Food Problem in India
Food is a basic necessity and vital for human existence. India is beset with many problems. Food problem is one of them. India is a very big country & it’s population is very large. This adverse land-man ratio is posing food problem to the forefront of our national challenges in the coming decades. In fact, India is faced with the challenges of sustaining current level of food production, to feed its already vast and ever increasing population, let alone augmenting food production.
Causes of food problem: As
we have seen above, increasing population is the major cause of food problem.
However, there are a number of other reasons of food problem in India.
Every year India in losing
about 80 thousands hectors of its cultivable land due to housing, setting up
industries, school, college, hospitals, constructing roads and highways and
other infrastructural developments. Statistics show that if this rate goes on,
India will have no agricultural land after 2060.
Secondly, in this age of
tremendous scientific advancement, our agriculture system is still back-dated
and unscientific. Though India is a land of rivers and wetland, our agriculture
suffers from irrigation and water crisis, because it depends no nature for
water, and we could not develop a good system and network of irrigation.
Then, our farmers mainly
use unscientific and traditional tools and means of cultivation that hampers
our food production.
Our agricultural lands are
divided and subdivided and also highly fragmented. Agriculture yet faces more
setbacks from the want of required fertilizer supply, good seeds and sudden
unexpected nature disasters like flood, storm, excessive rainfall, drought etc.
Impacts of food
problem: Any decline o crisis in
food-production brings great distress to people, especially poor people and
seriously hampers economy growth of a country. The obvious result of food
problem is starvation, which in the long run, leads to famine. When there is a
crisis or problem in food production, its prices rise. As result inflation occurs,
this creates socio-economic problems.
Remedies: Food problem is
a serious one and in India sustaining food supply to increasing population is a
major challenge. Reasonably, co-ordinate and pragmatic effort a necessary.
Fortunately, India has steadily progressed in food production in the last few
years. But worrying truth is that India is not a food self sufficient country
and imports a huge amount of food grains every year.
India must find ways to
increase food production. We should go for hybrid crops from hi-yielding seeds.
We have to develop our cultivation system scientifically and ensure irrigation
fertilizers and insecticides. We can start contract-farming. Another important
step required is improving our land distribution system, preventing river
erosion and sustaining agricultural production in times of natural disasters.
And finally, the most important step is to control production explosion.
Recent research
reveals that the present world is not a food-surplus one, but a food-deficit
one, due to climate change, population increase and decline of cultivable land.
However, as there is no alternative of food for our survival, we must solve this
problem. Otherwise unprecedented and quite terrible disasters may fall on us.
