Crop residues and agricultural waste represent a vast, underused source of biomass energy in India, with the potential to power rural electrification while reducing the open burning that worsens air quality each winter. Yet converting this potential into reliable power generation faces real constraints: residue collection is seasonal and dispersed across millions of small farms, making logistics costly; storage facilities to bridge the gap between harvest and year-round power demand are largely absent; and the capital cost of biomass gasification plants remains high relative to their generation capacity. Should large-scale industrial demand for biomass energy compete directly with agricultural residue traditionally used as animal fodder or ploughed back as soil nutrient, this could squeeze an already strained rural resource base.

Which one of the following, according to the passage, could lead to a food-security problem?