7. Production and availability of foodstuffs other than cereals
The status of basic food security, limited really to the availability of cereals, has been examined in quite some details in the earlier Chapters. The performance of the three most important instruments being utilised to improve access to food viz. the PDS, the JRY and the IRDP have also been dwelt with in some details. In this Chapter, it is proposed to undertake a brief review of the production and availability of the foodstuffs other than cereals.
It needs hardly any emphasis that malnutrition is a multi-faceted phenomenon and requires multi-disciplinary strategy to tackle it. It so happens that various elements of such strategy fall into different jurisdictional areas being handled by various Ministries in the Central and State Governments. In India, the Ministry of Agricultural has the overall responsibility of planning and producing the foodstuffs required for the country. It has many Departments within it. The Department of Agricultural & Cooperation is concerned with agricultural production including horticulture, fisheries etc. as also disaster management. The Deptt. of Animal Husbandry looks after all aspects of livestock management. Deptt. of Agricultural Research is charged with the responsibility of carrying out and coordinating research and transfer of research from laboratories to farms. The Min. of Food is responsible for all activities relating to foodgrains after harvesting. These include ensuring price support to growers, feeding public distribution system, guiding trade so as to function smoothly, curbing hoarding and speculative tendencies. Ministry of Food Processing Industry also plays an important role as it not only seeks to enhance income of growers but makes available nutrition all over the year through processed food items. The Department of Women & Child Dev. is concerned with nutrition policy. Ministry of Civil Supplies, Consumer Affairs & Public Distribution coordinates the activities of all Ministries in the matter of availability of essential commodities. The problem of nutrition is the concern of all these Ministries and effective convergence of their activities is a big challenge. The nutrition problem originates with what all of the required food items are produced, how lack of some can be tackled, the arrangement for the marketing and conversion of all food stuffs into edible form and ultimate consumption by people in required quantities and in appropriate quality. Any gaps in production, distribution and consumption should be a matter of concern for all policy makers. "This general problem of under nutrition should be seen as a part of a larger set of processes that produces and consumes agricultural commodities on farms, transforms them into food in the marketing sector and sells the food to customers to satisfy nutritional, aesthetic and social needs." (National Nutrition Policy, 1993). These processes are spread over the entire gamut of human activities with strong linkages between factors like resource endowment; technological attainments; investment capacities; price policies; cropping pattern and inter-se importance given to various crops; storage; marketing and processing infrastructure; growth of the industrial and scientific sectors and the health of the economy; the rate of growth of population and above all, the commitment of the Government and the political system towards improving the quality of life of all the people living in the country. In the ultimate analysis, the most effective yardstick is-whether the country is able to produce all the foodstuffs required for the nutritional well being of all its people on a sustained basis and if not, whether it has the wherewithal to procure by import what it does not produce or produces in inadequate quantity. As far as India is concerned, it has already been established that it has been able to produce all the cereals it requires and now we can examine the production and availability of the foodstuffs, other than cereals. Their availability is as important as that of cereals because various nutrients required come from different foodstuffs and human potential cannot be optimised, without intake of various food items.
The data about other foodstuffs is, unlike cereals, not available uniformly since the independence of the country. However, whatever data is available in various statistical publications of the Ministry of Agriculture, will be used to examine the status and progress of production and availability of some of the more important foodstuffs like pulses, fish, milk, oils, sugar etc. and the same is analysed hereinafter to examine the trend of their production and availability.
