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Climate Change: FOOD SECURITY MAY FACE BRUNT By Dhurjati Mukherjee, 3 June, 2014 Print E-mail

World Environment Day

New Delhi, 3 June 2014

Climate Change

FOOD SECURITY MAY FACE BRUNT

By Dhurjati Mukherjee

 

The Green Revolution in agriculture finds itself triumphed by the Green Evolution because of changing climatic developments, which are likely to occur in the coming years. The recent world-wide concern about global warming and the concerns of eminent scientists and academicians that urgent action was needed to prevent the catastrophe have gone virtually unheeded though there has been some headway towards bio-fuels.

 

Obviously bio-fuels could be an ideal solution to bring down pollution levels and curb CO2 emissions but the negative aspect is by turning agricultural land to grow crops that could be processed ethanol – a less polluting fuel than petrol or diesel – thereby further impacting food production.

 

This has resulted in land that was previously used to grow grains and other agri-products for human consumption which has now been devoted to crops for vehicles. The obvious effect over the last few years has led to a crisis situation in food, which may get accentuated in future, resulting in further escalation of food prices due to shortages. Former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has stated: “something must be done to ensure that both the US and Europe stop producing fuel in competition with food”, 

 

Meanwhile, a recent UN report predicted severe impact of global warming on foodgrain production, fresh water resources and human settlements across the globe with populous areas facing the brunt of it. It forecast that climate change is expected to reduce median yields by up to 2 per cent per decade for the rest of the 21st century against rising demand of foodgrain by 14 per cent per decade until 1950.

 

The temperature increase of 2.5 degree C above pre-industrial levels, states the report, predicted declining yield of major crops such as wheat, rise and maize in different climatic zones as also the tropical regions of Asia. It adds: “The majority of those affected will be in East Asia, South East Asia and South Asia. Rising sea levels means coastal systems and low lying areas will increasingly experience submergence, coastal flooding and coastal erosion”. Thus the effect of this would affect the poorer sections of the population.

 

It can easily be said that impact of climate change would severely affect Third World countries. Agricultural productivity would, in all likelihood, decline in the tropics, even with changes in farming practices. And, as per reports, over 3 million additional people could die from malnutrition or under nutrition every year. Developing countries are likely to be more dependent on imports from their well-off counterparts with their farmers losing market shares in agricultural trade.

 

The spike in food prices during the past few years and the global financial problems have been critical issues. It is well known that almost half the Third World countries are still in poverty, living on less than $ 2 a day. Insofar as India is concerned, keeping in view climate and agricultural outcomes, yields of major crops are projected to decline by 4.5 to 9 per cent within the next three decades, even allowing for short-term adaptations.

 

The implications of climate change on poverty – and GDP – would be enormous given projected population growth and the evidence that one percentage point of agricultural GDP growth in developing countries increases the consumption of the poorest third of the population by 4 to 6 percentage points.    

Man’s fight against hunger has taken a new turn and as Dr. Norman Borlaug predicted way back in his 1970 Nobel Prize address that the green revolution can “provide food for sustenance during the next three decades” is very much true today. The green revolution has run its course and after four decades is being faced with environmental consequences of intense, industrial agriculture apart soil salinity due to high degree of chemicals and pesticides and, of course, water shortages.

The threat to food security as well environment has undoubtedly posed a big challenge to the human race. Global hunger is indeed quite severe: nearly 30 per cent of world’s population currently suffers malnutrition, some 850 million are undernourished and around 2.8 million children and 300,000 women die annually in the developing countries. Sometime back it was estimated that around 3 billion or about half of the world’s population would be food insecure.

Meanwhile, during the past two-three years, the price of wheat rose by over 100 per cent while the price of rice in some countries of Asia more than doubled. It is likely to get accentuated in the coming years and obviously the poor and the deprived sections of society, specially in the Third World, are likely to suffer the consequences, resulting in malnutrition, suicides and starvation deaths.

A billion people in Asia are already seriously affected by the surging costs of daily staples such as rice and bread, as per estimates of the DG, Asian Development Bank. This includes roughly a billion people who live just under a dollar a day (or $ 1.25) which is the standard definition of poverty and another 400 million who are just above the borderline.

Unless the food shortage situation is tackled effectively, the world would face social riots, terrorist activity, political instability and more failed States. During the past few years, food riots were reported in over a dozen countries in Africa and Asia, specially in Egypt, Haiti, Cameroon, Bangladesh and Indonesia following sharp rise in food prices caused by record oil costs, severe droughts, diversion of corn for ethanol use and rapidly growing demand. The he same situation was last year. A few years ago, former World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick warned that 30-odd nations were at risk of social unrest from the crisis as the world faced the biggest challenge from its 45-year history.

