Climate of threat to food security

Suman Sahai

Despite the fact that independent India has not had large-scale famines, widespread hunger prevails and is growing. According to official data, almost 87 per cent of rural India gets less than the minimum calorie requirement.

The decline in agricultural productivity, the diversion of foodgrains to feed poultry and livestock, policies that focus on export products and cash crops, as also inflationary food prices are contributing to a growing food crisis in the country. In addition, there is the proposed diversion of land and water to the production of Jatropha-based biofuels, the rapidly changing land use policy and the government’s support for special economic zones even when they encroach on prime agricultural land.

Economic reforms in India have led to disinvestment in the agriculture sector. This has adversely affected more than two-thirds of the population that is dependent on agriculture for its livelihood. Farmers themselves face hunger due to rising input costs and non-remunerative prices of farm products. There is no effective crop and livestock insurance to cover damage and credit is not available at reasonable rates.

Food availability has declined. Immediately after Independence, from the 1950s to 1964, it ranged between 140 and 170 kg per capita per annum. Between 1979 and 1994, it went up to 180 kg per capita per annum. After the reform period, foodgrain availability declined sharply to 150 kg per annum. There is a considerable shortfall in the actual requirement and availability of foodgrains. In the context of the current agrarian crisis, this trend poses a grave danger to communities already afflicted with hunger.

Adding to this already grim scenario is the new challenge of climate change. This year’s see-saw with the monsoon is a pre-runner of what awaits us ahead. According to climate estimates, agriculture in the productive areas of South Asia will be among the most adversely affected. As temperatures rise, the growing season is expected to shorten with decreases in agricultural productivity of up to 40 per cent. The worst brunt of climate change on food production will be borne by farmers in rain-fed areas.

Coping with the impact of climate change on agriculture will require careful management of resources like land, water and biodiversity. A large-scale public education and training programme is necessary to help farmers cope with the changes coming from global warming. Nothing in their experience has prepared them for the rapidly evolving, anthropogenic climate turbulence.

The disbanded extension service in the agriculture sector must be resumed urgently. Training and capacity building programmes must help to increase sensitivity to the problems that agriculture will face and understand its causes. At present, there is little understanding among rural communities about global warming and they are facing difficulties adjusting to the unpredictable changes that are throwing their long-held cropping patterns out of gear. The new extension service must be geared to teaching farmers how to adapt their agriculture to the new weather conditions that will negatively impact their food and livelihood security.

Not just farmers, it will be necessary to provide education and training to a range of actors. This would include policymakers, Panchayati Raj institutions, the banking sector, civil society groups, corporate executives and others, in the theory and practice of adapting agriculture to climate turbulence. Such capacity building will enable the successful adoption of adaptation strategies at policy and implementation levels.

There will have to be a fundamental strategy change in food production. Practices in agriculture will need to shift from intensive, mechanised, water-demanding agriculture to a more sustainable, conservative agriculture that grows crops using less water. “More crop per drop of water” is a strategy recommended to tackle drought. The same approach is applicable in a wider sense when addressing the challenges posed by global warming.

The first step in adapting agriculture to cope with climate change will be to diversify the farm production model to minimise risk and obtain the most benefits from available resources. Such sustainable models will have to include crops, livestock, poultry and where possible, fisheries and agro forestry.

As the monsoon rainfall gets reduced and more uncertain and receding glaciers reduce water flows in rivers, farmers must learn to make maximum use of available water. Rainwater harvesting and traditional water storage structures such as farm ponds, wells and tanks will have to be revived. Watershed development and catchment area recharge treatments to allow for aquifer replenishment will have to be undertaken on priority basis in all ecosystems. As rainfall becomes less reliable, water conserved in tanks, ponds and wells will provide life-saving irrigation to crops.

Soil management will need to focus on increasing organic matter to improve soil nutrition and water retention capacity, thus increasing crop productivity. The eco-system approach to agricultural production using crop rotation, maintaining an appropriate balance of soil nutrients and using an integrative and bio-organic approach to pest management will be effective in coping with rapidly changing farm conditions.

Contour bunding will be useful, especially in the hill areas, to increase water retention in terraced fields and improve crop productivity. It was a central component in regenerating degraded soils in Burkina Faso in West Africa and is credited with as much as a 40 per cent increase in agricultural production the first year after its implementation. Planting hedgerows of leguminous plants, especially in poor soils, which constitute the bulk of the soil in India, is important to fix nitrogen, prevent soil erosion and conserve soil moisture.

