It is estimated that one billion people of the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition. The majority of hungers deaths are caused by chronic malnutrition as the families facing extreme poverty are simply unable to get enough food to eat. While the world has been changing over the past decades in unexpected and remarkable ways, food security remains an unfulfilled dream for currently more than 800 million people.

Poverty reduction has been the top priority of development endeavors over many years. Yet, despite the fact that significant progress has   been made in improving living standards in almost all developing countries, more than 1.3 billion people in the developing world still live in absolute poverty. Every year nearly 8  million children die from diseases linked to dirty water and air pollution, 50 million children are mentally or physically damaged because of adequate nutrition, and   130 million children, are denied the chance go to school. The process of globalization has sharpened the threat to food security of many people living in developing countries, and India is no exception.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. The factual position is that a safe and nutritionally adequate diet is a basic individual right and an essential condition for sustainable development, especially in developing countries. Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world. The problem aggravates with the continuing increase in the prices of main food commodities such as grains and vegetable oils to significant levels of more than 60% above the levels just two years ago.

Almost every agricultural commodity is part of this rising price trend. At the household level, rising, falling and unpredictable food prices hit those who can afford it the least that is the poor and food insecure population. Though the few poor households in the rural areas who are net sellers of food might benefit from higher prices, but households that are net buyers of food and which represent the large bulk of India’s poor population will be debilitated. Modification in the rural economy which is asserted to be underway in order to create new income opportunities, will take time to reach the poor.

The nutrition of the poor is also at peril when they are not protected from the price rises. Higher food prices compel poor people to limit their food consumption and change to even less-balanced diets, with harmful effects on health in the short and long run. On the global level, major key indicators show that the physical condition of the earth is also deteriorating, that is the earth is getting warmer. The deforestation of the planet continues unabated, reducing the capacity of soils and vegetation to absorb and store water. Soil erosion by water and wind due to inappropriate agricultural techniques as well as overuse of scarce resources, particularly overuse of water resources, make every effort to improve food security an even more difficult task.

Unless countries with high population growth achieve a sustained social transformation that results in a substantially lower birth rate and unless they start regenerating their resource base, they will continue to move towards a major social and ecological disaster.