CHAPTER 4 FOOD SECURITY (ECONOMICS CLASS 9)

1. What is food security?
The World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet dietary needs for a productive and healthy life.​This means availability, accessibility and affordability to all citizens.​

2. What is hunger?
According to the UN's Hunger Report, hunger is the term used to define periods when populations are experiencing severe food insecurity—meaning that they go for entire days without eating due to lack of money, lack of access to food, or other resources.

3. Seasonal hunger?
Seasonal hunger is the hunger that cycles around the harvest and sowing season of seasonal activities like agriculture. Seasonal hunger is found in rural areas in some cases and in urban areas also. This type of hunger exists when a person is unable to get work for the entire year. Seasonal hunger is prevalent in rural areas because of the seasonal nature of agricultural activities and in urban areas because of casual labour.

4. Chronic hunger?
It usually arises in connection with poverty. Chronically hungry people do not have sufficient money for healthy nutrition, clean water or health care. Hidden hunger is a form of chronic hunger. Due to an unbalanced diet, important nutrients are lacking, such as iron, iodine, zinc or vitamin A.

5. Social insecurity of food?
In many Indian households it happens that some members of a household suffer from malnutrition while others do not under the same conditions of physical and economic food accessibility is indicative of differential cultural access to food within households.​

In poor and vulnerable families women and girls eat food only after the male members of the family have consumed their food. Women are supposed to consume whatever is left for them.

6. Bengal famine of 1943, famine that affected Bengal in British India in 1943. It resulted in the deaths of some three million people due to malnutrition or disease.

While many famines are the result of inadequate food supply, the Bengal famine did not coincide with any significant shortfall in food production. According to the Indian economist Amartya Sen who himself witnessed the famine as a nine-year-old boy, the famine was the result of availability of food to all section s of the society. In other words, the distribution of the food supply throughout Bengali society was hindered primarily by economic factors that affected the ability of certain groups of people to purchase food.

7. Causes of Bengal Famine:
Sen demonstrated that the Bengal famine was caused by an urban economic boom that raised food prices, thereby causing millions of rural workers to starve to death when their wages did not keep up.Florence Nightingale pointed out that the famines in British India were not caused by the lack of food in a particular geographical area. They were instead caused by inadequate transportation of food, which in turn was caused due to the absence of a political and social structure.

8. What was responsible for Bengal famine?
The Bengal famine of 1943 estimated to have killed up to three million people was not caused by drought but instead was a result of a “complete policy failure” of the then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a recent study has said.

9. Public distribution system in India:
The Food Corporation of India (FCI) is a statutory body created and run by the Government of India. It is under the ownership of Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Government of India formed by the enactment of Food Corporation Act, 1964 by the Parliament of India.

What is the role of FCI
Effective price support operations for safeguarding the interests of the farmers. Distribution of food grains throughout the country for public distribution system. Maintaining satisfactory level of operational and buffer stocks of food grains to ensure National Food Security.

Minimum Support Price (MSP) is a form of government intervention to insure the farmers against a steep decline in the prices of their goods and to help them prevent losses. It is the minimum price set by the government for certain agricultural products. The farmers are paid a pre-announced price for their crops.

Issue Price - In order to help the poor strata of the society, the government provides them food grains from the buffer stock at a price much lower than the market price. This subsidized price is known as the Issue Price. There are about 5.5 lakh ration shops all over the country. Ration shops also known as Fair Price Shops keep stock of food grains, sugar, kerosene oil for cooking. These items are sold to people at a price lower than the market price. Any family with a ration card* can buy a stipulated amount of these items (e.g. 35 kg of grains, 5 litres of kerosene, 5 kgs of sugar etc.) every month from the nearby ration shop.

10. Government of India initiatives towards food security

In addition to PDS, various poverty alleviation programmes were also started which comprised a component of food security. Some of these programmes are: Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS); Food-for-Work (FFW); Mid-Day Meals; Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) etc. In addition to the role of the government in ensuring food security, there are various cooperatives and NGOs also working intensively towards this direction.