Mulching and other types of soil cover is helpful in arresting soil erosion and extending the availability of soil moisture. Mulching has the added benefit of reducing weed populations by up to 60 per cent, saving on weeding costs. None of these are rocket science but they are neglected in our policy and implementation plans. India’s strategy to deal with climate change, encapsulated in the National Action Plan on Climate Change lacks vision and offers no realistic solutions. We need urgently to come up with a policy and framework to protect our agriculture and food production from the onslaught of global warming.

The writer, chairperson of Gene Campaign, is a scientist and development activist. She can be reached at mail@genecampaign.org

Source : Deccan Chronicle, October 15, 2012

Knowledge Is Survival

Knowledge passed from generation to generation provides a guarantee for the next harvest.

Indian farmers are fighting for their intellectual property.

 

Large conglomerates take advantage of Indian farmers. The farmers forfeit their claim to their intellectual property and ultimately, to the knowledge that might allow them to resist climate change. The "Gene Campaign" has become their advocate.

Diversity is Nature's "Plan B": it provides a variety of possibilities. Let us suppose that a plant crop no longer grow once its native habitat has become flooded. However, some of its relatives are not afraid to get their feet wet and will take root even in mud. Or say the higher temperatures caused by climate change make it difficult for traditional crops. This is where Mother Nature plays her joker card called biodiversity. If one plant won't grow under these conditions, another will.

A pretty cool thing, this Nature. If only we could put it to use. Well, that's exactly what man has been doing since the beginning of agriculture. We not only know that a certain plant has medicinal properties; we also know that it can withstand drought or rain, or that the wind will easily knock it over. All of this knowledge; acquired by trial and error and passed on from generation to generation, helps to guarantee the next harvest and thus, the survival itself in a constantly changing environment.

"I want to help my country!"
People all over the world are struggling to preserve and protect this knowledge. Dr. Suman Sahai and the "Gene Campaign" NGO*, which she founded, are fighting for the rights of Indian farmers to their intellectual property. Trained in genetics, the scientist can look back on a long and successful career. She performed research and taught at universities in India, Canada, the USA and Germany. "It wasn't a professional mid-life crisis that brought me from research to the 'Gene Campaign'. I was a successful scientist and I really enjoyed my work," says Sahai. "It was my Indian identity. I want to help my country." And just what kind of service to the Indian people does Dr. Sahai find so rewarding?
"Gene Campaign" fights internationally for the fair treatment of indigenous intellectual property. Based on the premise that no one should have to be made to account for his property, Suman Sahai pillories scientists, pharmaceutical companies, and agricultural concerns as "biopirates" and accuses profit- hungry governments.The "exploiters" not only disregard the moral principles that Sahai stands for but also violate the objectives and duties prescribed by the CBD (Convention on Biodiversity), all under the mantle of the WTO (World Trade Organization). Benefit-sharing remains merely an ideal because there is money in knowing how to use plants. Lots of money. Suman Sahai has estimated what fair benefit-sharing would look like in her view. Pharmaceutical companies might invest a billion dollars from the time a plant is discovered until a product is launched on the market. Deducting the outlays needed for advertising and standardization in Western markets of around 400 million dollars, that would place a value of 600 million dollars on the plant itself. This would provide an equitable basis for negotiations. The only question is: What is fair? Five percent for the people who discovered the knowledge? Or fifty? "Plus a share of the profits, naturally," says Dr. Suman Sahai.

It's no surprise that the "biopirates" are anything but thrilled by this calculation. This is where Sahai's reputation as a scientist is helpful. "Governments listen to me, even though they don't like what I have to say. My career as a scientist confers authority on me." This authority, plus the conviction of doing the right thing are apparent in her entire manner, in the rapid, almost brusque way she counters arguments, or in the way she calls for people to rethink. They are towering demands, made by a towering personality.

Bringing science to the village
The "Gene Campaign", however, doesn't just perform international publicity and stand up for the rights of farmers. The organization also provides on- site assistance. The marketing of diversity by the industrial nations not only puts farmers at a disadvantage; their valuable know-how is slowly being lost. Optimized seeds dominate the market. Native low- performance varieties and alternative sources of food are slowly being forgotten. To put it drastically, farmers' survival is being pinned to one crop alone. In an effort to preserve indigenous knowledge, the NGO delivers "science where it's needed" — to the villages. Local communities assist in erecting simple seed banks. Villagers receive training in managing their seed supply and ultimately assume responsibility for them. The banks thus provide a guarantee of crop diversity and preserve the knowledge of their uses.

