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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Agri-growth and malnutrition by Ashok Gulati, T Nanda Kumar & Ganga Shreedhar

Agri-growth and malnutrition by Ashok Gulati, T Nanda Kumar & Ganga Shreedhar

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published Published on Jun 29, 2010   modified Modified on Jun 29, 2010

India has been lauded for its remarkable overall economic growth of over 8% over the last five years. But despite this high and relatively stable growth, India's underbelly is soft. The agriculture sector is performing below expectations, with growth rate of around 2.8%, it is way below the Eleventh Plan target of 4%.

The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimates that 22% of India's population is undernourished. Child malnutrition is especially high, as National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3 ) data reveal that 48% of children under-five years suffered from low height-for-age (stunting ) and 42.5% from low weight-forage (underweight).

This raises some questions — is there no relation between economic and agricultural growth and malnutrition? Can better agricultural performance contribute to bringing down malnutrition levels?

In a preliminary effort to explore this, we map out the level of agriculture performance and malnutrition across some major Indian states to see whether states that have a higher level of agriperformance record better nutritional levels.

As agricultural growth shows high volatility at the state level for certain years, the annual growth rate of gross domestic product (GDP) from agriculture may not be a suitable indicator to assess the relation between agrigrowth and malnutrition.

Thus, rather than growth rate, we use another indicator of the level of agri-performance , namely its land productivity measured as the gross value of agriculture and livestock output per ha of gross cropped area (GVOAL/ha), which captures the growth performance in agriculture during previous years and also if the state has adopted high value agriculture as a means to bring prosperity to its rural people.

To weed out the annual fluctuations in the level of this agricultural prosperity, a three-year average is taken (pertaining to triennium ending (TE) 2005-06 ). To assess its relation with malnutrition, a malnutrition index is constructed from (1) percentage of underweight , stunted and wasted children under-five years of age and (2) percentage of thin men and women (aged 15-49 years; from the NFHS-3 data).

It is seen that there is a strong inverse relationship (coefficient correlation equals -0 .75) between the level of land productivity (or agri-performance ) and malnutrition across the states.

Kerala and Punjab, which have almost the highest value of agri-output per hectare also have low levels of malnutrition, while a state like Madhya Pradesh is at the bottom of value of output, and no wonder it is also lowest in nutritional status (See accompanying graph). This suggests that agricultural performance may be a necessary — but not a sufficient condition — to reduce malnutrition.

As malnutrition has multiple dimensions , a host of other conditions need to be in place in order to tackle this problem. One of the most critical factors for longterm and sustainable impact on nutritional outcomes is the level of women's education.

International Food Policy Research Institute's (IFPRI) research on 63 countries (during 1970-96 ) estimates that women's education accounted for 43% of the child malnutrition reduction during the period. Besides constituting roughly half the population, women take important decisions on family health, education and feeding.

Thus poor and ill-informed decisions have adverse consequences on child health, education and nutrition status, accompanied by a high risk of transmission of chronic malnutrition to future generations.

Some other important factors include improved access to safe drinking water, sanitation facilities and quality healthcare services and infrastructure, better implementation and coordination of existing nutrition interventions (especially those targeting children under-three years of age and pregnant women), better governance and non-farm income growth.

Nonetheless in order to work towards reducing the ‘curse' that is India's malnutrition problem, agricultural growth and development remains a critical and necessary factor. Dovetailing certain aspects of agricultural development and nutrition reduction strategies can be a critical step in the right direction.

One option at the sowing stage is the process of bio-fortification of crops with essential nutrients like iron, zinc and vitamin A, after suitable research, quality testing and trials.

Research by the IFPRI in Africa, Asia and Latin America indicates that developing and disseminating bio-fortified crops is a highly costeffective means of reducing micronutrient malnutrition. This can be quite relevant in India as micronutrient deficiencies are very high — for instance in 2005-06 , 69.5% of children and 71.7% of women had some form of anaemia.

Productivity growth via diversification into high value agriculture (fruits/ vegetables, fisheries, livestock) can also promote nutritional security. High value agriculture can firstly be instrumental in boosting incomes of farmers, especially small holders and womenheaded households.

Secondly it also provides more nutritious food for selfconsumption purposes. In order to preserve and even enhance this nutritional value, post-harvest activities like handling , transport, storage, processing, quality control and marketing become imperative , as they are easily perishable.

Finally, innovative solutions to address the nutrition problem are also necessary in the policy implementation front. For instance, to tackle the protein deficit, a more cost-effective and nutritious option is to use soya meal (which has 40% protein compared to 20-25 % in pulses), in food-based safety nets.

India has witnessed relatively high growth in soya crop — between 1981-82 and 2008-09 , production rose from 0.5 to 10.8 million tonnes — but most of the increased output has been used by the feed industry and exported.

Data from the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (NNMB) and National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) reveal only around 60-75 % of the protein requirement is met amongst people at the bottom 30% expenditure group, adolescents and pregnant /lactating women. Thus reconstituted soya flour can be sold through the public distribution system, as well as distributed in the mid-day meals scheme and Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme in cooked meals to enrich dietary intake.

(Ashok Gulati is the director-in-Asia and Ganga Shreedhar is a research analyst at the International Food Policy Research Institute . T Nanda Kumar is former secretary of agriculture, Government of India)


The Economic Times, 29 June, 2010, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6103949.cms


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