-The Hindu While there are well-equipped schemes to address malnutrition, funding and policy gaps are problem areas A few months ago, the Global Hunger Index, reported that India suffers from “serious” hunger, ranked 102 out of 117 countries, and that just a tenth of children between six to 23 months are fed a minimum acceptable diet. The urgency around nutrition was reflected in the Union Finance Minister’s Budget speech, as she referred...
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Indigenous food must be brought back to plates, say ecologists -Meenakshi Sushma
-Down to Earth Local food crops should be preferred over GM crops to address deficiencies, say experts at Bhubaneswar food sovereignty meet. A recent study has found that Gandhari saag, a leafy wild plant found in Odisha, can be a much better source of Vitamin A than golden rice, a genetically modified variety, which was being looked at as a revolutionary solution to check the vitamin deficiency. “Gandhari saag has 9 per cent...
More »Promoting pulses offtake via PDS and related policies -G Chandrashekhar
-The Hindu Business Line By converting a necessity into a virtue, the government has decided to release the large inventory of procured pulses to different States at a discounted rate for utilisation in various welfare programs. Necessity because the stocks continue to occupy scarce warehousing space and incur huge carrying costs. Also, the Centre thinks, warehousing space may be needed during the upcoming kharif harvest less than six weeks away; and of course,...
More »A way to manage falling prices of pulses -C Rangarajan & Shashanka Bhide
-The Hindu Business Line Procurement of the excess output vis-a-vis a normal year, rather than open-ended purchase, is a viable option A bountiful harvest that implies an increase in output may not always increase the nominal income of the farming sector, which is subject to the behaviour of input and more particularly output prices, which may sometimes move sharply. There can, therefore, be years in which there is a sudden and sharp...
More »Improve nutritional content of school meals to tackle stunting - Soumya Swaminathan and SV Subramanian
-Hindustan Times As per the latest National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau, which has been collecting data on diet and nutritional status of rural, tribal and urban populations for almost four decades, the calorie intake of children (1-3 years) in rural areas was only about 70% of their requirement due to shortage. In India, more than 4.8 crore children suffer from stunting, which means they are below the normal height range for their...
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