Environment Special
New Delhi, 2 June 2008
Future Challenges: Food, Poverty
WORLD ON COLLISSION COURSE
By Dhurjati Mukherjee
On 5 June humankind celebrated World Environment Day. But underlining
the merrymaking were issues of grave environmental concern. Which are going to
challenge our future, specially food shortage, poverty and environment
degradation.
The Green Revolution
in agriculture finds itself trumped by the Green Evolution because of changing
climatic developments. Years of world-wide concerns about global warming needing
urgent corrective action expressed by scientists and environmentalists to
prevent a catastrophe has led to new enthusiasm for bio-fuels, an ideal solution
to bring down pollution levels and curb CO2 emissions.
Many developed countries, especially US, have turned swathes
of agricultural land to grow crops that could be processed with ethanol, a less
polluting fuel than petrol or diesel while in the developing countries land is
being diverted for industrial and urbanization usages. However, this has resulted
in land previously used to grow grains for human consumption now being devoted
to crops for vehicles. The effect over the last 2-3 years has led to a crisis
situation in food, which might get accentuated in future, leading to escalating
food prices because of shortages.
Though the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) has
predicted an increase in global rice production of 12 million tonnes (2 % this
year), demand would outstrip supply as Australia, a major wheat
producer-exporter is facing drought. Observed outgoing Italian Prime Minister,
Romano Prodi, “something must be done to ensure that both the US and Europe
stop producing fuel in competition with food. People can no longer be allowed
to starve to death in Africa simply because some people in the US or EU
consider that the votes of farmers or landowners are worth more than the
survival of millions of men and women.”
Prodi was echoing what the Union of Scientists expressed in
1993: “Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human
activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and
on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at
serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and the
animal kingdom, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to
sustain life in the manner that we know”.
Man’s fight against hunger has taken a new turn and Nobel
Prize winner Norman Borlaug’s prediction in 1970, that “the green revolution
can provide food for sustenance during the next three decades”, rings true
today. The green revolution has run its course and is facing environmental
consequences of intense industrial, soil salinity due to high degree of
chemicals and pesticides and water shortages.
Besides, nearly 30 per cent of the world’s population
suffers malnutrition, some 850 million are undernourished, 2.8 million children
and 300,000 women die annually in developing countries on this account. The UN
mid-year update of the World Economic
Situation & Prospects estimates that almost 3 billion or about half of
the world’s population is food insecure. Meanwhile, the wheat price has risen nearly
130% over last year and the rice price in Asia
has almost doubled in the first quarter of 2008. According to the Asian
Development Bank Director General, a billion Asians have been hit by these
surging prices, including 600 million who live under a-dollar-a-day resulting
in more malnutrition, suicides and starvation deaths.
Unless the food crisis is tackled effectively, we would face
riots, terrorism, political instability and more failed States. Already, food
riots have broken out in over 12 countries in Africa and Asia.
Namely, Egypt, Haiti, Cameroon,
Bangladesh and Indonesia due
to food shortage, record oil costs, severe droughts, diversion of corn for
ethanol use and rapidly growing demand. The World Bank President has warned
that around 30 nations are at risk of social unrest.
Worse, by 2012, the population will be 7 billion. India will add 500 million totalling 1.6 billion
and Africa’s 960 million will grow by one
billion. According to the Earth Policy Institute just to feed the additional people
would require 640sq miles of good farmland, roughly Los Angeles’s size or 18 million football
fields every year. More. With forests chopped for timber and farmland in the Amazon,
Indonesia,
Congo etc, the land available for agriculture has shrunk due to desertification
and soil pollution. Also, with the Third World, including India, converting
farmland to develop townships or industrial projects, where returns are higher,
has led to displacement and migration of the rural population to cities
resulting in the farm yield declining to 1.2% during the last decade..
However, experts believe that the situation is retrievable and
the current food crisis would lead to an ever-green revolution, designed to
improve productivity with associated ecological harm. The climate change
problem may turn into a blessing in certain parts of the world through
reorientation of agricultural research and development strategies based on the
principles of ecology, economics, food and energy security and sustainable
growth. Such a revolution would be through organic farming and/or green
agriculture and is based on integrated pest and nutrient management, crop
livestock integration, use of productive genetic stains, adoption of dryland
farming and low water-use techniques.
Another view is that increasing productivity this way might be
insufficient to meet the increasing demand of an exploding population in the
coming years. True, in India
the average crop yield has roughly doubled in 2006 to 3.12 tonnes per hectare from
what the farmers were getting in the 1960s. But this pales in comparison with China where the
yield was 6.26 tonnes per hectare in 2006 and the Asian average of 4.17 tonnes
per hectare, almost 25 per cent better than that ours.
Sadly, in India
there is little synergy between researchers and farmers notwithstanding talks
of lab-to-land approach. There is a huge gap between what is produced in
research stations and demonstration fields and the average actual production. This
gap is nearly 200% in many cases. Further, the benefits of research have not
percolated uniformly to guide the farmers. While the north and west regions are
quite productive the east and north-east are not. The potential for increasing
yields exists provided recommended practices and good extension systems are followed.
According to Dr M. S. Swaminathan, the conversion of farmland
to SEZs should be stopped and these be set up on barren lands if the country
has to ensure food security and prevent increasing poverty. Clearly, high GDP sans
a decrease in poverty and upgradation of the lives of the rural poor does not
mean real development. Further, to maintain social peace we need work on the
rural sector and ensure that the basic necessities of the people are met. It is
necessary to maintain demographic equilibrium as economic growth alone cannot
tackle the problem. The demand on resources and the consequent effects on
nature would become a critical problem if population growth is not restrained.
An expert aptly pointed: “The size of the human population
is inextricably woven with global warming; yet seldom will ‘population’ be
found on the agendas of global economic and sustainability forums”. Observed James
Lovelock: “We have grown in number to the point where our presence is
perceptibly disabling the planet like a disease.” --- INFA
(Copyright India News & Feature Alliance)
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