Agricultural policymakers need to typically focus on investing in improved nutrition for high economic payoffs. Analyse (200 Words)
Refer - The Indian Express
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IAS Parliament 3 years
KEY POINTS
· The highest numbers of women and children suffering from this “hidden hunger” live in South Asia, especially India.
· The primary underlying cause for mineral and vitamin deficiency is low-quality diet. The poor desire, but cannot afford to purchase sufficient quantities of vegetables, fruits, pulses, and animal products, which, gram for gram, contain relatively high amounts of bio-available minerals and vitamins, but whose prices have been rising much faster than staples like wheat, rice and corn over the past several decades.
· There are two broad strategies. The first is to improve the densities of minerals and vitamins in the high amounts of food staples that the poor already consume. The second is to increase their consumption of nutritious non-staple foods. This second broad strategy fundamentally depends on raising incomes and lowering the real prices of non-staple foods.
· The objective, then, within the sub-strategy of focusing on food staples, is to increase densities of nutritious components and decrease the densities of undesirable compounds. One way to do this is through conventional plant breeding. A term has been coined for this process, “bio-fortification.”
· These bio-fortified staples need to be closely linked to India’s food-based welfare programmes including the public distribution system (PDS) the mid-day meal and anganwadis and should become an integral part of the National Nutrition Mission (POSHAN Abhiyan).
· Turning now to vegetables, fruits, pulses, animal products foods already dense in minerals and vitamins the fundamental strategy should be to increase the supply of key foods that can contribute importantly to nutrient intakes.
· For example, the major push by the Indian government, called Operation Flood, improved the efficiency of milk production, a highly nutritious and important food in Indian diets. Supply went up sharply and the relative real price went down significantly. Milk consumption increased.
Answer writing practice 3 years
Please review my answer and give suggestions
thank you sir/ mam
IAS Parliament 3 years
Cut short the introduction part, try to stick to word limit and provide sub-headings for better presentation. Keep Writing.
Venkateshwaran R 3 years
Kindly provide feedback. Thank you sir
IAS Parliament 3 years
Good attempt. Keep Writing.
