Fertiliser Reforms for Food Security

摘要

Food security continues to remain a major concern for the country. Food security not only means enough production of food grains but also, its affordability by large poor populace of the country. Food Security Bill introduced in Parliament will provide access to the 60 per cent of the country's population to meet its nutritional requirement. Simultaneously, it will increase the demand for food grains production. It is estimated that India would require additional about 40 million tonnes of food grains by the year 2020. Hence, there is need for increasing production of food grains and other agricultural crops substantially in next 5-10 years. Agriculture growth includes crop sector, live stock, fishery, etc. Crop segment constitutes about 70 per cent of total output of agriculture sector. Performance of this segment is vital for farm income, food security and price stability in the country. Unfortunately, Indian agriculture is not growing at the required pace. During Ninth and Tenth Five Year Plan, average agricultural growth was only 2.5 and 2.3 per cent per annum respectively. It has increased to about 3.2 per cent during the Eleventh Five Year Plan, but is still way behind the target of 4 per cent per annum. This underlines the urgent need for accelerating agricultural growth.