Abstract

                                Any agricultural policy for maximising food production should draw its inspiration, not from the accidents of temporary food shortages but from fundamental concepts of human nutrition. In the shaping of a food plan for the Indian Union we should distinguish two aspects that have gained clear recognition at the hands of nutrition experts. First, of course, is the need for providing the requisite amount of calories which supply the needed energy for people of different ages and in different avocations in life. Second is the introduction into the diet of an adequate quantity of protective foods which are indispensable to keep the human body free of illnesses traced to ill-balanced food. As Sir John Orr put it in that documentary film The World of Plenty "It is not enough to eat more food-it is the kind of food that matters most" Governments today are assuming greater and greater responsibilities for the regulation of agricultural production, and the shape and hue which agricultural industry takes under such direction should make the fullest use of what scientific facts have to offer. Into a pattern of that kind, therefore, a purely unregulated agriculture weighted wholly in favour of calorie-yielding food crops will no longer fit. Modern agricultural policy in the Indian Union should not merely be a palliative for our food shortage, with its sole interest to alleviate hunger at the expense of health. On the other hand, it should be attuned to the national requirement of an improved dietary with a readjustment to concepts of food in relation to health.

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