About the Book
ood security describes a situation in which people do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. World-wide around 852 million men, women and children are chronically hungry due to extreme poverty; while up to 2 billion people lack food security intermittently due to varying degrees of poverty. The concept of food security has been on the international agenda as far back as 1948, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirmed that “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food.....” Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights went further, in 1966, when it affirmed the “right of everyone to be free from hunger”. This right to food is even characterised as a “fundamental right” and is acknowledged as the primary economic right of a human being. This, according to the author of this Agriculture Food Security Nutrition and Health book, implies that those who live below poverty level are unable to buy enough food, in almost all the states of North-East India the availability of all the food items taken together are much below the standard as recommended for a healthy life. The immediate objective of policy makers and official agencies is, thus to make standard food available to the people. Unfortunately, this remains uncertain in North-East India, and the situation is alarming. A natural corollary of this situation is widespread nutrition deficiency and at least 250 million people in India suffer from varying degrees of malnutrition: out of 100 deaths in rural India, 58 are of children and seven million children are affected by blindness because of nutrition deficiency. It is hoped that this book will be of great value to students, teachers and researchers in agriculture, food science and extension agronomy and soil science and environmental sciences.
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