Three dimensions of food security amid Covid-19 – Burning Issues – Free PDF Download

Why In News?

• The current national lockdown to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the problems of food, nutrition and livelihood security confronting a large number of rural people, in particular, migrants to Cities.

Context

• While some measures have been announced, such as provision of additional rice or wheat, some pulses and oil free of cost, as well as ₹1,000 cash for the purchase of other essential commodities through the Public Distribution System (PDS), we need to understand the different dimensions of food security in a holistic manner in order to address this problem in its totality.
• Food security is the combination of the following three elements:

1)Availability:

• It is dependent on food production by farmers. The harvest of rabi crops has been affected across states, despite the agricultural works being exempted from the lockdown, due to unavailability of farm labourers.
• But many of the inputs, including seeds, are expensive or unavailable, marketing arrangements including supply chains are not fully functional, pricing is not remunerative, and public procurement is also not adequate. 2)Access :
• Access to food is a function of purchasing power.
• Fortunately, the government, through the National Food Security Act (NFSA) and the PDS, has assured some additional food to every individual during this crisis.
• This should be further strengthened and the food basket widened by including millets, pulses and oil.
• Steps should also be taken to avoid hidden hunger caused by the deficiency of micronutrients in the diet.
• In light of the closure of schools and Anganwadi centres, and the consequent disruptions in the provision of midday meals or other nutritional inputs, it is important to pay attention to the life cycle approach advocated in the NFSA, particularly the first thousand days in a child’s life, when the cognitive abilities of the child are shaped.
• India might otherwise see negative effects on nutritional security in the medium to longer term.

Ensuring Job Security through value addition

• Food security and access to nutritious, good quality food is also contingent on job security.
• If job security is threatened, then so is food and nutrition security.
• This would of course mean some attention to and investment in new technologies that can contribute to biomass utilisation.
• A second pathway to livelihood security for small and marginal farmers and landless households, and women within them, is strengthening the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).
• Given the lack of jobs and incomes during the COVID-19 crisis, it is imperative to expand the definition of work in MGNREGA to cover skilled work related to farmers and their farming activities

 3)Absorption:

• The third dimension of food security is absorption of food in the body or its utilisation, which is dependent importantly on sanitation, drinking water and other non-food factors, including public health services.
• Ensuring that these services are functional depends on the capacities of the local panchayats and their coordination with other local bodies.
• The lack of adequate clean water, in particular, has come to the fore in both rural areas and urban slums in the context of COVID-19, where one of the key measures for stopping transmission relates to frequent handwashing.

 Food safety under threat of pandemic

• If we can ensure food availability, food access and food absorption, then we have a fairly robust system of food and nutrition security.
• It is very critical to highlight the linkages between agriculture, nutrition and health.
• While the PDS may be able to meet calorie needs, the inability to harvest, transport and market perishable fruits and vegetables at remunerative prices during the current crisis, has not just deprived farmers of incomes and livelihoods, but consumers too are deprived of micronutrients in their diets.
• Farmers making losses, and agriculture moving from being job-led to jobless, raise questions about the sustainability of the production cycle.
• At the same time, this can have long-term consequences on nutrition and health security.

Way Forward

• Through a combination of farmers’ cooperation, technological upgrading and favourable public policies in procurement, pricing and distribution, we can deal with the fallouts of the pandemic.
• We hope that this pandemic will help recognise the contribution of our farmers.

Additional Info

What is Food Security?

• Food security, as defined by the United Nations’ Committee on World Food Security, means that all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life.

MGNREGA

• The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), also known as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) is Indian legislation enacted on August 25, 2005. The MGNREGA provides a legal guarantee for one hundred days of employment in every financial year to adult members of any rural household willing to do public work-related unskilled manual work at the statutory minimum wage. The Ministry of Rural Development (MRD), Govt of India is monitoring the entire implementation of this scheme in association with state governments

Public distribution system

• India’s Public Distribution System (PDS) is the largest distribution network of its kind in the world.
• PDS was introduced around World War II as a war-time rationing measure. In 1960s due to food insecurity, the government set up the Agriculture Prices Commission and the Food Corporation of India to improve domestic procurement and storage of food grains for PDS.
• By the 1970s, PDS had evolved into a universal scheme for the distribution of subsidised food.
• In 1997, the government launched the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS), with a focus on the poor. TPDS aims to provide subsidised food and fuel to the poor through a network of ration shops.

 Mains Question

•  Food security involved the security of food in all three dimensions, availability of food, access to food and absorption of food. How far the food security act is effective in ensuring security in all three dimensions?

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