Food security and access to natural resources: a review of recent trends
Shah, A.
Economic and Political Weekly 32(26): A46-A54
1997
ISSN/ISBN: 0012-9976 Document Number: 271788
This paper reviews the empirical evidence on the changing patterns of food grain production in India during the post-reform period and explores the feasibility of ensuring food security by improving access to land among the resource-poor households. Two groups of important questions are posed and dealt with: (1) Is crop diversification merely a post-reform phenomenon? Has food grain production become more concentrated across regions? Is growth in food grain production inadequate/non-sustainable in the long run? (2) Does access to land ensure food security? Is it possible to provide access to private and community land to a large number of landless and semi-landless households? Will access to land induce the required investments needed for enhancing food production? The section after the introduction examines the trends to diversification and sustainability of food grain production across different regions of India. The next section provides a summary of the major findings, raises policy issues and highlights some of the imperatives for future policies. Overall it demonstrates that yield-based growth in food production has taken place in most states including dryland regions, that diversification is a larger process that had already set in before liberalization and that the shift from oilseeds to food grain production is essential for the economic sustainability of dryland farming.