Pulses
As far as pulses are concerned, the picture has been rather unsatisfactory. In the decade between 1950-51 and 1960-61, the production of pulses jumped by more than four million tons, an increase of 51 percent or 5 percent per annum. This came about both by increase in area (3.39 million hectares or 16.8 percent in the decade) and increase in per unit production (441 kg per Ha to 539 kg per Ha i.e. an increase of 22 percent during the decade). During the next two decades, the production declined to 10.63 million tons, area as well as yield declining in 198081 due to unfavourable monsoon rains. During the next decade i.e. ending 1990-91, the production reached a high of 14.06 million tons, area and yields both registering an upward increase. There was again a decline to 12.02 and 13.60 million tonnes during 1991-92 and 1992-93. It is expected the production will go up to 14.8 million tonnes during 1993-94. The per capita availability of pulses has, therefore, been showing sharp fluctuations, the extent and spread of monsoon rains greatly determining the production by influencing both area under pulses and yields. Against the requirement of 50 gms per capita per day, the availability has been as shown below:
Table 19 AVAILABILITY OF ALL PULSES
Year |
Availability (gms/capita/day) |
1951 |
60.70 |
1961 |
69.00 |
1971 |
51.20 |
1981 |
37.40 |
1991 |
29.70 |
Source: Economic Survey, 1993-94
It is apparent that production of pulses has been at best stagnating and its availability has really shown a decline. Although pulses have been on Open General Licence for imports even during the stricter IMPEX policy, the annual imports of pulses never exceeded one million tons. Thus imports would have only marginally improved the per capita availability. Net imports of
pulses have been added to the production to work out the per capita availability in the table above. In view of the urgent need to raise production of pulses in the country and reach self -sufficiency, pulses were brought under the Technology Mission in August 1990. Two special schemes, namely, National Pulses Development Programme (NPDP) and Special Pulses Development Programme (SPDP) have also been taken up for implementation since 1990. Serious efforts are being made in the area of R & D so that high yielding varieties, both for irrigated and dry farming, could be evolved and popularised. The increasing trend in production seen since 1990-91 augurs well for the country but lot of ground is yet to be covered. Even though increase in the production of fish, eggs, milk and milk products has added to availability of protein, pulses are going to continue as the single most major source for supply of protein. In fact, this poor man's protein has such importance in the diets of Indians that a meal is commonly called Dal-Roti (pulse plus flattened bread) or DalChawal (pulse plus rice). Increasing the production of pulses, is thus a big challenge for the Indian agriculture.
Fish
Fish production has gone up substantially as can be observed from Table No. 20:
Table 20 PRODUCTION OF FISH (INLAND + MARINE)
(In million tons) | |
50-51 |
0.75 |
60-61 |
1.160 |
70-71 |
1.756 |
80-81 |
2.442 |
90-91 |
3.386 |
91-92 |
4.157 |
92-93 |
4.365 |
93-94 |
4.572 (Estimated) |
Source: Food Statistics, Min. of Agriculture
The production of fish, taking together inland and marine fishery, is thus steadily rising and for the latest available three year period, it has gone from 3.386 million tonnes in 1990-91 to 4.572 million tons in 1993-94. No specific RDI has been prescribed with respect to the fish (refer Table No. 5) but its availability will certainly contribute to the overall dietary intake, especially in respect of protein, oil and some other micro nutrients.
Mutton
Production of meat, from all sources has increased more than five-fold between 1971-1992 as can be seen from Table No. 21.
Table 21
Year |
Production of meat |
1971 |
0.76 |
1981 |
0.91 |
1985 |
1.17 |
1990 |
3.72 |
1991 |
3.84 |
1992 |
3.90 |
Source: Food Statistics, Min. of Agri.
The availability of meat has thus, shown a steadily increasing trend. This increased availability would make up for decline in per capita availability of pulses and at the same time provide more easily absorbable protein to body.
Milk
It has often been said that India has recently gone through a white revolution. The "Operation Flood" strategy of cooperativising the entire milk production programme not only paid rich dividends in Gujarat State but was duplicated in many other States successfully. There has been good progress in cross breeding of cows and provision of extension as well as veterinary services. This, coupled with entry of private sector in the dairy industry, starting from captive hinterland, has resulted in sharp increase in milk production, especially from 1990-91, as can be observed from Table No. 22.
Table 22 MILK PRODUCTION IN INDIA
(In Million tonnes) | |
1950-51 |
17.0 |
1960-61 |
20.0 |
1980-81 |
31.6 |
1985-86 |
44.0 |
1990-91 |
53 9 |
1991-92 |
55 7 |
1992-93 |
57.8 |
1993-94 |
60.8 |
Egg Production
Impressive progress has also been made in poultry and production of eggs, as can be seen from table below:
Table 23 Production of eggs.
(In million Numbers) | |
80-81 |
10060 |
85-86 |
16128 |
90-91 |
21115 |
91-92 |
21984 |
92-93 |
22913 |
93-94 |
24440 |
Source: Deptt. of Animal Husbandary, Min. of Agriculture
In order to further increase production of this commodity, which is becoming very common even amongst poor household, especially amongst slum dwellers, labourers and migrant labourers, a number of poultry estates are planned to be set up. Tremendous progress has been made in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, which now supplies eggs to at least half of the country. Similar progress is sought to be duplicated else where.
