The rise of food prices in India today remains insufficiently analysed in terms of food security. Years ago Amartya Sen, in his “Capability Theory”, explained famines not only by a lack of food availability but also by social and economic factors. According to him, famines occur when vulnerable populations can no longer access available food due to a lack of means. This theory remains valid today in India where undernutrition is primarily a function of households’ financial resources. But in the future, food security may also be challenged in quantitative terms because of climate change.
Key factors of undernutrition
In today’s India undernutrition is partly due to one of the contradictions of the Green Revolution. Certainly, this “revolution” has resulted in a rapid increase of the production of foodgrains (rice, wheat, and pulses) – 2.5% per year from 1950 to 2007, while the population increased by 2.1% per year. As a result, India began to export rice and even wheat. But India continues to suffer from chronic undernutrition partly because the Public Distribution System gives cereals – the key products of the Green Revolution – to the poor and not enough pulses, fruits and vegetables. This paradox was noted as early as 2014 by Suresh Babu of the International Food Policy Research Institute, in a highly interesting interview.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.
In 2021, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), while launching its Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition, pointed out that “74.1% of Indians were unable to afford a healthy diet”. The trend is worrying: in 2023, India ranked 111th out of the 125 countries considered by the Global Hunger Index, an index whose calculation is based on four criteria: the general undernutrition of the population, the weight of children under five, their height, and their mortality rate. India is increasingly falling in the ranking conducted every year based on this index: it was ranked 107th in 2022, 103rd in 2018, 100th in 2017, and 97th in 2016. Only Haiti and twelve countries in sub-Saharan Africa were ranked lower than India. While India had seen its index significantly improve from 35.5 to 29.2 between 2008 and 2015, it has almost stagnated since then to reach 28.7 in 2023.
The latest National Family Health Survey 2019-2021 (NFHS-5) reveals that about a third of Indian children under five years of age are underweight and show growth retardation: 36% of children under five are too short for their age, which is a sign of chronic undernutrition, 19% are too thin for their height, which is also a sign of acute undernutrition, while 32% are underweight.
Certainly, the prevalence of stunting and underweight has decreased since 2015-16. Stunting affected 36% of the population in 2019-21, compared to 38% in 2015-16. During the same period, the prevalence of wasting (or emaciation) went from 21% in 2015-16 to 19% in 2019-21. However, progress is very slow. The average annual rate of reduction (AARR) between 2005-06 and 2019-2021 is 2.2%. If India continues at this pace, the proportion of Indian children suffering from growth retardation due to undernutrition will not fall below 10% until 2076.
Furthermore, according to the National Family Health Survey of 2019-21, 67% of children (aged 6 to 59 months) suffer from anemia. These figures reflect a worsening of the situation because in 2015-16 the prevalence of anaemia among children in this age category was “only” 59%. Among adults, 57% of women (aged 15 to 49 years) were anaemic in 2019-21, as well as a quarter of men in the same age group.
The data presented in the latest National Family Health Survey displeased the government, which led to the suspension of the director of the International Institute for Population Sciences, the agency in charge of this report. The government decided that from now on, the NFHS surveys will no longer measure anaemia. When the thermometer reveals a fever that those at the top do not want to admit, it is considered good practice to break it. This practice had already been observed in 2019: when figures from the National Sample Survey Office revealed that the percentage of Indians living below the poverty line had increased between 2011-12 and 2017-18, the government cancelled its publication, prompting two statisticians – thanks to whom these figures are known – to resign.
How much food is – and will be – available?
If the quality of the food the poor can get is at stake, the quantity is not guaranteed – and may not be sufficient in the future.
The problem is already palpable today. Although cereal production has greatly increased, the quantity of “foodgrains” available per capita is already decreasing, going from 510.1 grams per day per person in 1991 to 507.9 grams in 2021.
How is this essential variable calculated?
By subtracting from the total production seeds, concentrates for animals, lost products, and the balance of imports/exports, and then dividing the resulting figure by the population. While seeds only marginally reduce the product, the same cannot be said for the other three variables.
