security is worsening by the year.

The cost of food items

is increasing rapidly, making them unaffordable to a majority of the people. Add
ed to these woes is the short supply of pulses and edible oils, which forces the
Central government to import them.
Pulses play a critical role in the diet of the people of India, where large sect
ions are vegetarians. Protein plays a key role in the human diet. It is the body
-building nutrient that develops muscles and is responsible for body strength, e
ndurance and productivity at the workplace.
It is established that a human body requires a daily intake of about 50 gm of pr
otein. While people in the developed countries and most of the developing countr
ies have a satisfactory intake of protein, in India the per capita daily intake
is only about 10 gm. This endangers health and work performance.
Proteins are amino acids. Out of the 22 amino acids required in the human diet,
the body supplies 14. The remaining eight have to come from food. If all the eig
ht amino acids are present in a single food item, it is called a complete protei
n food.
Since all proteins from animal sources are complete proteins, it is easy to meet
the dietary protein requirements of non-vegetarians. However, the main sources
of protein for vegetarians are leguminous plants â to which pulses belong. In genera
l, pulses have lower concentrations of protein than animal sources. Besides, non
e of the pulses â except soybeans â are complete proteins. Therefore, combinations of t
o or more pulses are needed in a vegetarian diet. Dairy products, which are comp
lete proteins, may also be used to supplement pulse proteins in vegetarian diets
.
Given the important role that pulses play in the human diet, their availability
needs to be increased indigenously. The common belief that without new high-yiel
ding varieties the country will have to continue importing pulses and edible oil
s to meet the requirements is not true.
The possibility of improving productivity per acre by an order of two to three t
imes using existing varieties has been demonstrated time and again in grower-fie
lds in India. However, it is not done just by following current production pract
ices but through the adoption of entirely new but simple and farmer-friendly tec
hnologies and tools that are now not available to Indian farmers.
The underlying problem of Indian agriculture that threatens food security is ext
remely low productivity. For example, in the case of rice it is only a third of
what has been achieved elsewhere. Cotton productivity is only a sixth of what ha
s been achieved in developed countries. The situation is no different in the cas
e of other crops. In order to progress, the mindset with regard to the following
two factors needs to change:
1. It is not the farmer who makes the food: he is only a facilitator. Food is ac
tually made by plants. Therefore it is important to understand the requirements
of plants and supply them without restrictions in order for plants to deliver fo
od. Since plants do not talk, their needs are understood through research and ex
perimentation. As indicated by Dr. R.S. Paroda, a former Director-General of the
Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), our agriculture scientists will
not by themselves be able to cope with the food security challenges that face t
he country.
The current policy of pampering farmers with subsidies will get us nowhere in te
rms of improving productivity. This is well understood not only in developed cou
ntries but also in developing African countries like Malawi. Malawi was a basket
case of poverty, malnutrition and food shortage. Crop productivity improvements
have taken it to the point where the country now exports its surplus food to ne
ighboring poor countries.
The lesson India has to learn is that instead of subsidising food supply to the
people, the plants need subsidised food such as fertilizers and other inputs in
order for them to produce the food to achieve food security.
2. The mindset that assumes that breeding is the solution to all maladies has to
change. Nurturing of plants is several times more important in crop productivit
y improvement than hybrid seeds per se. A hybrid variety will not produce if pla
nted in non-fertile beach soil. But it will produce several times more if plante
d in fertile soil.
Brazil learnt this lesson years ago and stopped financing breeding for new varie
ties. Instead, it scours countries around the world and selects promising variet
ies to test their adaptability to Brazilian climatic conditions and then provide
s funding just to do that. It has taken stem cuttings of black pepper varieties
from Kerala and spent money and effort on crop production practices. Now Brazilâ s pe
pper yield is 1,500 kg an acre compared to Indiaâ s average of 350 kg an acre, the lo
west among all pepper-producing countries.
India has about 50 million acres of irrigated land and is second only to the Uni
ted States with 60 million acres. In the U.S. it is possible to raise only one c
rop a year due to weather constraints. However, many areas in India have the pot
ential to raise three crops a year, provided we learn how to sustain the fertili
ty of the soil. This will be equal to 150 million acres of irrigated land. At th
e present time our system of monitoring soil fertility and maintaining it is fla
wed and needs urgent attention. We cannot just bury our heads in soil as ostrich
es may do.
Finally, we have facilities now in place in Tamil Nadu to adopt new crop product
ion technologies and tools, where crop productivity is routinely maintained at 3
00 per cent to 500 per cent more per acre than the average in India. We are now
in the process of developing infrastructure for the rapid propagation of these h
ighly cost- effective crop production technologies across the country.