FOOD SECURITY IN INDIA

• About 26% of our people live below poverty line today who do not have enough money to buy essential food items, often not even for the first meal .
• One of the main reasons why food security has become an important issue today is the
  burgeoning population in India. India's present population in 1.3 billion. In terms of
  annual household demand, India can see a surge from 168.3 million metric tonnes in 1991 to 343 million metric tonnes in the year 2020. To be able to feed such a huge population, India needs to quickly augment its production and productivity.
• Furthermore, India seems to have entered a high growth trajectory in the recent times. For the past four years, Inida witnessed a growth rate of over 9%. As the economy grows, people earn more and one major consequence will be rise in consumption. This increased rate of consumtion usually gets confined to some pockets which lead the emergence of non inclusive consumption trends.
• In india, nearly 70% of the net cultivable land areas are rainfed and these have not
  benefited from Green Revolution of 1960's . Of this 70%, about 30% area is under dryland
  agriculture where the annual rainfall is upto 40cm. To achieve food security keeping in mind challenges of tommorow, there is a need to bring more and more areas under irrigation.
• To meet the growing demand from the bloating population, India needs to adopt a broad
  based approach. Areas under productio will have to be increased. This maybe done by
  implementing measures like rainwater harvesting, watershed development alongside improvement in irrigation facilities. Adoption of hybrid varieties , especially of transgenic variety of crops may lead to incresed production and productivity.