The FAO estimates that 40% of agricultural products are lost in India due to poor storage conditions, preservation, and transportation. 1.3 billion tons of perishable goods (such as fruits, milk, etc.) are lost due to the lack of an efficient cold chain. This staggering figure represents a third of the total production and amounts to between 8 and 15 billion dollars depending on market prices.
Concentrates for animals (cereals, oilseeds) are becoming an increasingly important factor given the growth in poultry (uniquely fed with oilseeds) and livestock which has increased by almost 5% between 2012 and 2019.
Finally, India has become a major exporting nation of agricultural products, with revenues from these sales jumping from 33.3 billion dollars in 2016-17 to 50.2 billion in 2021-22. Cereals – especially rice, but also recently wheat – top these exports.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
What about the food availability in the future?
The scenario we present below is based on three different sources: the Annual Report, 2022-23 of the Department of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare, the Basic Animal Husbandry Statistics of the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying, and the Handbook on Fisheries Statistics, 2022. We have calculated the “Compounded Annual Growth Rate” of each of the productions we were interested in between 2015 and 2020 and then extended the curves to 2050 by applying this growth rate. A variant of these simulations was then added to present the situation that would prevail in each case if the annual growth rate was 5% lower.
The Indian population is expected to register a 0.82% annual growth rate between 2020 and 2050 according to the forecasts of the Census of India. The report from the Census of India titled Population Projections for India and the States, 2011-2036 covers only part of the period we are interested in, so for the years 2036-2050, we have applied the same rates of deceleration in population growth as those observed for the period 2011-2050. This leads us to estimate India’s population at 1,723,380,000 people by mid-century.
On the basis of these data, per capita productions of cereals, pulses, foodgrains (a category combining cereals and pulses), vegetables, milk, meat, and eggs are likely to increase, respectively, by 2.65%, 4.9%, 2.84%, 4.65%, 4.58%, 11.57% and 5.82% as an average annually. In the scenario where the annual growth rate of these productions was 5% lower than the projections on which these figures are based, the per capita productions would increase over the period by respectively 2.52%, 4.66%, 2.69%, 4.42%, 4.36%, 10.99% and 5.53%. Apart from meat – whose dynamism reflects the phenomena noted above –, none of these food productions is therefore expected to experience growth that would significantly combat undernutrition.
This scenario does not take into account the possibility of a drop in production linked to a rapid deterioration of weather conditions due to an acceleration of climate change. Yet the most recent events, from prolonged drought episodes to excessive rainfall leading to catastrophic floods, make this hypothesis credible.
Due to these extreme conditions, in 2022, wheat production fell 107 million tonnes against 113 million tonnes the previous year. It rose to 112 million tonnes in 2023, but is bound to drop to 105 million tonnes in 2024. In 2023 and 2024, the decline in rice production has been even more significant. According to the Indian government, it should still drop by 8.8% below the level of the previous year in 2024. This is due to the drought that affected a large part of the territory (monsoon rains being very late or insufficient) and the floods that subsequently devastated the crops. Expecting a poor harvest, the Indian government suspended exports of rice other than Basmati in July 2023. India, whose rice exports account for 40% of global rice exports – a performance unmatched by any country – had exported nearly 18 million tonnes of non-Basmati rice in 2022, with Basmati rice accounting for only 4 million tonnes. In 2023, the government of India, by suspending exports of non Basmati rice, has been able to sale 17.5 million tonnes of rice on the domestic market in order to contain price rise.
The possible grim scenario of declining rice and cereal production deserves to be taken seriously, even if it is too early to assign it a probability coefficient for several reasons, all related to environmental conditions.
The Sixth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that not only the yields from cereal crops like rice and wheat will decline significantly because of climate change, but also that the risk of simultaneous crop failures will increase. Using some of the most reliable studies, the report said that “by 2050, the number of people at risk of hunger will increase by 20% and 11% under high- and low-emission scenarios, respectively”, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia “being projected to be at the greatest risk, with triple the amount of South Asia’s current food reserves needed to offset such an extreme event”.
The heatwaves – which have so penalised Indian agriculture in 2022, 2023 and 2024 – risk becoming the norm. The incidence of heatwaves in India has increased by a quarter compared to the previous decade. Climate change has made heatwaves 30 times more likely than it would have been otherwise in India, according to World Weather Attribution. This is due both to the increase in India’s average annual temperature — by about 0.7°C between 1900 and 2018 — and to the fact that it has made heatwaves larger and more frequent.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.
