Tag: rice

India’s Conquest of Famine

April 19, 2026     In the weeks since Paul Ehrlich’s passing away, there have been many articles about the change that have occurred since his publication of the Population Bomb, where he warned about trends in risk of famine in India.

Indeed, one of the greatest stories in human history of overcoming food insecurity and famine has been India over the last 50 years. Not only has India grown in terms of food production, but it has diversified its economy, built infrastructure, and increased its GNP, which also supports improvements in long-term resilience.  In the 1990s, India turned away the food assistance provided in large quantities by the US Government’s Food for Peace, and India became itself a food aid donor to other countries.

In the late 1960s, India began intensively experimenting with ways to improve yields of key food crops, particularly wheat.  A few Indian scientists played an historic, important role in feeding this country which today has more people than any other.  The most important was M.S. Swaminathan, an unassuming man who, in his own gentle way, revolutionized India’s agricultural sector.

Swaminathan started out in 1947 working on plant breeding at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in New Delhi. Swaminathan collaborated with US plant breeder Norman Borlaug touring India, breeding Mexican wheat with Japanese varieties. This new crop produced high yields of good quality.  In 1964 he earned funds to plant demonstration plots which convinced Indian farmers to experiment with its use.  Further experimentation led to wheat varieties which by 1968 increased wheat production to 17 million tons.

Swaminathan’s lifelong commitment to transparency pushed him to establish various systems of accountability of the institutions he headed; therefore, he placed the entire international rice collection under the supervision of an international rice board even though it was already a part of IRRI.  Swaminathan never tired of crediting that the seeds of the green revolution in India were actually sown far back in 1949 in the fields of the Central Rice Research Institute in Cuttack, India long before Norman Borlaug came to India.  Working with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, he established a commission for plant-based genetic resources to address issues related to the conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources for food and agriculture. This included plants, animals, and aquatic organisms.  The commission’s focus was on the management of biodiversity.  In the 1980s, Swaminathan led, as Director General, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). Here he shone as a brilliant and dedicated scientist, an excellent leader, and kind-hearted.  Despite occasional setbacks, he persevered in promoting international cooperation in the utilization and conservation of genetic resources.  His vision extended beyond yield per hectare. He was a prophet of sustainability long before it became a buzzword of the 21st century. From championing greater participation of women in agriculture to espousing ecological balance, from advancing research in Russian attics to promoting sustainable coastal farming, from advocating for tribal food security to establishing gene banks for endangered crops, his canvas was vast, and his brush precise. Swami Nathan was generous and humane, embodying the best and noblest of the India into which he was born and by which he was shaped.

As shown in the graph at right, food production in India has more than kept pace with population growth due to ongoing improvements in applications of scientific methods. In these same last fifty years, India’s population hasalmost tripled, from 520,000,000 to about 1.5 billion today.

India’s agricultural geography has shifted from a northwest “Green Revolution core” (1970s) to a much more broad-based and increasingly central/eastern growth pattern (last decade).  In the 1970s, increases in production were largely in the Punjab, Haryana, and Western Uttar Pradesh.   More recently, Indian States with the strongest increases in food production:

    • * Madhya Pradesh – often cited as India’s fastest-growing agricultural state in the 2010s
    • * Chhattisgarh – rapid expansion in rice production and procurement
    • * Jharkhand – gains from irrigation and diversification
    • * Bihar & Eastern Uttar Pradesh – improvements in rice, maize, and horticulture.

The elimination of famine has not meant that there is no malnutrition in India.  Fifty years ago half of children were stunted (low height per age) from undernutrition, while today 1 in three are.

Meanwhile, rate of wasting malnutrition (as measured by weight for height) has remained stubbornly high over the last 50% years, by many estimates stuck in the range of 17-18%.

The government’s most current estimate for the national prevalence of wasting (low weight for height) among children under five in India for 2025 is estimated the 5.4% though estimates from prior years are closer to 18% among children.  Wasting malnutrition also varies across different areas.  For instance, the Union Territory of Lakshadweep reported the highest wasting rate at 11.6%, followed by Bihar (9.31%) and Madhya Pradesh (8.2%).

Much of the growth of production in India has been facilitated by increases in application of synthetic fertilizers. This is relevant today because, as reported yesterday, India’s food economy is seriously dependent upon fertilizers from the Middle East that are now blockaded and will be increasingly expensive, which may challenge food production in India this year.

Read more:   M.S. Swaminathan in conversation with Nitya Rao: The Ethics and Politics of Science, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation Centre for Research on Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development, 2014.

Charles C. Mann, The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 2018).

Priyambada Jayakumar, M S Swaminathan: The Man Who Fed India,  HarperCollins India, September 10, 2025

Book Review: How to Feed the World, by Vaclav Smil

Vaclav Smil has produced an increasing repertoire of books summarizing how humans consume different resources.  Over four decades he has visited many topics including food availability and its constraints.  His latest 2025 book, “How to Feed the World:  The History and Future of Food“ stands as his summum opus, and is the best current survey about the tension between human needs and food supplies, comparing key options and constraints.  Therefore it is highly recommended to students, scientists, aid workers and general readers alike.  The first section of his book tracks the inevitability of humans to depend on grains and legumes.

