How wheat imports and food security have become a necessity

As private bodies’ in the grain market jeopardise the population’s nutritional security, pressure builds on government bodies to maintain food stocks.

The need of the hour is a National Food Security Board.

THE pros and cons of wheat imports are now a matter of public, political, and media concern and debate. I have been quoted as both favouring imports and opposing it. Since this issue is a complex one with short and long-term implications, I would like to explain my personal position.

Government’s push for food security

The wheat import plan announced by the Government of India is in response to the need for maintaining adequate food stocks both for the purpose of food security and for feeding the public distribution system. Following the Wheat Revolution in 1968, Indira Gandhi decided to build a sufficient buffer stock of food grains under government control in order to ensure that the basic staples are available at reasonable prices even under conditions of unfavourable monsoon. She was also deeply conscious of the linkage between food security and sovereignty in foreign policy.

Maintaining adequate food reserves is an absolute must from the point of view of avoiding both panic purchases and famines, particularly at times when there are indications of aberrant monsoon behaviour. A few years ago, the Government of India had over 60 million tonnes of food grain reserves and substantial quantities were exported to reduce the cost of maintaining stocks of that order. There was criticism at that time that while we are exporting food grains, millions of children, women, and men go to bed partially hungry in our country. The situation was described in the media as “grain mountains and hungry millions”. Even now we have the largest number of malnourished children in the world. Only the grain mountains have disappeared.

Entrance of private players

The Minister for Agriculture and Food has explained that imports have become essential to build a buffer stock. Normally much of the surplus grain is bought by government agencies like the Food Corporation of India at the support price announced by the government. This year, private parties, including large corporations, have also entered the grain market and have been able to procure a part of the surplus grains at higher price. The farmers are certainly happy when they are able to get prices higher than the price offered by the government. However, this situation has led to a shortfall in procurement targets, necessitating wheat imports.

Maintaining food security for our over 110 crores of people is a fundamental obligation of the government. Fortunately, we have sufficient foreign exchange reserves and hence imports can be resorted to where there is no other alternative to replenish the buffer stock and operate the Public Distribution System (PDS). What is important is to draw appropriate lessons from this year’s experience and undertake the development of a long-term policy for home-grown food-based food security, where both the public and private sectors perform well-defined and mutually reinforcing roles.

Such a strategy should be designed to promote the availability of the staple grains and food commodities needed for nutrition security at the right time and place as well as at an affordable price. The private sector should develop its own code of conduct and should not give the impression that for short-term financial gains, the health and nutritional security of millions of children, women, and men are being sacrificed. There is a need for a transparent and well-defined code of conduct in the areas related to the purchase and trade of basic food grains. The nation as a whole must take pride in an effective food security system.

Farming productivity and poverty: the connection

There have also been adverse comments on the removal of 10 per cent tariff imposed on the import of pulses. In our country, the situation with reference to producers and consumers is different from those of the industrialised nations. Nearly 65 per cent of the consumers in India are also producers, many of them operating farms of 1 ha. (hectare) and below in size. Rural malnutrition is more widespread than urban malnutrition. Small farm families depend for their livelihood on income from the sale of whatever surplus quantities of food grains, vegetables, fruits, and milk they may have for the market. Pulses and oilseeds are predominant crops of rain-fed and dry farming areas.

Productivity is low since efforts in taking new technologies and seeds are poor or inadequate, although there is a huge stockpile of underutilised technologies including new varieties. If we continue the practice of importing pulses and oil seeds, dry farming areas will continue to languish in poverty and malnutrition. The linkage between low small farm productivity and the persistence of poverty and malnutrition is very strong.

Therefore, the sooner we revise our import policies in relation to pulses and oil seeds and divert our attention to helping the millions of farmers toiling in rain-fed areas, the greater will be the possibility of substantial reductions of hunger and poverty across the country. Whenever there is a good crop of pulses or oilseeds like the one in mustard this year, farmers suffer due to a lack of assured and remunerative marketing opportunities. The interests of the producer-consumers need greater protection than the interests of trader-importers.

The achievement of environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable food security or “food for all and forever” must be at the top of a national common minimum programme. The strategy for achieving this goal must be the result of a political consensus and should transcend political frontiers. It would therefore be useful to constitute a National Food Security Board chaired by the Prime Minister. In addition to the Food and Agriculture Minister, such a Board could include other Union Ministers concerned, a few Chief Ministers of food surplus and deficit States, leaders of political parties, food and gender specialists and representatives of farmers’ associations and the print, electronic and new media.

Such a Board can help to develop and implement an action plan for providing economic, physical, and social access to a balanced diet and safe drinking water to every child, woman, and man in the country. The National Commission on Farmers in its second Report submitted in the middle of 2005 has offered suggestions for bringing about a paradigm shift from food security at the national level to nutrition security at the level of each individual.

Looking towards rural India

To sum up, imports or exports of food grains may be necessary from time to time, but the bottom line of our import-export policies must be the livelihood security of both the farm and non-farm populations of rural India who constitute 70 per cent of our population. We are confronted with the need to safeguard the food security requirements of both resource-poor farmers and resource-poor consumers.

The bulk of such resource-poor farmers are small or marginal farmers and landless agricultural labourers in unirrigated areas. It is these linkages which need to be understood and attended to. The proposed National Food Security Board can attend to these complex linkages in a holistic manner and develop and implement a transparent national food security policy.