Food Security: Key Issues and Strategies for Kerala - A Note

The paper attempts to make short term projections of food grains supply and requirement for the state of Kerala. The study is based on the premise that the gap between food supply and food requirement is a better indicator of the food security level than the usually adopted supply-demand gap. On the basis of suitability, the forecasting techniques viz. Double Exponential Smoothing and Simple Exponential Smoothing were applied to estimate the projection of production of cereals and pulses respectively, for the years 2005-06 and 2010-11. The age group wise requirement for cereals and pulses were also estimated for the same time periods. The estimates of food grains production and requirement for the state of Kerala indicated that overall cereals and pulses requirement would be in deficit condition in both the periods.