“Agriculture Performance and Malnutrition in India”

Citation: Gulati, A., A. Ganesh-Kumar, G. Shreedhar and T. Nandakumar. 2012. “Agriculture and Malnutrition in India”. Food and Nutrition Bulletin, 33(1), pp.31-43.

Abstract:

Background: Despite high and relatively stable overall growth of the economy, India’s agriculture sector is underperforming and a vast section of the population remains undernourished.

Objective: This paper explores the possible interplay between agricultural performance and malnutrition indicators to see whether states that perform better in agriculture record better nutritional outcomes.

Method: The relationship between agriculture performance and malnutrition amongst children under age five and adults in the age group 15-49 is studied for 20 major states using data from the National Family Health Survey-3 for the year 2005-06 and the national accounts, using correlation analysis and a simple linear regression model.

Results: The analysis shows that indicators of the level of agricultural performance / income have a strong and significant negative relationship with the indices of undernutrition amongst adults and children suggesting that productivity improvement in agriculture can be a powerful tool to reduce undernutrition across the vast majority of the population. Besides agriculture, access to sanitation facilities and women’s literacy are also found to be strong factors affecting malnutrition. Access to health care for women and child care practices, breast feeding within 1 hour in particular, are other important determinants of malnutrition amongst adults and children.

Conclusion: These findings bring out the multi-dimensional nature of malnutrition problem and indicate that improving agriculture performance is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for addressing malnutrition.

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