Table Of ContentPALGRAVE STUDIES IN
AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS
AND FOOD POLICY
Transforming
Food Systems for a
Rising India
Prabhu Pingali
Anaka Aiyar
Mathew Abraham
Andaleeb Rahman
Palgrave Studies in Agricultural Economics
and Food Policy
Series Editor
Christopher Barrett
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY, USA
Agricultural and food policy lies at the heart of many pressing societal issues
today and economic analysis occupies a privileged place in contemporary
policy debates. The global food price crises of 2008 and 2010 underscored
the mounting challenge of meeting rapidly increasing food demand in the
face of increasingly scarce land and water resources. The twin scourges of
poverty and hunger quickly resurfaced as high-level policy concerns, partly
because of food price riots and mounting insurgencies fomented by contesta-
tion over rural resources. Meanwhile, agriculture’s heavy footprint on natural
resources motivates heated environmental debates about climate change,
water and land use, biodiversity conservation and chemical pollution.
Agricultural technological change, especially associated with the introduc-
tion of genetically modified organisms, also introduces unprecedented ques-
tions surrounding intellectual property rights and consumer preferences
regarding credence (i.e., unobservable by consumers) characteristics. Similar
new agricultural commodity consumer behavior issues have emerged around
issues such as local foods, organic agriculture and fair trade, even motivating
broader social movements. Public health issues related to obesity, food safety,
and zoonotic diseases such as avian or swine flu also have roots deep in agri-
cultural and food policy. And agriculture has become inextricably linked to
energy policy through biofuels production. Meanwhile, the agricultural and
food economy is changing rapidly throughout the world, marked by contin-
ued consolidation at both farm production and retail distribution levels,
elongating value chains, expanding international trade, and growing reliance
on immigrant labor and information and communications technologies. In
summary, a vast range of topics of widespread popular and scholarly interest
revolve around agricultural and food policy and economics. The extensive list
of prospective authors, titles and topics offers a partial, illustrative listing.
Thus a series of topical volumes, featuring cutting-edge economic analysis by
leading scholars has considerable prospect for both attracting attention and
garnering sales. This series will feature leading global experts writing acces-
sible summaries of the best current economics and related research on topics
of widespread interest to both scholarly and lay audiences.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14651
Prabhu Pingali • Anaka Aiyar
Mathew Abraham • Andaleeb Rahman
Transforming Food
Systems for a Rising
India
Prabhu Pingali Anaka Aiyar
Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture
and Nutrition and Nutrition
Cornell University Cornell University
Ithaca, NY, USA Ithaca, NY, USA
Mathew Abraham Andaleeb Rahman
Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture
and Nutrition and Nutrition
Cornell University Cornell University
Ithaca, NY, USA Ithaca, NY, USA
Palgrave Studies in Agricultural Economics and Food Policy
ISBN 978-3-030-14408-1 ISBN 978-3-030-14409-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14409-8
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F
oreword
India poses some of the greatest puzzles in the world for agricultural econ-
omists and food policy analysts. How does a country with some of the
most selective universities in the world, and home to some of the planet’s
most technologically advanced companies, nonetheless have an agriculture
sector still surprisingly dependent on smallholders practicing rain-fed cul-
tivation using decades- or centuries-old methods? How is it that some of
the world’s wealthiest families live among the largest number of under-
nourished people in the world? How can some of the most logistically
sophisticated supply chains in the world coexist alongside agricultural
input and output value chains that routinely fail poorer farmers? These and
similar juxtapositions make the food systems of India especially fascinating
and complex.
The study of India’s food systems is valuable not just for educational
purposes, however. The prospective human well-being impacts of solutions
to the various obstacles that impede India’s various food sub-systems hold
enormous promise. For the past several years, the Tata-Cornell Institute
for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI), led by Professor Prabhu Pingali, has
been at the forefront of field-based, multi-disciplinary, rigorous scientific
research to unpack the complexity of India’s food systems and to identify
and evaluate prospective solutions. This volume shares with readers the
fruit of findings by TCI and its collaborators, along with what seem the
blueprints for many years’ efforts by them and dedicated others.
Professor Pingali and his co-authors, Drs. Anaka Aiyar, Mathew
Abraham and Andaleeb Rahman, use a Food Systems Approach (FSA) to
frame a fascinating exploration of the multiple mechanisms that leave a
v
vi FOREWORD
tragically large number of Indians malnourished. The integrative FSA lens
helps Pingali et al. weave together compelling evidence as to how a highly
successful agricultural research and extension system’s intense focus on
staple cereals—especially rice and wheat—has led over time to nutrient
imbalances in the food system that contribute to both obesity/overweight
and micronutrient (i.e., mineral and vitamin) deficiencies without fully
resolving the undernourishment challenge. They likewise explain how lag-
ging smallholder productivity growth interacts with poor sanitation and
lack of access to clean drinking water to compound the nutrient composi-
tion of India’s food systems and lead to widespread malnutrition amidst
plenty. They clearly explain how dramatic urbanization compels changing
institutions, structures and technologies in farming and in post-harvest
value chains, and how climate change is increasingly exerting similar pres-
sures. And social institutions and cultural customs, not least of which the
evolving roles women play in rural India, feature prominently throughout
the volume. At a time when the term “intersectionality” has grown popu-
lar in political discussions, Pingali et al. illustrate the concept’s power
when applied to the study of food systems in which biophysical, commer-
cial, cultural, demographic, economic and sociopolitical forces all intersect.
