India ranks lower than China in global food security index

India has been ranked 66, much lower than neighbouring China, in the 2012 Global Food Security Index released today by the American chemical company DuPont.

With India expected to be the most populous country in the world by 2025, feeding the population is likely to be one of the serious challenges that the country will face in the coming decades, it said.

“India is ranked 66 in the list of 105 countries, scoring slightly higher in the category of ‘availability’ than in other two categories of ‘affordability’ and ‘quality and safety’,” DuPont Executive Vice-President James C Borel said after the launch of the index.

INDIA: WHAT WE EAT
Quality of the food consumed in India

• The share of non-starchy food is 38%
• Iron and vitamin A account for 26.5%, half the global average
• Share of animal iron is 0.6%, against the world average of 2.8
• Share of protein is 37%, while global average is 65.9%

Although India's food security level is lower than China (ranked 39) and Sri Lanka (62), it is much better than Pakistan (75) and Bangladesh (81), the index findings showed.

High levels of poverty, lower income, less public spending on farm research, poor infrastructure, sluggish supply of quality protein are some of the key challenges that India need to address, it noted.

However, the presence of food safety net programmes and access to farm credit has helped the country achieve some level of food security, it added.

The 2012 Global Food Security Index, developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and commissioned by DuPont, ranks 105 countries in accordance with their relative level of food security in three categories — affordability, availability and quality and safety.

According to EIU regional Director Pratiba Thaker, "Apart from the challenges of availability and accessibility as reflected in chronic household food insecurity, India also faces a nutrition challenge. India's nutrition level is lower than the neighbouring Pakistan due to large percentage of population being vegetarian.”

Highlighting the importance of the Food Security Index, DuPont South Asia President Rajeev Vaidya said: “It should be used as a tool to help stakeholders make informed decisions that drive sustainable results at a local level.”

The company called for local collaborations and science-powered innovations to address the challenge of the country's food security.

To address global food security challenge, DuPont also announced investment of $10 billion in farm research and development and advancing 4,000 new products by 2020.