The Good Food Fix

Context: Restore agriculture’s broken link with nutrition, by bio-fortifying staples consumed by poor and making essential non-staples affordable, provides a solution to India’s hunger problem.

Significance of Nutrition and Hunger Reduction:

• Foundational Objectives of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO): The FAO was set up in 1945 represented by 44 nation to raise levels of nutrition and improve production and distribution of food.
• Primary objective of agriculture: is to produce food that provides enough minerals and vitamins that sustain healthy human beings.

Problems associated with nutrition intake:

• Increased sickness, deaths and lower cognitive ability: 2 billion women and children in low and middle- income countries (LMICs) (including India) are at risk for vitamin A, iron, and zinc deficiencies.

• Low-quality diet due to economic constraints: The poor cannot afford to purchase sufficient quantities of vegetables, fruits and animal products and thus consume a large amount of staple foods.

Way Forward: Addressing the problem of hidden hunger: 

• Improve the densities of minerals and vitamins: Through bio-fortification done through conventional plant breeding. (Recently, the endorsement of eight bio-fortified crops is commendable.)

• Increase consumption of nutritious non-staple foods: (like vegetables, fruits, pulses, animal products)

•  Link bio-fortified staples to food-based welfare programmes: like Public Distribution System (PDS),  the Mid-Day Meal and Anganwadi as an integral part of National Nutrition Mission.
• Raising incomes and lowering the real prices: of non-staple foods.

• Increase the supply of nutritious foods:  by going for the right fertilizer strategies. 

• Nitrogenous fertilizers can increase the densities of proteins, minerals and vitamins in staple foods.

• Adding zinc and/or iodine to fertilizers will also increase the zinc and iodine density in grains.

• The evidence for the fertilizer strategies was developed under the “Harvest Zinc” programme in Turkey.

• Replicate Operation Flood: Programmes similar to Operation Flood( for milk) shall be launched for vegetables, fruits and pulses, while the current reforms in farm laws offer an opportunity.

Conclusion: Drawing attention to bio-fortified basic staples and linking it to public food programmes is an important step towards addressing the problem of Hidden Hunger.