Agriculture and Food in India

VIDEO

"India, despite its ambitions as an emerging economic giant, still struggles to feed its 1.1 billion people."

"Critics say Indian policy makers have failed to follow up on the country’s investments in agricultural technology of the 1960s and ’70s, as they focused on more glamorous, urban industries like information technology, financial services and construction."

"Indian laws and customs bar corporations from farming land directly for food crops. The laws also make it difficult to assemble large land holdings."

"Food prices are rising faster in India than in almost any other major economy — and faster than they did during the 2007-8 surge.

In December 2010, India’s food prices jumped 13.7 from the year earlier, while inflation for all commodities, heavily weighted by the food number, stood at 8.4 percent."

 "Food inflation hits especially hard here because Indians — most of whom live on less than $2 a day — spend a bigger portion of their disposable incomes on food than people in other big, developing economies like China and Brazil."

"And rural India has far too few temperature-controlled warehouses that could help farmers and the nation build up reserves as a hedge against poor growing seasons."

"Experts say India needs to make changes like some of the ones China made, beginning in the late 1970s, when it started investing heavily in agriculture and eased regulations on farming.

As recently as 1977, Chinese and Indian farmers harvested roughly the same amount of wheat for each acre that they planted. But by 2009, United Nations data shows that wheat yields were 1.7 times higher in China than in India."

"Anil Jain, managing director at Jain Irrigation, said India needs to help farmers invest. “Agriculture can grow at 6 to 8 percent,” he said. “But we have to create opportunity and income in rural areas.”"