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Increasing Food Demand:MALNUTRITION & & FAMINE SCARE, by Dhurjati Mukherjee, 16 May 2008 Print E-mail

Open Forum

New Delhi, 16 May 2008

Increasing Food Demand

MALNUTRITION & & FAMINE SCARE

By Dhurjati Mukherjee

The global food situation has been reported to be quite alarming and with record high grain prices there is a possibility of increasing malnutrition, perhaps famine, in some parts of Africa and South Asia. The Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) has declared that 850 million persons would go hungry in the world and things are expected to get worse this year and also possibly in 2009. Yet an estimated 1.6 billion adults, about a quarter of the world’s 6.7 billion people are overweight, some of them obese.

According to the United Nations Population Division, the world’s population is growing by about 78 million people per annum with projections of an additional 2.5 billion by 2050. The increase in population and the change in consumption coupled with growing use of corn and other foods for bio-fuel are expected to trigger a food shortage. Unless food shortage is tackled effectively and quickly, the world would face increased social unrest, food riots, political instability and more failed States, observed Lester Brown, president, Earth Policy Institute, Washington.

Already food riots have been 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 various factors which included record oil costs, severe droughts, diversion of corn for ethanol use and rapidly growing demand in the Third World countries, including China and India. The World Bank president, Robert B. Zoellick, has warned that around 30 nations are at risk of social unrest from the crisis as the world faced the biggest challenge from its 45-year history.

By 2012, world population is expected to touch seven billion, most of the additions being in South Asia and Africa. Asia will add 500 million, reaching 1.6 billion. Africa’s population, now 960 million, will grow by one billion. A rough calculation by Brown and his Institute has found that just to feed the additional each year would require 640 square miles of good new farmland. That’s an area approximately the size of Los Angeles county or 18 million football fields. 

At a recent meeting of experts, called by the British Prime Minister to discuss the food crisis, the chief of World Food Programme, Josette Sheeran, said a “silent tsunami” threatened to plunge 100 million people on every continent into hunger. “This is the new face of hunger – the millions of people who are not in the urgent hunger category but now are”, he observed.

Meanwhile, the White House released $ 200 million in wheat stores for developing countries recently, and further steps are being planned to help ease the burden of the rising food prices on the world’s impoverished people. Options include building more overseas storage facilities and roads to reduce food wastage and taking necessary measures to accord top priority in evolving an action plan at the G-8 summit of industrialized nations in July.

As for India, it has been found that the Rs 5,000-crore National Food Security Mission (NFSM), launched to ensure food security for all by 2012, may be inadequate for meeting the foodgrains’ demand in the country. While the total production has been estimated to touch 230 million tonnes by then, experts feel that it will fall short of the demand by 4.15 million tones. The demand estimates do not take into account the changing consumption pattern in the country, specially in a section of the rural areas and the urban areas.

The FAO has estimated that one-fifth of the Indian population is undernourished because of poverty. While general consumption has been on the rise, on the one hand, and a changing pattern discernible, on the other, there would be increasing pressure on foodgrains. One cannot deny that the effects of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP) and Bharat Nirman will steadily have an impact on the rural areas and, as the poor and the economically weaker sections use over 70-80 per cent of their income on food, the demand projections may need to be further revised.

The NFSM has been designed only to produce more rice, wheat and pulses.  “It does not focus on coarse grains but we’re now thinking of looking at the demand for such grains as well”, Union Agriculture Ministry sources informed. This is much needed at this point as demand for coarse grains would increase greatly in the coming five years while, in urban areas, the demand would be oriented towards meat, eggs and pulses.

The problem of food crisis is exacerbated by the fact that in China, India and some other countries, the diet of the growing middle-class now includes more meat, poultry and eggs. To grow farm animals and poultry require much more agricultural feed stocks per unit of output compared to the crops being consumed by humans. Amongst vegetarians and a section of the rural population, the per capita consumption of pulses and edible oils is growing as well, pushing up prices of all these commodities.

In addition, the production of foodgrains has also been affected by climate change such as unseasonal heavy rains, floods. Moreover, diversion of more land top growing crops for production of bio-fuels for energy security has pushed up food prices and depleted food stocks. In India, water availability is a problem specially to boost up productivity, while dryland farming has not yet become widespread. Irrigation and water facilities are inadequate in most parts to produce three crops per year.  

Moreover, in some countries of the Third World, including India there is an increasing trend to industrialize by using agricultural land to boost up the pace of growth. If this continues, it is likely to have disastrous consequence in the not-too-distant future and food security may get jeopardized. Though the Union government has recently come out against this trend, it does not look to be serious.          

While there is still time for India, we need to focus attention on the agricultural sector and ensure increased production of foodgrains, pulses and other basic necessities. The average crop yield in the country --3.12 tonnes per hectare is far less than the Asian average--4.17 tonnes per hectare. Punjab and Haryana have been facing soil health problems in respect of salinity and nutrient imbalance and irrigation potential appears to be steadily exhausted. However, there is need to fully tap the potential in the eastern and north-eastern region, stretching from eastern Uttar Pradesh to Assam for improving productivity, specially of rice.

The land-to-lab approach has to become a reality and the agricultural universities have to be actively involved in this task. Other measures such as  rain water harvesting, use of genetically modified seeds, wherever necessary, protection against weeds and pests, better storage facilities and improving weather forecasting (specially of rains) to protect crops are very much necessary in the short term.   

India must give special attention to the fact that while it gives preference to the export promotion, it should not weaken its ‘food security’ condition and  usurp the livelihood of poor villagers. As Mangal Rai, Director General, Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) rightly pointed out: “Since land area is limited and agricultural land is the most precious, one must be very careful. One will have to take into cognizance the long-term effects of food security of the country. Food security is an integral part of national security”.  ---INFA

 (Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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