Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Per Capita Availability of food grains in India


Per capita Production and Availability:
When resources (especially Land) and technology constraints limit the aggregate food production, its negative impact on food security at the household and individual level can be minimized to some extent by the efforts on curtailing population growth rates within tolerable rates[1]. Another way to feed the ever-growing population is to achieve the higher fertility rates. Table: 3 presents the data of Yield Per hectare of major food grains in the country.
The fertility of wheat has shown considerable growth from 750 kg/hectare in 1953-54 to 1630 kg/hectare in 1980-81 and to 2281 kg/hectare in 1990-91 and 2708 kg/hectare in 2000-01. The yield per hectare of wheat was 2938 kg/hectare in 2010-11.
Food grains production trends according to major crops indicate non-uniform trends. The substantially higher growth rate of above 4 per cent experienced for rice during the 1980s has declined to 1.68 per cent during 1990s. Food grain production has been almost stagnant for more than 10 years and now there is a growing gap between supply and demand of food grains[1].The emerging trends in India’s food grains output can be seen in Figure:1 output has been fluctuating sharply.
The availability of food grains, derived from the accounting identity involving production levels, stock changes and trade balance, can be considered as a good estimate of the aggregate consumption, and in spite of the limitations imposed by the problems in obtaining stock changes. The average daily per capita availability of food grains in 1970s remained slightly at a lower level than in the 1960s, but the 1980s and 1990s witnessed a moderate improvement in the availability level[2]. Remember it also includes the grains spoiled in the godowns of FCI India. Table -4 presents net availability of food grains for various years from 1951 to 2010. It also includes data on availability of rice, wheat, other cereals gram, and pulses.
There is an improvement in the per capita net availability of food grains over the decades but one cannot notice any perceptible upward trend in the net availability. On the contrary, what one notices is the YoY variability in the availability. This may be due to fluctuations in area and productivity. During the 1990s both area and yield levels indicated a reduction in the variability due to increased production and huge stock position with the government. However it should be emphasized that physical access alone will not ensure the food security unless it is matched by economic access i.e. the purchasing power with the poor.
To ensure the economic access of the poor the government of India has come up with a very ambitious plan of providing food at subsidised rates to almost all the population. Government has introduced a National food security Bill in the Parliament on 22 December 2011 to ensure the adequate safety for 400 million poor. Let us now discuss some salient features of the bill.



[1] Badar alam Iqbal and Theo van Der Merwe”Food Crisis in India (A Review Article)”,Asian Journal of Agricultural Economics
[2] P.S.George(1999) op.cit. p 473


[1] P.S.George,” (1999) “Some reflection on Food security in India”, Presidential address delivered at 59th annual Conference of the Indian society of Agricultural Economists ,Vol.54, No. 4, 

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