Creative solutions needed to combat current food crises
OPINION: Manmohan Singh
Business Standard / New Delhi April 13, 2008 (http://business-standard.com/common/news_article.php?autono=319879&leftnm=4&subLeft=0&chkFlg=)
A progressive increase in agricultural productivity and income is essential for the removal of mass poverty and for creating an expanding market for industrial products. It is our sincere desire and effort to take Indian agriculture to a new level of knowledge-based development that is inclusive, equitable, environmentally sustainable and is regionally balanced. It is our goal to ensure both livelihood security and food security for all our people, paying particular attention to the needs of small and marginal farmers.
India has had a long association with each of the international organisations present here today. We owe a debt of gratitude for your contribution to improving the lot of our farmers and enhancing our food security. India's green revolution would not have been possible without the active cooperation and support of several international organisations as well as some major developed countries, such as the US.
Today, we are at the beginning of what may well be a new phase in our agricultural growth trajectory. We are once again faced with a situation where rising demand for foodgrain and other food items is running into supply constraints – both domestically as well as internationally. Similar pressures are being felt across the world. The world is faced with a situation where rising demand for food is not being met with a similar supply-side response. Further, the situation is becoming more complex due to alternative uses being developed for food crops - I refer here to the growing demand for bio-fuels. Owing to galloping oil prices, bio-fuels are being seen in many quarters as attractive substitutes for imported hydrocarbon fuels. Some see them as a greener alternative, although there may be more than one view on that. Many countries are actively promoting the development of bio-fuels. It's particularly worrisome that the new economics of bio-fuels is encouraging a shift of land away from food crops. What this has done is that for the first time, there is a direct linkage between oil prices and food prices. Food markets have got interlinked to oil markets, making food policy — complex as well as uncertain.
Given this scenario, there is a feeling that the first green revolution has run its course. Modern technology has certainly widened the options available to our farmers and planners. Yet, the world seems to be facing the prospect of food shortages and rising food prices. I believe that this is going to be one of the most urgent challenges of our times. We need a second green revolution. The global community and agencies must fashion a collective response that leads to a quantum leap in agricultural productivity and output so that the spectre of food shortages is banished.
We in India too are deeply concerned about rising commodity and food prices. Sharply rising food prices can slow down poverty alleviation, impede economic growth and retard employment generation. The global economy can also be hurt by this process. We in the developing world will of course be seriously hurt. In most developing countries, food prices are the kingpin of the price structure. A steep rise in food prices will make inflation control more difficult, hurting macro-economic stability. The constituency for economic reforms would also diminish. Pressures would mount for restrictive trade practices. We cannot react to such a situation by returning to an era of blind controls and by depressing agriculture's terms of trade. That will hurt the welfare of our farmers as well as long-term growth. The non-farming economy cannot prosper on the back of an impoverished farm sector. Hence, we need imaginative solutions that increase agricultural productivity, increase farm incomes, increase food production and, at the same time, also contribute to greater purchasing power in the hands of the poor.
We are worried that climate change and global warming may have a harmful impact on land productivity and water availability. We need concerted global action to grasp the impact of climate change on agricultural production world-wide. We need more equitable, efficient and rational systems and institutions for the utilisation of scarce water resources. The first green revolution by-passed dryland farming. We need now new technologies and new production regimes for rainfed and dryland agriculture.
(Excerpts from Manmohan Singh's address at the Global Agro Industries Forum, New Delhi, 10 April, 2008)
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