Food Resource in India

Every living being needs food resources to live. Food resources consists of plants, agriculture, fisheries and animal husbandry. India has around 700 million people and more who depend upon agriculture for food production. The amount of land dedicated to food grain cropping has gone up over the years. The total land use for agriculture is around 170 million hectares. Around 12 million hectares of land is used as meadows and pastures and are utilized for animal husbandry. 

Animal husbandry also provides food resources as meat, milk, Egg, leather, woolens, etc. in India, goat meat is preferred with contribution of 57% or more to the total meat output in country.

Fisheries in India is also an important food resource. Both aqua and captured fisheries are practiced. In parts of Bihar, Assam, West Bengal, Orissa etc. such practices are more. About 40% of the total harvest comes from inland fisheries which could which consist of freshwater fishes. India also consist of 6000 km of coastline. Its exclusive economic zone consists of 2,000,000 km² which have fishes and other useful animals. The total potential of marine fisheries in India is about 3,900,000 tons per year net. 

Today India has the world’s largest dairy herd at over 304 strong and stand finest in milk production with 176.3 million tons of milk produced in 2017-18, at an average growth rate of 4.5 percent. India is the third largest egg producer in the world with 84 billion Egg production for the year 2017–2018 translating to a per capita egg consumption of 63 egg p.a. and market size of ₹.420 billion.

World Food problems include complex interaction among population growth, poverty, food production etc. Population in the world is growing at a faster rate. Producing food at higher rate than population will not solve this problem. Chronic hunger and famine are due to lack of access of food. In India there is a shortage of cultivable land farms and crop plants are very small. Poor agricultural practices are used. 194.4 million people are undernourished in India. By this measure 14.5% of the population is undernourished. It is ranked 103 out of 119 countries under the Global Hunger Index.

It thus stands at an average pedestal from the standpoint of food production. While it is acclaimed for an abundant food resource production, it still lags in feeding the mouths of the population severely. India has a long way to ensure food security and sustainable modern practices of agriculture.