Understanding food choices to transform agriculture  

India’s success story of attaining self-sufficiency in food production faces sustainability hurdles due to fast-changing consumer food habits and preferences. The NITI Aayog, while dwelling on the issue, has come up with an interesting factsheet that calls for the focused attention of policymakers to the emerging trends. The “Working Group Report on Crop Husbandry, Agriculture Inputs, Demands, and Supply” published by the apex government think tank is a timely alert to all stakeholders, including the central and state governments, to revisit their policies and make necessary changes. Some of the key highlights in the report reflect the progress made by the country in food production and future trends. There is an increasing trend in total household expenditure, but the share of food expenditure in it has declined across all expenditure classes and in rural as well as urban areas. Secondly, the demand for cereals has declined due to changing consumer preferences for nutritious foods and also due to reduced energy requirements. Rice and wheat have increasingly been substituted for nutrient-rich cereals and maize. Further, the consumption of nutritional cereals has been shifting from lower expenditure classes to higher expenditure classes and from rural to urban areas, it states. Other trends observed in it are: the household demand for pulses and high-value food commodities, including fruits, vegetables, and animal-source foods, has been increasing faster compared to other food commodities, and the household demand for edible oils has increased significantly, with refined oil emerging as the most consumed edible oil. Synergies between farmers’ choice of food production and consumers’ food preference are crucial for the country’s agriculture to remain competitive. Failure to achieve it will only lead to the withdrawal of farmers from agriculture, the primary source of livelihood for the majority of the population, and migration to industrial and other sectors. A sharp decline in food production owing to such withdrawal will lead to more imports of food products to meet domestic consumer demand, which will make the sustainability of self-sufficiency in food production a daunting challenge. The report sounded the caution that food production is “sufficient to meet the normative demand,” but “the present level of food consumption is inadequate and imbalanced to meet nutrients’ requirements for a healthy life.” With the governments, both at the centre and in the states, striving for improvement in nutrition supplements through various flagship schemes and awareness drives, the demand for nutritious food is gradually increasing. Producers, traders, and other stakeholders who have updated and quality data on new demands are of paramount importance to making necessary changes in investment decisions. Another key projection made by the Working Group is that while current production of fruits and vegetables is short of their demand, the shortfall may remain in the future in the absence of a significant acceleration in their yield growth and area expansion. The Working Group has laid emphasis on land use planning and recommends that, given the disproportionate increase in demand for fruits, vegetables, pulses, edible oils, nutri-cereals, and maize compared to rice and wheat, it is important to evolve economically feasible cropping patterns suited to the resource endowments of different agro-ecological zones. It points out that the open-ended procurement of rice and wheat at minimum support prices acts as a disincentive for diversification towards high-value and riskier crops. A critical question that arises is whether the farmers are aware of the changing food preferences of consumers and are willing to grow alternative crops to tap the market. The onus to inform them lies with the agricultural departments. Withdrawing the incentives in the form of government procurement of rice and wheat is not going to ensure the shift. Without assured demand for the alternative crop, such a step will be a huge shock for the farmers and will push them out of agriculture. There are also other issues of the availability of inputs, such as fertilisers, for alternative crops at an affordable cost, so that investment remains within their capacity. The government initiative to reduce the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides and promote organic manure and bio-pesticides is a laudable move aimed at restoring and preserving soil health, preventing harmful impacts on health, and mitigatingthe impact of climate change on agriculture, but the production of organic inputs has not increased substantially to cater to the demand of farmers. States need to push these initiatives with substantial funding from their own budgets so that production of organic fertilisers and bio-pesticides can increase substantially to cater to the demand created by the new food preferences of consumers. The Mission Organic Value Chain Development in the North Eastern Region, a central sector scheme aimed at producing certified organic products and developing end-to-end organic value chains in the region, provides ample opportunities to boost commercial organic farming. Replicating commercial success stories is crucial to achieving optimal benefits but requires a robust data system on food choice, as recommended in the report.