21/12/2019 - Education | Mainstorming

Chinna 5 years

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IAS Parliament 5 years

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IAS Parliament 5 years

KEY POINTS

· Researches have established that in general diets in developing countries are deficient in vitamin A, zinc, and iron, resulting in increased mortality, morbidity, and health and development costs.

· In India, only 9.6% of the children between 6-23 months of age are able to get minimum acceptable diets. This means that children of comparatively economically well-to-do families, too, suffer from malnutrition—that too, during the most crucial phase of their mental and physical development.

· Biofortification, an agriculture-based approach to the development and dissemination of micronutrient-rich crops, offers a viable option to mitigate malnutrition and hidden hunger.

· Unlike the above-listed options, which demand considerable time and resources, biofortification is simple and economical.

· It mainly targets poor and rural households, where home production and consumption of staple food crops is significant, and consumption of the marketed surplus is most likely to remain within the community.

· Enriching staple crops with required micronutrients reduces people’s nutritional vulnerability because, during economic shocks, the poor tend to reduce their consumption of higher-value food commodities that are naturally rich in micronutrients.

· Farmers, even with limited resources and market access, can grow biofortified crops since they don’t need repeated purchases of seeds year after year—they can use a part of their produce as the seeds for the next year.

· For farmers to grow the biofortified crops, the nutrient-rich varieties should be economically remunerative.

· For consumers to consume, besides taste, texture, and visual appearance, awareness about malnutrition, easy availability, and access of cereals at an affordable price are crucial.