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Moderated e-mail conference on small farms and food security

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This is Mahesh Chander, again.

My comments relate mostly to Question 3.3.6 (i.e. "The importance of healthy, balanced, diversified diets is increasingly recognised (e.g. FAO and WHO, 2014). In view of this, some small farmers may undertake crop diversification or diversify out of crops into aquaculture and livestock. Developments may vary across different parts of the world. What are your observations? Also, do you think that in small farms the share of staples in the output is higher than in large farms?"):

The available reports by nutrition experts and economists suggest that in India, falling protein intake of rural Indians should be of greater concern than declining calorie consumption or rising fat content in urban diets. The low consumption of protein rich diets among rural Indians might mean that the majority of small scale producers are concentrating on growing grains like wheat and paddy or cash crops, ignoring legumes or keeping expensive pulses/legumes for marketing (rather than consuming self) to meet household requirements of cash incomes. This relates much to the food security policies of the concerned countries, which often emphasize grain production over protein rich pulses. The deficiencies of protein in diets have serious health  implications. The nutrition-sensitive policies being promoted by the FAO including some countries is one step in the right direction. There is growing impetus to pulses production in India recently due to rising prices of pulses. 

With this background, sensitivity to nutrition in farm production profile of households could be one of the criteria to judge the farms - whether they aim to meet food security or the nutrition challenge of the household or the country on the whole. The countries or the farms may be mapped for meeting food security or nutrition security or balanced, meeting both the requirements.

The last part of Question 3.3.6 also asks whether in small farms the share of staples in the output is higher than in large farms. There are references that small farmers contribute more to staples than pulses.

According to Birthal et al (2011), small farmers in India contribute to both diversification and food security, but they allocate larger proportion of land to rice and wheat than other farmers. In terms of production, small and marginal farmers also make larger contribution to the production of high value crops. They contribute around 70% to the total production of vegetables, 55% to fruits against their share of 44% in land area. Their share in cereal production is 52% and 69% in milk production. The Indian small and marginal farmers allocate lower proportion of land to pulses and oilseeds and only in the cases of pulses and oilseeds, their share is lower than other farmers. While there is self-sufficiency in staples in India, the government is compelled to import pulses and edible oils. This indicates that the concern has always been more on food security, especially at the level of small scale farmers, than nutritional security until recently when nutritional hunger is increasingly being talked about in India.

Mahesh Chander
Principal Scientist & Head, 
Div of Extension Education 
ICAR- Indian Veterinary Research Institute, 
Izatnagar-243122 (UP)-243122 
India
E-mail: mchanderivri (at) gmail.com
Mob: +91 9411087833
+91581 2302391
www.ivri.nic.in

Reference:
Birthal, P.S., PK Joshi and AV Narayanan (2011), "Agricultural Diversification in India: Trends, contribution to growth and small farmer participation", ICRISAT, mimeo. Cited in M.S. Dev (2012, http://www.igidr.ac.in/pdf/publication/WP-2012-014.pdf)

[Just a reminder that 2016 is the International Year of Pulses. See http://www.fao.org/pulses-2016/en/ for news, events, recipes, resources and much more...Moderator]

[To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] For further information, see http://www.fao.org/nr/research-extension-systems/res-home/news/detail/en/c/434322/ ].

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