The situation may deteriorate further if oil prices do not stabilize; climate change related disasters increase in frequency and intensity; policy decisions, such as mandated bio-fuel quotas in fuel supply, further deteriorate the already strong price connection between fuel and food; threats of drought in a cyclical order – more so due to soil contamination -- and rapidly growing demand.

It was estimated that by 2012, there would be 7 billion people, which may be around 7.5 billion now, with most of the additions being in South Asia and Africa. India will add 500 million reaching 1.6 billion, while Africa’s population now 960 million will grow by one billion. A rough calculation by President, Earth Policy Institute in Washington, Lester Brown, found that just to feed the addition to the world population each year would require some 640 square miles of good farmland. That’s an area approximately the size of Los Angeles or 18 million football fields.

 

But though forests the world over, specially in the Amazon region, Indonesia, Congo are being chopped down for timber and to create farmland, the amount of land available for agriculture has been shrinking due to desertification and soil pollution. Moreover, the current trend in Third World, including India, has been to convert farmland for extending and/or developing townships or for industrial projects, where returns are much higher. This has led to wanton displacement and migration of the rural population to cities coupled with violent protests in most places. Farm yield has been dwindling and declined to 1.2 per cent per cent during the last decade or so.      

However, a section of experts believe in an utopian proposition that the situation could be retrieved and the current food crisis will eventually lead to an ever-green revolution, designed to improve productivity in perpetuity with not much ecological harm. 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.

The direction of such revolution would be through organic farming and/or green agriculture. The emphasis of such an approach has gained wide acceptance and is based on integrated pest and nutrient management, crop livestock integration, use of appropriate and productive genetic stains and the adoption of dryland farming and low water-use techniques. Some also believe that while reducing the use of fertilizers and chemicals and conserving water, widespread adoption of genetically modified crops is necessary.

There is another view that increasing productivity in the above manner may not be sufficient enough to meet the increasing demand of an exploding population in the coming years. But as far as India is concerned, the average crop yield has been 3.12 tonnes per hectare in 2006 – roughly double the yield farmers were getting in 60s, according to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). This may have increased slightly to say 3.30 to 3.50 presently but it pales in comparison with China where the yield in 2006 stood at 6.26 tonnes per hectare. Even the average for Asia as a whole is 4.17 tonnes per hectare, almost 25 per cent better than that in India.

At this point in time, in India there is a need to concentrate on the traditional methods of soil health enhancement and pest management and blend them with modern technology. It would be prudent to promote livestock farming systems rather than totally depend on monoculture of the same crop and variety. In the wake of global energy and food crises, developing nations like ours should promote conservation farming and sustainable rural livelihoods. This may help to achieve an evergreen revolution, leading to an improvement of productivity.

Population rich but land hungry countries including China, India and Bangladesh have no option but to produce more per unit of land and water under conditions of diminishing per capita arable land and irrigation water availability and expending biotic and abiotic stress.  

Additionally, there is very little synergy between researchers and farmers in the country in spite of repeated emphasis of lab-to-land approach. There is indeed a huge gap between what is produced in research stations and demonstration fields and the average actual production. And that gap could be up to 200 per cent in many cases. Moreover, certain regions of the country, specially the northern and western parts, are quite productive which, however, is not the case with the eastern and north-eastern segments.

Undeniably, the benefits of research have to percolate to all parts of the country through the setting of district-level coordination and extension centres to guide and help farmers. The potential for increasing yields thus exists for the country if the recommended practices and good extension systems are followed.

But simultaneously it has to be ensured that farmland is not converted for setting up SEZs or for purposes of industrialization, whatever may be the provocation and however much these may contribute to GDP growth. Such projects should be located in places where there are barren lands unfit for agricultural use and this view has been propounded by none other than the eminent agricultural scientist Dr M S Swaminathan. This has to be strictly adhered to ensure food security and prevent the incidence of poverty from getting accentuated.

Additionally, high levels of GDP growth without a simultaneous effect on poverty eradication and upgrading the lives of the rural poor doesn’t mean real development. Moreover, to maintain social peace, it is imperative that a country which is aiming to be a global power has to lay adequate stress on the rural sector and ensure that the basic necessities of the people are met.

Finally, it is necessary for the country as also for most of the Third World to maintain demographic equilibrium as economic growth alone cannot tackle the problem. The hyper population, the demand on resources and the consequent effects on nature would become a critical problem if population growth is not restrained. Let us remember what Africa Geographic (August 2007) aptly pointed out: “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”. It referred to James Lovelock observation: “We have grown in numbers to the point where our presence is perceptibly disabling the planet like a disease”. ---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

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