Transforming Food Systems for a Rising India
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PALGRAVE 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 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019. This book is an open access publication. 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Cover illustration: Dinodia Photos / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland FOREWORD 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