Physical, social, economical, political and ecological access to balanced diets and safe drinking water, so as to enable every individual to lead a productive and healthy life in perpetuity is called as food security.

“Food security deals with viz., availability of food, which is related to purchasing power, absorption of food in the body, which is determined by the availability to transient hunger, which is related to natural and man-made calamities and disasters and sustainability of production, which is influenced by extent of attention given to ecological foundations essential for sustained advances in production.

As we are witnessing the problem of food insecurity, malnutrition and hungry India, this is the time for us to usher into Second Green revolution, where emphasis should be on soil and water conservation in dry land agriculture, use of micro irrigation, increased investments in irrigation, organic farming, integrated investments in pest and disease management, precision farming systems based on agro ecological conditions, cultivation of HYVs resistant to drought, flood, salinity, pest and diseases, value addition, food processing, credit to farmers, price stabilization and targeted subsidies.

Ever since the Green Revolution of the 1960s India’s foodgrains production has been on the rise despite year-to-year fluctuations. While in the pre-Green Revolution period, much of the increase in output was due chiefly to expansion in area under cultivation, after the Green Revolution, the output uptrend was sustained by increase in productivity due to introduction of yield-enhancing technology and supportive services and infrastructure.

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Consequently, the country’s total output of foodgrains, which was merely 50 million tonnes in 1950-51, has shot up over eight folds to cross 212 million-tones mark, according to latest estimates. The per capita foodgrains availability has risen during the same period from nearly 300 grams per day despite unabated rise in population.

India has since become the world’s second largest exporter of rice and seventh that of wheat. However, food self-sufficiency does not automatically reflect food security for the entire population at all the times though it does make the country food secure at the micro-level. To be effective, food security needs to manifest in all its dimensions, covering all regions and all economic strata of society.