Educating for equity
Villagers are grateful for the attempts to secure their future by preserving diversity but many a battle against powerful adversaries needs to be fought before equitable benefit-sharing can proceed. Sahai hopes that future generations will learn to respect and deal fairly with resources — both intellectual and material — through education and publicity.

Verena Orth

Source : Correcting Images. Protecting and Using Biological Diversity - Preserving Cultural Diversity

 

 

WE NEED A BETTER FOOD SECURITY LAW

Suman Sahai

Despite the proposition that independent India has not had large scale famines, widespread hunger prevails and by all accounts, is growing. As we now know from official data, the majority of the population does not attain the minimum calorie levels for rural and urban areas. According to one estimate almost 87 per cent of the rural population gets less than the rural cut-off of 2400 calories/day, and 64.5 per cent of the urban population gets less than the urban cut-off of 2100 calories/day. India finds itself at the bottom in terms of the HDI rankings. According to the multiple poverty index the levels of poverty in the country are alarming, in the range of 645 million, or 55.4 per cent of the population.

The Indian State Hunger Index (ISHI) found that 12 of 17 states surveyed had ‘alarming’ levels of hunger, with one state having an ‘extremely alarming’ level. Not a single state had ‘low’ or ‘moderate’ hunger levels. Despite this commonality, the ISHI demonstrated high variability in hunger between states. The ISHI enabled global comparisons which showed that several of India’s worst performing states have higher levels of hunger than countries such as Zimbabwe and Haiti. Madhya Pradesh, the worst performing state, ranked just above Ethiopia.

The agrarian crisis
The output of food grains in 2003–04 was still 14 million tonnes below the high level reached in 2000–01. Admittedly the food grain production did go up in the last two years yet the shortfall is still massive. In 2011 there was the announcement of so-called record food grain production which prompted the lifting of the Supreme Court ban on wheat exports. Nevertheless, this increase in production has been limited to the surplus states such as Punjab, Haryana, and Andhra Pradesh whereas the rainfed states suffering from the highest levels of hunger, such as Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand, have not shared in these increases. On the contrary, the extent of fallow lands is increasing as farmers are unable to farm due to the paucity of productive resources. Given these growth rates and the regional disparities in hunger and agricultural production, it is not surprising that hunger and malnutrition have reached unprecedented levels.
Malnutrition

Today, nearly half of India’s children below the age of three are malnourished and stunted, and 40 per cent of rural India eats only as much food as sub-Saharan Africa. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), India is one among 17 countries where the number of the undernourished decreased in the first half of the 1990s, before increasing in the second half, thus almost completely offsetting the gains made during the earlier part of the decade. The per capita availability of food has declined for the first time since the 1960s. The official National Sample Survey (NSS) of 2000 revealed that three-fourths of India’s rural population and half the urban population did not get the minimum recommended calories. This is confirmed by nutritional and health surveys, which show: more than two-fifths of the adult population suffers from chronic energy deficiency, and a large percentage are at the border of this condition; half of India’s women are anaemic; and half of India’s children can be clinically defined as malnourished (stunted, wasting, or both). It is estimated that half of the Indian rural population, over 350 million people, are below the average food energy intake of sub-Saharan African countries.

Economic reforms in India have led to disinvestment in the agriculture sector. This has adversely affected more than 60 percent of the population which relies on agriculture for its livelihood. Many of the farmers responsible for making India self-sufficient in grain production are themselves facing hunger due to non-remunerative prices and rising input costs, among other factors. The following graphs show how the new agriculture policies have diminished the food availability gains made in the 1980s, resulting in a food availability situation not much better than the early 1950’s.

Fig 1: Food Grain Availability

Source: Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Delhi 2005.
Fig. 1 shows that the 1950s, and up to 1964, the per capita availability of food grains ranged between 140 and 170 kg per annum. The availability dropped drastically in 1967, when it touched 143 kg, and then it increased again. What is noteworthy is the trend between 1979 and 1994, when the per capita availability of food grains ranged between 155 and 180 kg per annum. After 1994, availability declined to 150 kg per annum.

