Just
imagine a hungry small boy in a cake shop, absolutely bewildered by
the mouth watering range of cakes, pastries, tarts and brownies
nicely arranged in brightly lit show cases all around him. He wants
to eat to his heart's content. Yet he has a problem, he only has a 1
rupee coin in his hand and with that he can not buy even a bread,
leave aside cakes and pastries.
World's
hungry perhaps are facing same kind of trouble today as world's food
production has peaked again (2014) even surpassing the all time
records of 2013. According to UN affiliated Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), world cereal production has reached a new
all-time record of nearly 2,534 million tonnes (MT) in 2014, beating
the previous record of the 2013 by over 13 MT. This really means
that in one decade, global cereal production has gone up by almost
25%, setting all-time high records in five years out of 10. The year
ending stocks are at an all-time high of nearly 623 MT. Because of
series of bumper harvests with not so bad years in between in last
decade the prices af all main cereals are down sharply.
What
about India? Total Cereal production in India was 245.5 MT with
wheat production at 96 MT and rice production at 106.5 MT in 2013-14,
compared to production of earlier year with wheat at 92.3 MT and rice
at 105.31 MT, this indicates a substantial gain. All these figures
are record breaking with a growth of nearly 33% over a decade,
according to agriculture ministry estimates.
Does
this mean that world's 805 million hungry (according to FAO
estimates for 2012-14) now have enough food to eat? Sadly, the answer
to this question is “No.” According to FAO estimates, out of 2434
MT, 1104 MT of cereals would be used for food consumption, and
believe it or not! 876 MT of cereals would be consumed for feeding
animals, which will ultimately be consumed as meat.
Samuel
Taylor Coleridge was a poet, literary critic and philosopher from
Eighteenth century England and was contemporary of William
Wordsworth. He is probably best known for his poems, The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan. Four lines from his poem about an
ancient mariner, are rather well known and read:
“Water,
water, everywhere
And
all the boards did shrink
Water,
water everywhere
Nor
any drop to drink.”
With
his ship, standing idle in the middle of sea for days, its no wonder
that in spite of oceans of water surrounding him, this mariner can
not find a drop of water that he can drink. Similarly, for Millions
of 'below the poverty line' poor Indians, even when there are
mountains of grains around, they have nothing to eat.
The
bitter and hard truth is that even with plentiful food around, people
are going hungry because they cannot afford to buy it. Poverty is the
main reason for hunger and not cereal production or trade flows.
2nd March 2015
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