EDIBLE OILS
India has been importing edible oils on regular basis from 1980-81 to 1990-91. The annual imports were as high as 1.6 million tons in 1983-84 and touched a peak of 1.8 million tons in 198788, when the drought had badly reduced the production of oilseeds. However, in the meantime, India had launched a Technology Mission on Oilseeds in May 1986 to harness latest technology in all aspects of oil production, starting with production and going on to processing and marketing. Schemes like price support operations and market intervention were also started. A special Oilseeds Production Programme (OPP) is also being implemented in 324 districts in 21 oilseeds producing states in the country. The programme covers nine oilseeds. The results were quite dramatic. The dependence on imports started getting reduced after 1987-88. In 198889 the production of nine oilseeds jumped to 18.03 million tons from 12.63 million ton in 198788. It remained at the high levels in the subsequent years and crossed the 20 million tonnes mark during 1992-93. Import of oils correspondingly dropped to 0.32, 0.53 0.23 and 0.10 million tons in the period 1989-90 to 1992-93.
Even though the availability of edible oils has improved dramatically in recent past, it is still short of nutritional requirements. During 1993-94, the domestic requirement ~ 7.53 kg./ capita/year, works out to 6.84 million tonnes but production is expected to be only around 6.17. Even though import of edible oil has been out under OGL. the shortfall in availability during current year is expected to be even more than what it was during 1993-94. In earlier years also, there was a shortfall. This shortfall is duly reflected in consumption data.
Sugar and Jaggery
Sugar and jaggery are important sources of energy, especially in rural areas. In urban areas also, the poor migrant families working at construction sites and moving from place to place along with shift of work or living in slums have started taking bread and tea for breakfast in a big way. In fact, very sweet tea is not only a glass that cheers but provides energy for the tough work these migrant labourers do. In urban slums too this brew is very popular. We can study the progress made in production of sugar and jaggery by examining the sugarcane production. It exhibits an increasing overall trend even though there have been sharp fluctuations as can be seen from the table below:
Table 24 PRODUCTION OF SUGARCANE
(In million tonnes) | |
1989-90 |
225.6 |
1990-91 |
241.0 |
1991-92 |
254.0 |
1992-93 |
230.8 |
1993-94 |
231.0 |
Source: Economic Survey 1993-94.
Per capita consumption of sugar has steadily been going up from 2.5 kg./capita/year to reach 13 kg. during 1991-92. In fact, on the basis of ICMR norm of 31 gins/capita/day, the annual consumption should be only around 12 kg. This indicates excess consumption of sugar, which is not such a nutritious item (containing only energy).
Potato, Sweet Potato and Tapioca
These are important supplements to food intake for poor people, especially the tapioca. As can be noticed from the table below, while the production of potato has made a quantum jump since country's independence, whatever data is available for sweet potato and tapioca indicates a stagnation in the production of these two food items. Of course, potato received lot of attention from research and extension workers and it has now become an important cash crop with huge production in some areas creating problems of surplus, notwithstanding establishment of a number of cold storage. Sweet potato is grown only as a risk crop on rain fed marginal lands and tapioca is popular in only a few states. The position regarding production of potato is shown in the table below:
Table 25 Production of Potato
(In million tonnes) | |
1950-51 |
1.66 |
55-56 |
1.86 |
60-61 |
2.72 |
85-86 |
4.08 |
70-71 |
4.81 |
75-76 |
7.31 |
80-81 |
9.67 |
85-86 |
10;42 |
90-91 |
15.25 |
FRUITS
It is only recently that serious attention is being given to improve production, processing and marketing of fruits. At the central level, the National Horticulture Board has been set up to coordinate all the activities and give the necessary push to all the horticulture related activities. As per the Board, the production of fruits has been as under:
Table 26 Production of Fruits
Year (In million tonnes) | |
1989-90 |
28.24 |
1990-91 |
28.36 |
1991-92 |
32.07 |
It appears that production of fruits registered a quantum jump in 1991-92 and it is hoped that this progress will be maintained. Availability of fruits will greatly help in improving the nutritional status of people, especially children, who tend to get a bigger share of fruit consumption within the family.