This picture becomes clearer if we mark out the per day availability of food grains as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2 : Per Day Food Availability

Source: Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Delhi, 2005.
Fig. 2 shows that the net per day availability of food grains in India has dipped alarmingly. It is now touching almost the same levels that it had reached in the early 1950s, at less than 450 grams per day per capita. There is a considerable shortfall in the actual requirement and availability of food grains. In the context of the current agrarian crisis, this trend poses a grave danger to communities already afflicted with hunger.

The Food Security Bill
In the backdrop of declining food availability, there have been diverse efforts to tackle hunger. There has been the Public Distribution System (PDS) providing subsidized grain, the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and the mid-day meal scheme for school children.

The most recent in this line of efforts to improve the hunger situation, is the National Food Security Bill (NFSB) proposed by the powerful National Advisory Council (NAC). The NFSB is being considered seriously by the government where reception to its contents is mixed at best. Elements in government and out of it have not been unanimously supportive of the Bill. An expert committee headed by C Rangarajan, stated that the entitlements outlined under the NAC draft (90 percent coverage of the rural population and 50 percent of the urban) were not feasible due to unavailability of sufficient food grains. They recommended that the entitlements which were guaranteed for above poverty line (APL) households be discarded and that only below poverty line (BPL) households (as measured by the Tendulkar estimate plus a ten percent margin) be included in the scheme. This would mean a drastic reduction in coverage with only 46 percent of the rural population and 28 percent of the urban included under the ambit of the legislation.

The Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has expressed doubt over the large quantity of grain procurement that would be required by the NAC draft and said that the issues raised by the Rangarajan Committee remained ‘pertinent’. Adding to this, the Food Ministry submitted their revised draft legislation days later which was substantially different from NAC’s proposal and decreased both the scope and size of the entitlements. Civil society groups appear divided on the NAC Bill, with some terming it merely a revised form of the PDS.

There are grave problems with the government draft that patterns itself on the draft provided by the National Advisory Council. Primary is its extremely restricted scope. This is not a Bill that attempts to bring about food security, it is only a Bill that offers a different plan to the existing PDS system, to distribute grain. No attention is paid to the most important components of food security, the production of food, its distribution and its absorption by the poor and hungry. Of the three major pillars of food security, food production, food distribution and food absorption, the NAC draft addresses just one. It is actually more a welfare Bill, a ‘dole’ as it were than an effort to tackle the complex problem of food security per se.

Tackling food security will certainly mean treading on influential toes. The conflicts will arise over who will have preferential access to productive resources like land and water. Will Coca Cola get the water for its bottling plant or will farmers get it for their cultivation? Will small farmers in the dry lands get massive investments in creating water bodies to enable them to have a second crop in the winter? The conflicts will be over such things like fertiliser subsidies. Will Punjab, Haryana, Western UP, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu continue as the principal beneficiaries of the government’s subsidies or will nutrient based subsidy be directed at poor quality soils in rainfed areas that most need intervention, finally get their due? The smallest , most marginal farmers have the worst soils and the least access to water. A Food Security Bill will have meaning only if it tries to swing things in their favour.

The Food Security Bill must tackle the fundamental question of common property resources and the right of access to them. It must be able to speak out against Jatropha plantations on common lands which are conveniently designated as ‘wasteland’. The biofuel produced in the name of clean energy will take away the grazing lands of herders and pastoralists , the place where they can park their livestock because they have no other land. It will take away the source of leafy green vegetables and medicinal plants that the poor rely on.

Just as it will have to tackle the Coca Colas , the Food Security Bill must also take a position against the Adanis, the Reliance lot and all the other conglomerates who are grabbing agricultural lands in the name of SEZs to set up industrial estates ( or just to corner real estate ) India’s most productive lands, the two crop and three crop zones are being snapped up to build urban estates. Where will we grow our food?

The food production part of the Food Security Bill will also have to deal with putting into place our response to ensure food security when faced with climate change. According to the IPCC report, the impact of climate change will be most severe in Africa and South Asia, especially its rainfed areas. We cannot continue behaving as though this is someone else’s problem and even as we debate the finer points of universal versus targeted distribution of food grains , that someone will step in and make the problem go away.

The neglect of rural India continues . There is no technical or financial obstruction to providing sanitation and clean drinking water in mission mode but it still has not been done. Children continue to die of diarrhoea and adults continue to sicken with it , unable to retain the little nutrition they get. There is no reason why this simple intervention has still not been done….
The fact is that to draft a truly comprehensive Food Security Bill and accommodate the logical aspects that belong there, a lot of people will have to be asked to give up some of what is in their bag of goodies. The Food Security Bill clearly fights shy of that .

