Dwindling food - Shortcomings Of The Green Revolution

YP Gupta
The Statesman, 3 October

The import of 50 lakh tonnes of wheat for the second consecutive year (2007-08) and 55 lakh tonnes during 2006-07 imply that our food security is at risk. The Prime Minister has recently expressed concern over the declining trend in crop productivity, and has focussed on agricultural development. He has announced additional financial assistance of Rs 25,000 crore to encourage states to draw up comprehensive agriculture plans to achieve the targeted farm growth. A National Food Security Mission is being launched to raise production over the next five years. It aims at raising rice production by 10 million tonnes from the existing 86 million tonnes across 133 districts, wheat production by eight million tonnes from 69 million tonnes in 138 districts and pulses by two million tonnes from the existing 13.8 million tonnes in 168 districts. It is proposed to expand the area, improve crop productivity, restore soil fertility, create employment opportunities and raise farm economy to instil confidence in farmers.

Wheat production has been stagnating, and its yield declining, which is now 26.17 quintals/ha in 2006-07, down from 27.78 quintals/ha in 1999-2000. Its production has declined to 74 million tonnes in 2006-07 from 76 million tonnes in 1999-2000. The area under wheat is shrinking, while seed and fertiliser costs are rising. It has declined to 26 million hectares in 2006-07 from 28 million hectares in 1998-99. Many farmers in the north particularly in Punjab and Haryana are now shifting to profitable cash crops.

Disturbing performance

The performance on the food front has thus been disturbing as there has been a sharp decline in crop productivity. The era of the Green Revolution in wheat and rice has reached a dead end, as there has been no breakthrough in seeds or yield since then. On the other hand, the problems arising out of the Green Revolution are now emerging. There has been a qualitative and quantitative degradation of land, water and bio-resources; fertile lands have become uncultivable due to waterlogging and salinisation; and post-harvest losses have been substantial. The dwindling natural resources, depleting underground water resources and growing indebtedness are the new challenges in the farm sector.

The Green Revolution owes its success primarily to increasing wheat and rice production through the introduction of the high-yielding miracle Mexican wheat seed, and imported rice seeds from the Philippines and Taiwan, and use of high inputs in terms of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, irrigation, etc, and increased area under cultivation. This largely contributed to the agricultural development of Punjab and Haryana, but it failed to generate adequate employment potential in the rural sector. While this has benefited the rich and progressive farmers, it has created a wide disparity between the rich and poor farmers because the latter could not afford high inputs. As a result, the rich farmers became richer and the poor became poorer.

After introducing high-yielding seeds, the country made spectacular success on the food front in raising its food output to 212 million tonnes in 2003-04 from 51 million tonnes in 1947-48. But food production has now been falling. The target for food output for 2006-07 was fixed at 220 million tonnes but its output has touched hardly 209 million tonnes. The scenario on the food front in 2005-06 and 2004-05 has also not been encouraging. The present food production is not enough to feed our growing population of over 1100 million, if the entire half-fed people are fully fed. Today, one-third of our population is half-fed due to poverty and lack of purchasing power. In recent past, a large number of people died of starvation and malnutrition in the poverty-stricken regions of seven states. The population rise has nullified the benefits of higher production, and has been posing a serious threat to food security.

The number of the hungry has been rising. The FAO has estimated that there are 221 million hungry people in India. The UNESCO’s global monitoring report 2007 says that 47 per cent children in India are malnourished. The UN has reported that nearly six million children in the world die of hunger and malnutrition every year. The UN has recently reported that more than 850 million people worldwide are hungry and are suffering from diseases and malnutrition. An inter-governmental panel on climate had reported that rising temperature will leave millions more people hungry by 2080, and an additional 200 to 600 million people across the world would face food shortage in the next 70 years. The UN agency has recently warned that global warming may lead to hunger in India.

Poverty is the major contributing factor for the starvation deaths. Many government schemes for poverty alleviation remained on paper, and their benefits have not reached the deserving. There is no priority in policy planning to eliminate chronic hunger and rural poverty. There is need for social mobilisation to help the poor to improve their quality of life by creating an environment to empower them to reduce poverty. A World Development Report has cautioned that India will not be able to reduce poverty and improve human development by 2015 without socio-economic reforms in respect of better quality services, health, education, water, sanitation and electrification.

The task of ensuring food and nutrition to a vast population is hugely challenging. This will depend largely on doubling our food production in the next 15 years, requiring an annual growth of 4.7 per cent, the present rate being 1.5 per cent. Presently, the yield of the newly-developed strains of wheat and rice has almost reached a plateau under optimum conditions in Punjab and Haryana. These states have also been facing soil health problems in respect of salinity and nutrient imbalance. The irrigation potential is exhausted. Also, micro-nutrient deficiencies are causing concern.

Norman Borlaug, Nobel Laureate, who has recently been honoured by the USA, being regarded as the father of the Green Revolution in India, had now commented that wheat seeds which are being cultivated these days are not resistant to infection by UG-99 fungus. This fungus has been rusting the wheat plant and destroying it completely. It was originally detected in Uganda, and is now spreading to other African and Asian countries. It may soon spread to India and Pakistan where the staple food is wheat.

No impact

The so-called Green Revolution has not made an impact on cultivation in the dryland areas, and in respect of coarse grains and pulses due to non-availability of high-yielding seeds. About two-thirds of our cropped area under dryland farming account for 42 per cent of total food production. There is need to improve cultivation in this area for which we either wait for the miracle seed from abroad or develop the seed and the package of farming conditions ourselves.

A second green revolution through genetically modified (GM) technology referred to as gene revolution has been advocated to improve low productivity. But it has to be ensured that crop bio-technology products are safe as it has created controversy that GM food involves the risk of organ abnormalities. This would require an independent national bio-technology regulatory authority to closely monitor rigorous bio-safety and risk assessment of bio-technology products before their release to the farmers. Recently, a controversy has arisen over the death of goats and sheep grazing on post-harvest Bt cotton fields due to the presence of toxins in some districts of Andhra Pradesh. The state government has advised the farmers not to allow animals to graze on Bt cotton fields.

It is unfortunate that the right to food has not been given the overriding priority as there is hardly any concern over starvation deaths.

The author is ex-principal scientist, IARI, New Delhi