Smil highlights the paradox that some of the world’s largest food producers, like India, have significant undernourished populations. He attributes this to unequal “global entitlements to food” rather than insufficient production, pointing to economic, political, and social barriers that prevent equitable distribution.  But he also is concerned with the ability of societies to grow enough food for a population growing toward 10 billion persons, particularly in Africa where crop yields are low and water/irrigation is limited.

Smil causes particular attention to food waste.  He emphasizes the colossal scale of food waste, approximately 1,000 kcal per person daily in Western countries, with a third of food produced (around 3,300 kcal per person per day) wasted, including a quarter of unopened food in places like Britain. This inefficiency exacerbates hunger by reducing available food and straining resources, a critical issue as populations grow.

Much of the book tries to explain  why certain crops and animals are produced and others are not, and why a few specific foodstuffs provide the majority of the world’s calories today, and how hard it would be to shift away from those key crops.

The book reviews the history of the human race and how most humans over millions of years were primarily hunter gatherers.  Meat consumpion increased after domestication of animals (beginning around 10,000 years ago), “though it became more stratified by social class over time.” 

The book also covers related topics like the dominance of a few staple crops (rice, wheat, maize, etc.) for global calories, the history of animal domestication, fertilizer revolutions (e.g., Haber-Bosch nitrogen), and incremental paths forward like precision agriculture, nutrient recycling, and population stabilization via development.  Smil is patient in educating readers about the molecule cycles (such as nitrogen) involved in food ecology.

Much of the book may foment controversy.  For instance, Smil directly poses and scrutinizes the questions: “Could the whole planet go vegan and be healthy?  Should it?” His data-driven analysis highlights that many promoted plant foods (e.g., nuts, certain fruits, or intensive plant-based systems) carry high energy and resource inputs.  Such a shift to veganism may ignore human metabolic realities, historical dietary patterns (meat consumption rose with domestication ~10,000 years ago and became stratified), and practical trade-offs.  Similarly, Smil is skeptical of the scale-up prospects of laboratory-grown meat (without animals).  He notes their high energy demands, costs, infrastructure needs, and biophysical realities that make rapid large-scale deployment unfeasible.  This differs sharply from narratives positioning cultured meat as a near-term revolution for sustainability or feeding the world.

Organic farming also is seen as having limits.  Smil acknowledges the upsides such as improved soil health but emphasizes scalability limits:  heavy reliance on finite or unevenly distributed resources like animal manure and leguminous nitrogen fixation, lower yields compared to conventional systems, high labor demands, and nutrient-cycling bottlenecks. Proposals like massive double-cropping or cover-crop expansion overlook second-order effects (e.g., extra land needed for seeds).

Looking to the future, he recommends:

 Improve Agricultural Efficiency:  Boost crop productivity (especially in developing nations) through better agronomic practices (precision farming, optimized irrigation, soil health management) rather than just expanding farmland.

Reduce waste:  About 30–40% of food is lost post-harvest or wasted in distribution and consumption. Smil advocates for better storage, transport, and consumer habits.

Reduce Meat Consumption:  Shift toward less resource-intensive diets—Smil stresses that industrial meat production (especially beef) is grossly inefficient in terms of land, water, and feed use.

 Reform Fertilizer Use:  Nitrogen efficiency is key.  Synthetic fertilizers (especially nitrogen) revolutionized agriculture, but overuse causes pollution (e.g., algal blooms, GHG emissions). Smil advocates for precision application and organic amendments.   Recycle nutrients—Better utilize manure and food waste to close nutrient loops.

Don’t expect magical silver bullets:   No single solution will “fix” global hunger.  Smil critiques techno-optimism, arguing that diverse, incremental improvements are more reliable than radical shifts.  Lab-grown meat & plant-based substitutes may help but will likely remain a niche solution in the near term.  

Stabilize Population Growth:  Slowing population via education, women’s empowerment, and economic development, which reduces future food demand.

Reduce Biofuel Mandates:  channeling crops (corn, soy) into biofuels is inefficient which competes with food production and should be minimized.

Adapt to Climate Change by prioritizing resilient crops and farming systems over geoengineering or untested techno-fixes.  Smil observes that rising temperatures and CO₂ changes will unevenly affect staple crops like rice and corn, especially in Asia and Latin America.

Smil has written often about food and history.  Smil’s work on food production and agriculture emphasizes the intersections of energy, environment, and human systems, often highlighting the challenges of feeding a growing global population sustainably. He explores topics like the efficiency of food systems, the environmental impacts of dietary choices, and the role of technological innovations in agriculture.  He obtained a Ph.D. in geography from Pennsylvania State University in 1971 and joined the University of Manitoba in 1972, where he became Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment.

–  steve hansch, WHES