What is the issue?
- India is ranked 102 in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) out of 117 qualified countries.
- There is an urgent need to improve the GHI ranking by improving India’s Agro-biodiversity.
What is the current situation?
- Hunger is defined by caloric deprivation; protein hunger; hidden hunger by deficiency of micronutrients.
- Nearly 4 out of 10 children in India do not meet their potential because of chronic under nutrition or stunting.
- This leads to diminished learning capacity, increased chronic diseases, and low birth-weight infants from malnourished parents.
- The global nutrition report pegs 614 million women and more than half the women in India aged 15-49 as being anaemic.
Why agro-biodiversity is crucial?
- Agro-biodiversity (diversity of crops and varieties) is crucial in food security, nutrition, health, and agricultural landscapes.
- It helps nutrition-sensitive farming and bio-fortified foods.
- Out of 250,000 globally identified plant species, about 7,000 have historically been used in human diets.
- Only 30 crops form the basis of the world’s agriculture and just 3 species of maize, rice and wheat supply more than half the world’s daily calories.
- Genetic diversity of crops, livestock and their wild relatives, are fundamental to improve crop varieties and livestock breeds.
- Without the rich genetic pool, we would not have thousands of crop varieties and animal breeds.
- India is a centre of origin of rice, brinjal, citrus, banana and cucumber species.
- In India, over 811 cultivated plants and 902 of their wild relatives have been documented.
- India’s promising genetic resources include rice from Tamil Nadu, Assam and Kerala; wheat and mushroom from Himachal Pradesh; and rich farm animal native breeds.
What are some global initiatives against hunger?
- UN SDG - The UN Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2) advocates for Zero Hunger.
- Aichi Biodiversity Target - It focuses on countries conserving genetic diversity of plants, farm livestock and wild relatives.
- It emphasises that countries develop strategies and action plans to halt biodiversity loss and reduce direct pressure on biodiversity.
What is ‘Nutrition Garden’?
- The Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) brought out school ‘Nutrition Garden’ guidelines.
- It encourages eco-club students to identify fruits and vegetables best suited to topography, soil and climate.
- These gardens can give students lifelong social, numerical and presentation skills, care for living organisms and team work, besides being used in the noon-meal scheme.
- Students also learn to cultivate fruits and vegetables in their homes and this could address micronutrient deficiencies.
What are the CEBPOL’s recommendations?
- The Centre for Biodiversity Policy and Law (CEBPOL) came out with recommendations to increase India’s agro-biodiversity in 2019.
- These include a comprehensive policy on ‘ecological agriculture’ to enhance native pest and pollinator population providing ecosystem services for the agricultural landscape.
- Promoting the bio-village concept of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) for ecologically sensitive farming.
- Conserving the crop wild relatives of cereals, millets, fruits and nuts, vegetables, etc. for crop genetic diversity healthier food.
- Providing incentives for farmers who are cultivating native landrace varieties and for those who conserve indigenous breeds of livestock and poultry varieties.
- Encouraging community seed banks in each agro-climatic zone so that regional biotic properties are saved and used by new generation farmers.
- Preparing an agro-biodiversity index, documenting traditional practices through People’s Biodiversity Registers, identifying Biodiversity Heritage Sites under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.
- Strengthening Biodiversity Management Committees to conserve agro-biodiversity and traditional knowledge.
- Developing a national level invasive alien species policy and prioritising problematic species based on risk assessment studies.
What could be done?
- Loss of crop genetic resources is mainly a result of adopting new crop varieties without conserving traditional varieties.
- Similarly, there are concerns on high output breeds for production of meat, milk and egg.
- The consumption pattern and culinary diversity must be enlarged to increase India’s food basket.
- The indigenous crop, livestock and poultry breeds should be conserved.
- For this, it is recommended to mainstream biodiversity into agricultural policies, schemes, programmes and projects to achieve India’s food and nutrition security and minimise genetic erosion.
Source: The Hindu