If 147 million hectares are already suffering significant degradation due to different forms of erosion and salinisation, climate change is expected to amplify this process, to the point that by 2050 half of the arable land should suffer from it, which will inevitably result in a decrease in productivity. Two experts in the field do not hesitate to conclude that “Growing trend in the salt-affected soils in India is becoming a threat to national food security and economic development”. In 2012-14, an estimate, now ten years old, assessed the loss of agricultural production due to salinisation alone at 16.84 million tons.
Water resources are being depleted. The drop in groundwater levels is mainly due to the growing consumption of an ever-increasing population and, in some areas, to the introduction of water-intensive crops such as rice, sugarcane, cotton, or maize since the Green Revolution. However, the evolution of rainfall and monsoon patterns also explains why the largest part of the water supply for agriculture and the population’s drinking water comes from groundwater. Approximately 89% of groundwater used in India is for irrigation, and it is this type of use that has led to a 61% reduction in groundwater levels in India between 2007 and 2017, according to a report by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), presented to the Lok Sabha in 2018. In Punjab, Gujarat, Haryana, and Rajasthan, one must dig more than 40 meters on average to find water – and to irrigate fields –, something that only large operators ready to invest in tubewells can afford.
If the stagnation, or even the decline, in the production of staple crops were to be confirmed, the implications would be considerable in terms of undernutrition, but not only. One of the major consequences of such a development would concern the rise of farmers’ indebtedness which has already reached a very high level.
Another consequence would concern India’s trade balance. Today, the country earns precious foreign currency from its agricultural exports. In 2022, it sold $9.66 billion worth of rice. In the future, if production does not increase fast enough to feed the population, India will likely have to not only reduce its exports but also start importing essential commodities again, which will further impact its foreign trade. The country has already been importing large quantities of pulses and edible oil for decades.
Furthermore, the decrease in Indian exports contributes to reducing the supply of foodstuffs on the global market and, consequently, to increasing prices, which for rice, have jumped by 15 to 25% depending on the country following the announcement of the suspension of its exports by India. African countries are the first collateral victims of this new situation, with India exporting rice to Benin, Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, and Kenya.
The banning of rice and wheat exports has been criticised by observers of trade relations who accused the Modi government to destabilise the global trade of cereals for domestic, political reasons: “India’s export bans can also be seen as irresponsible if driven not primarily by domestic food security, but rather by political reasons. Ahead of the March [sic] 2024 elections, there is a need to appease India’s urban middle class by reducing mounting food prices”, wrote J. Ma Luis Montesclaros.
The scenarios mentioned above all focus on the issue of food production to examine to what extent India will be able to feed its growing population. The question is not trivial. According to the most serious estimates, India will indeed need to produce 311 million tons of foodgrains by 2030 and 350 million by 2050 to meet the needs of its population. To achieve this, the country must either increase productivity or expand cultivated areas – or, better yet, do both at the same time.
If the pessimistic scenario of significant impacts from the El Niño cycle does not occur, and if the recent decline in production is not due to climate change, then India’s food security is expected to be stable in the medium term, based on the scenario we have developed.Still, this scenario shows that malnutrition is expected to remain a chronic ailment in 21st-century India, simply because, as mentioned above, the country would need to multiply its annual average reduction rate (AARR) by two or three to significantly address this phenomenon, whereas today and in our scenario, it stands between 2 and 3%.
This article draws from a detailed study we have recently made for the Institut Montaigne, a French think tank. Next month, we’ll present a summary of the solutions we have suggested to meet the food security challenge India is facing.
Christophe Jaffrelot is research director at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Professor of Politics and Sociology at King’s College London and Non Resident Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His publications include Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy, Princeton University Press, 2021, and Gujarat under Modi: Laboratory of today’s India, Hurst, 2024, both of which are published in India by Westland.
Hemal Thakker is an environment policy expert specialising in Agriculture Policy and Energy Transition, currently serving as an Adjunct Professor at Sciences Po, and formerly worked with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food).
Vignesh Rajahmani is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of Indian and Indonesian Politics at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, Leiden.