The diversity of experiences among India’s states—many the size of
independent nations elsewhere in the world in terms of both land mass
and population—mirrors what one observes within global regions such as
Latin America, Africa or Southeast Asia. Indeed, that immense diversity
poses a significant challenge to studying India; one always risks misleading
homogenization. The authors skillfully navigate between general descrip-
tions of national-level policies and phenomena and much more local,
state-level assessments of specific experiences. Pingali et al.’s diagnostic
assessment of appropriate goals and agendas for specific sub-national-scale
food systems avoids the sorts of vacuous statements that so often charac-
terize one-size-fits-all descriptions. Their analyses emphasize nuanced dif-
ferences among the vast nation’s sub-populations.
The careful analyses in this volume merit attention because the Indian
case is of global importance. Furthermore, the dramatic structural transfor-
mation India has been undergoing for the past half century offers instructive
lessons for the rest of the low- and middle-income world. Pingali et al.’s
systematic, FSA-based diagnostic method as well as their conclusions deserve
careful consideration by those working on similar challenges elsewhere in
the globe. The context of this book may be d istinctively Indian, but many
of the challenges the authors describe and the prospective solutions they
advance are remarkably general.
FOREWORD vii
It is a great pleasure to include Prabhu Pingali, Anaka Aiyar, Mathew
Abraham and Andaleeb Rahman’s outstanding book in the Palgrave
Studies in Agricultural Economics and Food Policy series. I recommend it
enthusiastically to all students of India, of the process of international
development, of food systems and human health and nutrition outcomes,
and of thoughtful, multidisciplinary research.
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA Christopher B. Barrett
P
reFace
Over the past several decades, India has witnessed consistently high eco-
nomic growth rates, often among the fastest in the developing world. The
country has made significant gains in reducing poverty levels, and its urban
middle class is projected to rise rapidly, both in terms of size and income
levels. Despite positive economic growth trends, the country continues to
struggle with malnutrition manifested in terms of high rates of child stunt-
ing and wasting that are substantially higher than other countries with
similar economic growth experience and at similar stages of structural
transformation. Even while India struggles to address the undernutrition
problem, emerging trends in overweight and obesity portend to a future
public health crisis in non-communicable diseases.
India’s food and agriculture policy have historically focused on enhanc-
ing supplies and access to staple grains, especially rice and wheat, and
thereby have had considerable success in reducing the incidence of hunger
in the country. While it is true that millions still suffer from hunger, imag-
ine what the situation would have been if the country did not invest in
productivity improvement for the major staples through the Green
Revolution. However, the laser focus on enhancing rice and wheat sup-
plies may have inadvertently resulted in the crowding out of the more
nutritious grains, such as millets and other coarse cereals, and pulses.
Staple-grain-focused policies may have also created disincentives for farm-
ers to diversify their production systems in response to rising market
demand for non-staple food, such as fruit, vegetables and livestock prod-
ucts. The imbalance in protein, vitamin and micronutrient supply in the
food system is a major cause of the high incidence of malnutrition in India.
ix
x PREFACE
Poor sanitation, lack of access to clean drinking water and low levels of
women’s empowerment are other proximate reasons for the persistence of
malnutrition in India.
This book provides a detailed assessment of the major paradoxes of the
Indian growth story, one in which we see the simultaneous existence of
regional inequality, rural and urban food insecurity, intractable malnutri-
tion problems and the growing incidence of overweight and obesity. We
examine the nexus of economic development, agricultural production and
nutrition through the lens of a “Food Systems Approach (FSA)”. Central
to our vision for a robust food system is a future where nutrition-secure
individuals have the capability and the opportunity to improve their health
through greater access to a balanced and healthy diet. In order to imple-
ment a holistic approach towards economic welfare and nutrition security,
we link the goals for agricultural development, health and nutrition and
economic development with each other. We bring together the latest data
and scientific evidence from the country to map out the current state of
food systems and nutrition outcomes. We place India within the context
of other developing country experiences and highlight India’s status as an
outlier in terms of the persistence of high level of stunting while following
the global trends in overweight and obesity. We discuss the policy and
institutional interventions needed for promoting a nutrition-sensitive
food system and the multi-sectoral strategies needed for simultaneously
addressing the chronic undernutrition and emerging over-nutrition prob-
lems in India.
This book is a major output of the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture
and Nutrition (TCI) at Cornell University. It draws on and builds upon
the policy analysis and learnings at TCI during its first five years. TCI was
established with a generous gift given to Cornell University by the Tata
Trusts, a philanthropic branch of the Tata Group. The endowment was
made possible by the vision of Mr. Ratan Tata, the former chairman of
India’s Tata Group and a Cornell alumnus from the class of 1962. TCI is
a long-term research initiative focused on solving problems of poverty,
malnutrition and rural development in India. It is specifically focused on
understanding and addressing the malnutrition conundrum using a multi-
sectoral and multi-disciplinary approach. TCI’s research and projects in
India consider the factors that influence both a household’s ability to
access food—such as income, employment and the ability to afford safe,
high-quality and diverse foods in sufficient quantities—and the individu-
al’s ability to absorb and utilize his or her share of the household’s total
