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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Pulses and the zero hunger challenge -MS Swaminathan
-Financial Chronicle

Hunger has three major dimensions. First, is widespread undernutrition or calorie deprivation; second, there is inadequate consumption of pulses and other protein rich foods leading to protein hunger; third, the diet of the underprivileged sections of our society, normally deficient in micronutrients like iron, iodine, zinc, vitamin A and vitamin B12. If we wish to achieve the zero hunger challenge by 2025, we will have to pay concurrent attention to all these three forms of hunger.

2015 is the international year of the soil and pulses contribute, not only to human health but to soil health through improving the physics, chemistry and microbiology of the soil. Time is, therefore, opportune for concerted efforts to bridge the prevailing gap between potential and actual yields in pulses.

India is the leading producer and consumer of pulses. But for the nutritious pulse crops, protein hunger will be much more widespread in our country. Unfortunately, the per capita consumption is going down because of a gap between supply and demand. We are now importing nearly 4 million tonne of pulses from other countries. Recently the FAO office in Bangkok convened a meeting on improving the production and productivity of pulses, as a curtain raiser to the international year of pulses, which falls next year. The following nine point strategy suggested by me was adopted for action.

* Introduction of short duration and high yielding varieties

* Improved varieties with drought tolerance

* New niches, eg., chickpea in rice fallows and pigeon pea in rice-wheat cropping systems

* Seed systems and pulses seed villages

* Input supply, micronutrients and fertiliser

* Water harvesting and crop life saving irrigation

* Mechanisation both at the production and post harvest phases

* Remunerative support price and assured marketing

* Organisation of pulses panchayats

MSSRF is assisting the government of India in putting up a rice biopark at Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar. This is for value addition to the entire biomass. During next year, we should establish similar pulses biopark, where we can demonstrate how numerous market driven byproducts can be prepared from the plant biomass. This will also help to improve the income of farmers cultivating pulses, who normally live and work in dry farming areas dependent mostly on rainfall. As a part of its support to pulse production, govt of India should also support the establishment of a chain of pulses bioparks.

Our PM has announced that soil health cards will be provided to every farmer within three years. This will be helpful to ensure sustainable advances in farm production and productivity. The soil health card will become even more useful to farmers, if the card is tailored to the needs of a specific cropping system. For example, we are short of pulses like pigeon pea, chickpea, moong, urad, lentil and the price of pulses has gone up by over 60 per cent during the last year. As a consequence, protein hunger is tending to increase. 2016 is the international year of pulses. They are grown without irrigation and under low soil fertility conditions. This is why the average yields of most pulse crops are about 500 kg/h. Crops like arhar, which are grown in Australia from seeds obtained from India, yield over four tonnes per hectare. The import of pulses is increasing and now exceeds 3.6 million tonnes.

Pulse crops require more phosphorous in the soil. Therefore, the soil health cards, given to those cultivating pulses, should be designed to address the specific nutritional needs of these crops. The soil health monitoring and advisory service could be equipped to render specific advice to pulse crop cultivators on the nutrients needed based on soil testing. In other words, there has to be cropping or farming system based soil health cards, which could help the farmer to enhance the productivity of the conserved cropping/ farming system. From now onwards we should provide soil health cards for enhanced pulse production. We can then accelerate progress in bridging the demand and supply gap in the case of pulses and make the international pulses year purposeful.

I am happy that the procurement prices for major pulses like arhar, moong, urad, lentil and other crops has been increased by over 6 per cent by the government. This will provide incentive to farmers for increasing the area under pulses, which are climate smart and nutrition rich crops. At the moment, we are importing about 4 million tonnes of pulses annually largely from countries like Canada, Russia, Australia, Myanmar, Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi. India’s entry into the global pulses market enhances price volatility. Our average yields are low in most pulse crops. National demonstrations have shown that, there is a large gap between potential and actual yields. An urgent task during next year is the launching of a “bridge the yield gap movement”. This will require concurrent attention to the packages of technology, services such as provision of high quality seeds, nutrients and crop live saving irrigation from jal kunds and public policies relating to input-output pricing.

Another aspect of the decision for providing higher MSP for pulses is arrangement for procurement. In crops like wheat and rice, procurement by FCI or state food corporations or rice mills is done. Unfortunately, similar arrangements do not exist in the case of pulses which are mainly grown in dry farming areas. Therefore, we should give simultaneous attention to pricing and procurement so that, farmers are able to obtain a remunerative and assured price for these protein rich crops, which can make an immediate contribution to overcoming the widely prevalent protein hunger.

(The writer is an agricultural scientist who led India’s green revolution)