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Right To Food:RAISE HOPE, LIMIT POVERTY & HUNGER, by Dr MM Kapur, 2 May 2009 Print E-mail

Sunday Reading

New Delhi, 2 May 2009

Right To Food

RAISE HOPE, LIMIT POVERTY & HUNGER

By Dr MM Kapur

Our Lord Vishnu used to grant boons when he was well-fed and content. We now have a culture of holding free bhandaras on family celebrations and festivals to earn a boon out of satisfying others’ needs.    

Science tells us that under nutrition (UNN) and starvation impact the body machine in a negative manner. Systems of the body fall prey to disorders, till life itself is under threat. Food security is an important indicator of a nation’s vitality. It is defined as “Reliable cost/availability of sufficient quantity and quality of nutritious food for a population”

In its 2002 report the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) stated that 24% of the Indian population is undernourished and the other 1/5th suffers from chronic hunger. Five years hence, FAO noted: “record grain harvests and the yield was 2100 million metric tonnes.” If all the cereals grown had been distributed equally across the 6.6 billion world population and used as food there would have been no crisis. The cereals alone would have supplied everyone amounts of calories and proteins with about 30% left over.

In reality, the world-over it is estimated that about 923 million people are undernourished, 1.4 billion people live in extreme poverty and over 3 billion live in less than $2 per day. What are the reasons for this food insecurity?

Over the past 20 years, world food production has risen steadily at over 2% a year, while the rate of global population growth has dropped to 1.14% a year. Clearly, population is not outstripping food supply. The real reason is that people are too poor to buy the food that is available. Sadly, we are seeing hungry people in greater numbers than before—even when there is food on shelves and stores.

What then are the causes that result in food shortage and price rise? For one, cereal stock is being diverted in many countries as livestock feed, sweetener (i.e. high-fructose corn syrup), raw material for plastic, and feedstock for fuel in the form of ethanol. An estimated 100-million tonnes of grain per year are being redirected from food to fuel. Filling a tank of an average car with bio fuel, amounts to as much maize (Africa's principal food staple) as an African person consumes in an entire year.

Another reason is the changing food habits i.e. increasing non-vegetarianism among people. Seven kg of grains are equivalent to one kg of beef. In addition, the rise in oil prices has increased the costs of fertilizers, majority of which require petroleum or natural gas to manufacture. Because natural gas can substitute for petroleum in some uses, the increasing prices for petroleum lead to increasing prices for natural gas, and in turn for fertilizers.

Moreover, speculation and future trading have also contributed substantially to the rise in prices of various essential commodities including food items. Another factor is environment, which leads to reduction in crop production. Drought, heat wave, unseasonal rains, cyclone and diseases such as stem rust can play havoc with crops. Besides, large areas of croplands are lost every year due to soil erosion, water depletion and urbanization. Around 60,000 sq km per year of land becomes severely degraded and turns into wasteland that it adds to the crop supply problem.

Though the above points are relevant, in the Indian scenario inadequacy of the public distribution system (PDS), exhaustion of buffer stock as a part of globalisation and rapid opening up of the agricultural sector to foreign competition, which is vastly subsidized foodgrain, are specific issues leading to the food crisis.  

In July 2002, India was at an all-time high 63.1 million tonnes of food grain stocks with the Food Corporation of India (FCI). This exceeds the requirement for food security by about 20 million tonnes. Yet over 200 million people go hungry and 50 million are on the brink of starvation. Regrettably, the existence of food stocks above buffer requirements has not translated into availability.

Worse, the WTO agreement on agriculture has unfortunately made developing countries like ours more committed to marketing of agriculture than developed nations like the US, which have continued to maintain their high level subsidies. This has made agriculture in India less profitable, discouraging farmers from the field and resulting in reduction of production.

A look at excerpts of an interview with Union Minister of Agriculture Sharad Pawar by TV anchor Karan Thapar, on the issue of food security is telling:  

Pawar: "As representative of the Government, I know better than the papers. Suppose I purchase wheat from Punjab and Haryana and if I have to sell it to the entire South India, my yearly storage charges and my transport charges alone cost me Rs 1,150 to Rs 1,160 per quintal. My import price from Australia in southern India is somewhat close to Rs 950. It is my responsibility to protect the interests of the consumer, and for the sake of protecting the interests, I have to build up my buffer stock, and essentially in southern India. For the sake of building the buffer stock, in the case of an eventuality, I have no choice, I will import from anywhere”.  

Thapar: Professor MS Swaminathan, the father of Green Revolution in the country, says that India is facing second agrarian crisis. Professor Utsa Patnaik says India has become the republic of hunger. Do you agree with them?

Pawar: “I don't say that we are a republic of hunger. But it is true that investment in the agricultural sector in the last five-seven years, both public and private, has come down. This has affected the sector.”

Well, there are over 230 million people suffering from hunger or undernourishment in India, representing 27% of the worldwide hunger-stricken population! No other nation has so many people suffering from chronic malnutrition.

Unfortunately, the developed nations refuse to eliminate their outrageous agricultural subsidies while imposing rules of international trade on rest of the world. Their voracious transnational corporations set prices, monopolise technologies, impose unfair certification processes on trade, and manipulate distribution channels, sources of financing, trade and supplies for the production of food worldwide. They also control transportation, research, gene banks and production of fertilizers and pesticides.

It is this unfair trading world that globalisaton and the WTO has led our poverty-ridden citizens into. However, we can be fair within our borders: recognizing that food at affordable price is a human right. This is what one Gandhi we know would endorse. Parties can only ask for the boon of vote if they provide this human right.

With limiting of poverty and hunger hope will return. The thinking voter has an awesome power. Political Parties will have to reinvent themselves to meet the expectations of the thinking man. Sixty years is a long time and the aam aadmi’s patience has limits. --INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

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