Questions have also been raised about the manner of drafting this Bill. What kinds of consultations were undertaken? How did the principal stakeholders engage in the process of providing inputs? In what manner were experts and other actors brought on board ? How were the public’s views sought? Has this Bill attempted to be pluralistic representative of other views?

Redrafting a Food Security Legislation
It seems clear that to draft a food security bill, more than just the distribution aspects will have to be addressed. The Bill must include all relevant aspects related to the three major pillars of food security :
• the production (availability) of food,
• the distribution of food
• the absorption of food and nutrition. For this clean drinking water and sanitation are minimum requirements to prevent diarrhoea.

COPING WITH CLIMATE CHANGE TO PROTECT FOOD AND LIVELIHOOD SECURITY

Suman Sahai
As the world struggles with successive food crises and turbulence marks the countries that suffer from endemic hunger, there is the new factor of global warming and climate change to contend with. Climate change and its impact on agriculture and food production is being properly understood only now, as its anticipated impacts are being felt in agricultural ecosystems across the world.

The developing countries in the tropics are more susceptible to climate change damage than the temperate countries, many of which will be beneficiaries. The worst impacts of climate change on food production are anticipated in Africa and South Asia. For the latter where agriculture remains largely monsoon dependent, disturbances in the monsoon as we know it, could have grave implications for food and water security. If the monsoon falters, so does our food security as well as the livelihood security of large parts of the population.

Changes in rainfall patterns and temperature regimes, influence local water balance and disturb the optimal cultivation period for particular crops, known as Length of Growing Period (LGP). According to climate change data, land with good LGP will decrease by as much as 51 million hectare world wide.

Adequate LGP is needed to ensure that medium to long duration crops are able to grow to maturity. Some crop varieties ripen quickly and are ready for use in a shorter period ( short duration varieties), others, specially among cereals require a longer period to mature.When the LGP in an agro climatic zone is long,a variety of crops from short duration to long duration can be cultivated there, throughout the growing season. This means higher food production. When the LGP contracts, the growing season is shortened, with implications for food production. Most climate change models predict large increases of LGP in today’s temperate, and arctic regions. This means that temperate regions which are currently one crop zones will become two crop zones, thus increasing agriculture production there.

Tropical areas on the other hand are slated to see an expansion of arid zones accompanied by a contraction of 31-51 million ha of favorable cultivation areas. This will mean a significant reduction in food production in the most vulnerable areas where population density is high and food is already scarce. Nearly one billion people live in these vulnerable environments, dependent on agriculture. These vulnerable populations will suffer most from climate damage like land degradation and biodiversity loss.

Climate Change Impacts in India and South Asia
According to climate data almost 40 percent of the production potential in certain developing countries could be lost. In India and South Asia, dryland areas where agriculture is rainfed, will see cutbacks in productivity due to a shorter, more uncertain monsoon. The biggest blow to food stocks however is likely to come from declining production because areas where two to three crops are being cultivated today, as in Punjab, western Uttar Pradesh, the Northeastern states and certain coastal areas, are likely to turn into single crop zones, where only one crop can be taken in a year because the rest of the season will be too hot and dry to support cultivation.

The manifestation of climate change in India and South Asia finds many forms. There have been serious and recurrent floods in Bangladesh, Nepal and India since 2002 and unusually heavy rainfall and floods in Mumbai in 2005. Torrential rain in Jaisalmer and parts of Rajasthan in 2010 led to floods in this desert region, accompanied by more frequent and prolonged droughts as in the years 2008 to 2010. At the same time cyclonic activity has become high. Witness the increased cyclones in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea since 1970 and more recently Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008 and Cyclone Aila in 2009. This weather turbulence is accompanied by increasing turbulence in India’s food lifeline, the South West monsoon.

According to monsoon modeling data, the total number of rainy days during the monsoon period will decrease by 15 days. Considering that most of the monsoon rainfall falls within 100 days, this will be a significant shortfall. The intensity of the rainfall is expected to increase accompanied by strong surface run off and loss of fertile top soil. The melting of the Himalayan glaciers will diminish the water flow in the major rivers of North India ,affecting the food production in the highly productive Indo- Gangetic plains.

