Many problems related to agriculture can be solved but top agriculture scientist and member of parliament, M.S. Swaminathan said there is governance deficit in linking agriculture, nutrition and health in the country.

“If we can bring synergy among three factors it would be cost effective and problems can be solved,” Swaminathan told reporters in New Delhi on the sidelines of the two-day International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) conference on agriculture.

He added that largely problems do not come from policy but their implementation. “The problems also come from logistical structure like storage structure, storage of grains, storage of distribution, and timely distribution. There are number of problems in India.”

In a policy paper on agriculture, authors Stuart Gillespie and Suneetha Kadiyala explore broad disconnect between the agriculture and nutrition.“Agriculture research and technology development in India have dramatically increased food production and aggregate food availability – rendering large scale famine a rarity – yet the chronic malnutrition persists,” the paper says

India is second in farm output in the world while a third of the world’s undernourished children live in the country. Gillespie and Kadiyala’s paper also questions India’s approaches to child nutrition asking why the country has not been able to reduce malnutrition in children despite being the second fastest growing economy in the world.

“A new road map for future in needed,” Swaminathan said and added, “The prime minister's advisory council on nutrition is looking into matter of coordination between policy and strategy.”

“The national advisory council (NAC) also recommended widening of public distribution system (PDS) to include whole series of millets - jowar, Bajra,” Swaminathan said who is also member of the NAC.

“In addition to stagnation in undernutrition rates, India is facing a rising tide of obesity and related metabolic disorders,” Gillespie and Kadiyala’s paper said. “This double burden raises important challenges with regard to fine-tuning agricultural policies to deal simultaneously with issues of deficit, excess and dietary imbalance,” it said.

The IFPRI conference suggested that breeding crops with higher level of micronutrients like vitamin A and iron can potentially reduce death and disease, especially among women and children.

“Increasing crop productivity overall is not enough. A new paradigm for agricultural development is needed, so that agricultural growth leads also to improved nutrition and health,” Shenggen Fan, director general IFPRI told reporters.