Consumption Of Food Grains Research Articles

Food insecurity: Magnitude and remedies

Food insecurity is given an operational definition: the probability of foodgrain consumption in developing countries falling below a desired level due to a fixed upper limit on the food import bill they can afford and an unfavourable combination of poor harvests and world foodgrain prices. The author argues that food security should not be made contingent upon arrangements for worldwide foodgrain supply stabilization. Rather, it is suggested that food security could be attained through a food import bill insurance (FIBI) scheme. Alternatively, food security could be attained by a combination of a financial scheme and a grain buffer stock in or on behalf of the developing countries. The paper discusses the specific measures required to implement these proposals and shows that the resource capacity of the international community is sufficient to carry them out.

Measurement of Eural Food-Grain Consumption

Estimation of rural food-grain consumption is one of the difficult problems in national planning when the rural sector is largely non-monetized; the problem becomes especially important in the current period of aggravated shortage and efforts to ameliorate it. The mthods used by M. J. Desai in "A Comparison of Estimates of Consumer Expenditure on Food-grains by National Sample Survey and Aggregate Supply Date," Artha Vijnana , Vol. 4, No. 4 (1962), are therefore of interest.

Alternative Estimates of the Trend in Indian Foodgrains Production during the First Two Plans

This paper presents estimates of the rate of change in foodgrains production in India during the first two five year plans, 1951-61. The estimates are based on three approaches which are largely mutually independent: (1) measurement of trends in official estimates of foodgrains production; (2) estimation of changes in domestic consumption of foodgrains through analysis of changes in demand and prices; and (3) application of a production function to data regarding the principal inputs of Indian agriculture. The last computation also provides the basis for an estimate of the relative importance of particular classes of inputs in achieving the estimated production increase.

Short-Term and Long-Term Effects on Food-Grain Consumption Due to Changes in Total Expenditure

Short-Term and Long-Term Effects on Food-Grain Consumption Due to Changes in Total Expenditure