Traditionally the concern over food security was looked upon as a simple relationship between quantities of food produced vis-à-vis the world population. Rev Thomas Robert Malthus, way back in 1798, was one of the first people to study the relation between world population and food. According to Malthus, human population, if left unchecked, grows in geometric progression, while food supply grows only in arithmetic progression. Thus according to the Malthusian thinking, population growth will sooner or later outgrow the food supply.

To predict future availability of food it is not just enough to project population to forecast demand. One also needs to know the rate of income growth and have good estimates of evolution over time of how food expenditure changes as income rises. The modern definition of food security not only includes food availability, but also has additional elements such as economic access to food and the biological absorption of food in the body. Food security is “...when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life…”

The United Nations 2001 report indicates that the world population will grow from 7.2 billion (2015) to 9.3 billion (2050). In India, the projections indicate that population will be 1.5 billion by 2050 which will only increase the demand for an already stressed food production. The population explosion has also affected the per capita availability of agricultural area. This has far reaching impact on agricultural productivity and thus food security.

Food availability is an important component of food security. The composition of food consumption is estimated to remain unchanged and continue to depend on a relatively few number of traditional food commodities such as cereals and grains, has been stagnating over the past few years. Food availability is also dependent to a large extent on the regional flow of food supply. The global distribution of population is not even — nearly 51% of the global population is concentrated in the developing and underdeveloped countries. Unfortunately, the distributions of global food does not correspond to the global distribution of population.

Access to the available food is also an important aspect of the demand side of food availability. Accessibility to food is another term for the capacity of people to purchase the available food. It is directly dependent on the level of income and prosperity of nations. Greater food security, however, is not just about cost, choice and access to supplies; it also is about the ability to pay. Worldwide, some one billion people in 70 of the lower income countries are hungry, and the situation could grow worse in the poorest countries. Reducing poverty is a major key to food security. Today, about half the world’s population — three billion people — live in abject poverty. Roughly three-fourth of these poor people live in rural areas dependent upon agriculture. No country that has raised the majority of its people out of poverty has done so without attacking the causes of rural poverty.

Food consumption patterns constantly undergo changes, primarily driven by income levels. It is generally observed that as the per capita income increases in countries, the general food consumption pattern also undergoes a change. In low-income countries, the daily consumption of food is about 2000 calories on average, with around 70-75% of food consumed being cereals and pulses. As the per capital income rises, higher protein items such as milk, eggs and meat increasingly enter the food consumption profile. This shift also needs to be taken into account to ensure food security.

The major challenge to food security in the world is its underdeveloped agricultural sector, characterized by several environmental problems through over exploitation of natural resources like soil, water, forest, atmosphere and the genetic base, which put together has led to a fragile ecosystem. Water and air pollution due to indiscriminate use of agrochemicals such as inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, soil degradation, depletion of soil fertility and extinction of plant species are among the glaring problems that raise question about the feasibility of the technology being currently pursued to meet the challenges of current and future food demand, which are the foundations for both food security and environmental sustainability.

The constant increase in the demand of the burgeoning population for food, fodder, fuel and shelter puts a tremendous pressure on our land resources, always resulting in a continuous decline of the cultivable land area at a very fast rate. Among the different processes responsible for land degradation, erosion of soil (through water and wind) is the most destructive. Efficient land resource management needs to be given adequate attention to increase the productive capacity of land and to prevent it from deterioration.

Shifting cultivation that involves clearing a patch of forest land, cultivating it for two to three years and then abandoning it for 10-20 years to allow the natural forest to grow back and the soil to regain its fertility, helps in retaining useful trees and plant varieties. The jhum cycle, as it is called, practises conservation, taking care of the ecological balance. However, with the population pressure, communities wanting to grow more food have cleared greater chunks of forestland and returned to the fallow plots much sooner, resulting in soil degradation, fall in yield, lower returns, and reduction of green cover.

Agriculture singularly remains the dominant user of water resources and the gap between population growth and demand for water has also increased: as the world becomes richer and more industrialized, each person in it has been using more water. The measures that can be adopted for recommended production technology and crop planning is to increase water use efficiency, crop diversification, integrated watershed development, artificial recharge of ground water, etc.

Despite the fact that an extensive use of fertilizers and effective control of pests and insects through pesticides has been largely responsible for a quantum jump in agricultural production, their injudicious use has given rise to a number of environmental issues. Increased pesticide use has been seriously endangering the environmental sustainability and hence, an integrated approach to pest management is needed to make the agriculture eco-friendly. With increasing awareness on the ill effects of pesticides however, and the increasing popularity of genetically modified food, a decreasing trend in the extent of pesticide use has been gradually observed.

Genetically modified (GM) foods promise to meet the growing need of the population, which may help in improving food availability, nutritional quality and shelf life of harvested produce, and in developing plants resistant to insects, pests, disease pathogens and herbicides. However, as is true with all innovations and changes involving complex systems, there will always be trade-offs. GM crops have attracted many critics because of their potential impacts on biodiversity, toxicity to non-target organisms, cross-resistance in pests, the higher price of seeds and foods, monopoly of companies, patent and regulatory approval, and safety to consumers. The debate about its advantages and disadvantages continues.

Existence of the strains with vast genetic diversity within the same crop species provides basis for crop improvement. According to agricultural scientists at least 166 food crops have originated in India, including rice, pigeon pea, turmeric, ginger, pepper, etc. However, enormous exploitation of the forest resources for human activity has given rise to loss of valuable gene pools of different crop species including their wild relatives.

This erosion of agricultural biodiversity threatens the long-term stability and sustainability of agriculture itself in many ways. Firstly, it erodes the genetic base on which scientists depend for continuous improvement of crops. Secondly, by opting for high yield varieties, farmers become increasingly dependent on the industry dominated market and the government.

For every human being, today is a reality and tomorrow is a possibility meaning the hungry need food today and not just promises for tomorrow. To overcome this problem we have to produce more crops but produce it differently in a manner that high yields can be obtained in perpetuity without associated ecological or social form. Awareness for food security has to be spread and there is a need for greater research in the field of breeding crop varieties.

The biggest question remains to be answered is: Can we feed a growing population with biologically diverse agriculture? And can farmers achieve livelihood security through diversity? It is evident that there is great potential to increase and sustain food production through a mix of strategies to revive diversity. Hence it is not a question of ‘feeding the world’ but ‘keeping the world fed’ wherein lies true food security.

Ranjit Borthakur and Dipak Kripalani