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Agriculture plays a pivotal role in nutrition (Kadiyala et al. 2011). Agriculture provides the major food items required for the balanced dietary intake. As already discussed in the above section, India has made significant growth in agricultural production indicating that the availability of food is not a constraint in ensuring nutrition. But is this the only way through which agriculture ensures nutrition security? Nutrition security has three dimensions – access to adequate food, care and feeding practices, and sanitation and health (UNSCN). Here, the emphasis is on access to adequate food. The access to adequate food comes from the ability to pay for the demand of food. Source of livelihood here plays an important role in this ability to purchase apart from the subsidized food grains obtained from the NFSA. In 2020, agriculture employed around 58% of the Indian population and was the primary occupation of the country (IBEF 2021). In monetary terms, the Rs.19.48 lakh crores of Gross Value Added (GVA) was for agriculture, forestry, and fishing in 2020. Thus, a major source of income for a major section of Indian population. The year 2014 was recognized as the year of family farming emphasizing the role of agriculture in food and nutrition security. Moving to the care and feeding determinant of nutrition security it can be covered under agriculture by ensuring crop diversity and development of bio‐fortified food grains which have higher nutritional content, diversification of cropping pattern in order to ease the availability of a variety of food items at local level. And for the third determinant a model named “Farming System for Nutrition” model was developed (Das et al. 2014). This model suggested the location‐specific nutrition focused agriculture encompassing the diet need and surrounding environment development. Thus, it can be seen that the upliftment of nutritional security revolves around agriculture.

Figure 1.1 Per capita per day availability of food grains 1958–2018 in gm/day.