The melting polar ice is causing the sea level to rise. Large parts of the Maldives could go under, as could the Ganges delta in Bangladesh. India with its coastline of nearly 6000 km, has cause for concern. Several million people practice agriculture and aquaculture along the coast, all of which will be threatened by the increasing salinity of ground water as sea water seeps into aquifers. Along with major staple crops, other food sources like livestock and fish , both marine and fresh water will be affected by rising temperatures. Sea level rise will impact the habitations of populations that live along the coast, as in Kerala or Bangladesh and loss of homesteads along with livelihoods will create a new class of climate refugees who will be forced to migrate inwards, seeking new avenues of survival, creating greater pressures on urban centres. Contingency plans will be needed to rehabilitate climate refugees from vulnerable areas.

To cope with the impact of climate change on agriculture and food production India will need to act at global, regional, national and local levels.

Global –India must negotiate hard to ensure that the emission reduction pledges in climate change negotiations are sufficient to ensure that the global temperature rise is capped at 20C. If this is not done, the impact on agriculture and food security in developing countries will be devastating.

Given that agriculture is the lifeline of the developing world and will bear the worst brunt of climate change, India must insist that developed countries must reduce their own agriculture emissions while at the same time paying for adaptation, especially in the agriculture sector, consistent with the ‘polluter pays’ principle.

Regional.- Regional cooperation at SAARC level and with China is necessary to protect the Himalayan ecosystems and minimize glacial melt. Negotiations on river waters emanating from the Tibetan plateau are urgent so that the river flows in our major rivers like the Ganga and Brahmaputra are maintained to support agriculture. Regional strategies for mitigation and adaptation across similar agro ecologies will help all countries of the region to protect their agriculture and food production.

National – The Prime Minister has established the National Action Plan on Climate Change with eight national Missions designed to cope with the impact of climate change in diverse sectors like energy, water, agriculture and biodiversity. Appropriate policy and budgetary support for mitigation and adaptation actions is needed. In agriculture, adaptation strategies have long lead times and need to start NOW. Multiple food and livelihood strategies are needed in rural areas to minimize risk. Food inflation must be contained at all costs. It will worsen with climate change as more frequent and unpredictable droughts and floods will result in shortfalls in food production. Just one bad monsoon in 2009 led to a reduction of 15 million tonnes in rice and 4 million tonnes in pulse production, causing prices to go through the roof. To prepare for climate altered conditions, practices in agriculture will need to shift from intensive, mechanized, water demanding agriculture to a more sustainable, conservation agriculture that grows crops using less water, extracting more crop per drop of water.


Local- Attention will have to be paid both to mitigation and adaptation to climate change, the real action for which will have to be at the local level. The pursuit of sustainable agricultural development at the local level is integral to climate- change mitigation and combating climate change effects is vital for sustainable agriculture.

Since approximately 17 percent of total GHG emissions are attributed to crop and animal husbandry , it is necessary to reduce this for the overall health of the planet. Mitigation measures can include minimizing mechanization; supplementing urea with biological fertilizer and using neem coated urea to minimize ammonia volatilization contributing to nitrous oxide emissions. An effective strategy to reduce methane emission from cattle is establishing biogas plants with animal dung which in addition provides a clean source of renewable energy. Building soil carbon banks to capture and retain carbon in the soil can be achieved by planting fertilizer trees

Mitigation of greenhouse gases from agricultural systems and building adaptation strategies must be anchored in the village panchayat system to enhance coping capacities of farming communities. Mitigating emissions from agriculture will reduce input costs for the farmer and make the production system more sustainable but the real challenge to the food and livelihood security of our people will have to be met by rapid and targeted adaptation strategies.

Adaptation will require strategies to reduce vulnerabilities, strengthen resilience & build the adaptive capacity of rural and farming communities. Industrial agro ecosystems damage environmental goods and services and so have weak resilience. The ecosystem approach with crop rotations, bioorganic fertilizers and biological pest controls, improves soil health & water retention, increases fertile top soil, reduces soil erosion and maintains productivity over the long term. The more diverse the agro ecosystems, the more efficient the network of insects & and microorganisms that control pests and disease. Building resilience in agro ecosystems and farming communities, improving adaptive capacity and mitigating GHG emissions is the way to cope.

