Agricultural Diversification in South Asia: Beyond Food Security

South Asia is one of the fastest growing regions in the world. Home to approximately 1.3 billion of the world's population, the region's GDP growth rate of 5.6 per cent in 1990-2000 surpassed the world average of 2.6 per cent, second only to East and Southeast Asia at 7.0 per cent (The World Bank, 2004). During 1980-2000, the GDP per capita in South Asia grew at a rate of 3.3 per cent per annum. Sustained rise in per capita income accompanied by rapid urbanisation, better infrastructural facilities and changes in tastes and preferences in South Asia are diversifying the consumption basket in favour of high-value foods, such as fruits, vegetables, milk, meat, eggs, and fish. Even the poor are consuming more of high-value food commodities (Kumar and Mruthyunjaya, 2002). Urbanisation is proceeding steadily in all the South Asian countries. Urbanites consume larger quantities of highvalue commodities than ruralites do. Better roads and markets facilitate more direct links from producers to consumers, cutting down on transport and transactions costs, reducing risks of post-harvest losses in the cases of perishable commodities, and facilitating faster adoption of improved technologies. In addition, outward-looking trade policies have opened export markets and foreign direct investment has spurred food processing, animal feed, exporting, and (more recently) food retailing (Gulati, et al., 2005).