India has a horribly inefficient agricultural sector [1]. It's run as a jobs program for surplus unskilled labor. Its cost is in land and water waste, together with excess emissions and diet-related premature deaths.
Having been in US for a while and having coming back now I can definitely confirm that quality of fresh produce in US very bad compared to India, If you have only grown up on a meat based and processed foods diet you may not be able to relate. We generally consume a lot of fresh produce as compared to the western world, don't always believe in biased articles.
> quality of fresh produce in US very bad compared to India
I agree. (Though you can access similar quality at American farmers’ markets and upscale grocers in rich communities.) I never remarked on quality. Just efficiency.
Indian agriculture is small scale, labour wasteful, land and water inefficient and carbon intensive. Relative to median income, produce is high cost, which causes a lot of the population to over-rely on processed cereals.
High-income Americans and Indians consume a lot of good, fresh produce. (I’ve seen fresh Indian mangoes in New York, flown in overnight, though I’m doubtful they had their paperwork in order. That obviously isn’t scalable.) The absolute threshold is lower in India. But relatively speaking it’s higher.
> We generally consume a lot of fresh produce as compared to the western world
At a high relative income level, yes. (Lower in cities, because logistics.) There are good reasons Indian life expectancy is 15% lower than America’s at birth, 2 to 5% lower at 30 (males, reverse death probability) and then 20% lower again at 40 again.
India has a horribly inefficient agricultural sector [1]. It's run as a jobs program for surplus unskilled labor. Its cost is in land and water waste, together with excess emissions and diet-related premature deaths.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-020-00157-w