Bharat's Cereal Gap
Cereal gap:- large difference between net availability of cereals and household consumption
Net availability:- net production (gross production minus a ballpark allowance for feed, seed and wastage (FSW)) plus net imports minus changes in public stocks
cereal production is around 300 million tonnes per year, and net availability is above 250 million tonnes
12 kilograms (kg) per person per month as a generous upper bound for per-capita cereal consumption in 2022-23, there is a gap for minimum 45 million tonnes in 2022-23
According to the latest consumption survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), average per-capita cereal consumption was just 9 kg per person per month in 2022-23: 9.61 kg and 8.05 kg per person in rural and urban areas, respectively
total household consumption of cereals would have been around 150 million tonnes in 2022-23. This implies a cereal gap of more than 100 million tonnes!
Annual estimates of the cereal gap - the cereal gap started growing fast from around 2008 onwards
cereal production is increasing steadily, at a rate of around 2.5% per year in the last 10 years
Could it be that cereal production figures are exaggerated?
if India is awash with cereals, as the cereal gap suggests, then why are cereal prices rising fast?
How are minimum support prices to be sustained if cereal production continues to grow much faster than household consumption?
What if the cereal gap hides a scam of some sort?