Agriculture biodiversity is central to an agro ecosystem approach to food production. The genetic diversity in livestock and fish species and breeds is as important as in crop varieties . Genetic diversity gives species the ability to adapt to changing environments and combat biotic and abiotic stress like pests and disease, drought and salinity. A knowledge-intensive, rather than input-intensive approach should be adopted to develop adaptation strategies. Traditional knowledge about the community’s coping strategies should be documented and used in training programs to help find solutions to address the uncertainties of climate change, build resilience, adapt agriculture and reduce emissions.

An early warning system should be put in place to monitor changes in pest and disease profile and predict new pest and disease outbreaks. The overall pest control strategy should be based on Integrated Pest Management because it takes care of multiple pests in a given climatic scenario. A national grid of grain storages , ranging from Pusa Bins and Grain Golas at the household/ community level to ultra- modern silos at the district level must be established to store buffer stocks to ensure local food security and stabilize prices. A special climate risk insurance should be launched for farmers and the agriculture credit and insurance systems must be made climate responsive and more sensitive to the needs of small farmers.


Adaptation and mitigation support structures in the form of Climate Risk Research Centers should be established at each of the 128 agro-ecological zones in the country. The Centers should prepare computer simulation models of different weather probabilities and develop and promote farming system approaches which can help to minimize the adverse impact of unfavorable weather and maximize the benefits of a good monsoon. Gyan Chaupals and Village Resource Centers with satellite connectivity should disseminate value added weather data from the government’s Agromet Service to farmers through mobile telephony, giving them information on rainfall and weather in real time.

Uncertain weather will disrupt established cropping patterns, requiring a different set of crop varieties for which seed will have to be produced. Decentralized seed production involving local communities will help to produce locally adapted seed of the main and contingency crops. A network of community level seed banks with the capacity to implement contingency plans and alternative cropping strategies depending on the behavior of the monsoon will be a key adaptation strategy.

Finally, investments must be made in strategic research of both anticipatory and adaptive nature. This should cover all aspects of food production , starting with farming systems and including crop, fodder, livestock, fish and the key aspects associated with each of these.

Cancun gone, now look to South Africa

Suman Sahai

Before the run up to Cancun, world leaders have begun to articulate what everyone knew all along, that the climate talks in Mexico will not progress any on climate change than what happened at Copenhagen. The Cancun talks were expected only to be a halt en route

to arriving at something more. That ‘something more’, everyone agrees must be a globally binding deal like the Kyoto Protocol but nobody seems to want to take concrete

steps in that direction. To add another twist to the reigning despondency, Japan threw in its spanner, saying it had no interest in furthering the Kyoto Protocol.

Following the failure of Copenhagen, representatives of 192 met in the Mexican resort city of Cancun from November 29 to December 10 for another attempt to strike a deal to curb greenhouse gases after 2012. According to most world leaders, one of the major challenges of Cancun and indeed all climate talks is to get the American government and the Chinese government to agree to emission cuts and accept that it is actually in their interest to enter into a proper legally binding agreement.

For their part , Chinese leaders say they want a binding climate change treaty by late 2011 but blame US politics for impeding talks and making a deal on global warming impossible at Cancun. The Chinese also assert that they have little expectations from Cancun but hope that the final outcome of Cancun will allow progress on forging a legally binding document by the time of the next climate meeting, slated to be held in South Africa. Whereas China does not make clear cut commitments on emission cuts, it vows to keep pressurizing rich countries to commit to deeper cuts in the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are causing global warming.

With its 1.3 billion people, China is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from human activity, but is also a developing country with average emissions per capita well below those of wealthy economies. China will be a crucial player in post Cancun talks, so it is important that it takes the South Africa meeting seriously enough to put its weight behind achieving a firm and legally binding agreement on climate change and moving towards concrete implementation. The Beijing strategy is to press for certain principles in the climate talks, for instance that developing countries like China should not be made toaccept the same absolute caps on emissions that rich countries must take on.

Mr Jairam Ramesh said in Cancun that the Indian position would be guided first and foremost by the country’s economic interests ( read going slow on reducing emissions). This is clearly the government position, rather than Mr Ramesh’s. The environment minister has been known to express another view in private, that it was in India’s enlightened self interest to reduce its emissions.

As a matter of fact, India is extremely vulnerable to climate change impacts and can only benefit if temperature rise is checked. According to the IPCC climate report, agriculture in South Asia will be most severely affected by climate change and the rainfed areas of the region will suffer the worst depredations from the uncertainties that climate change will bring. India is vulnerable on several fronts. It has a coastline of about 7500 km ( including the islands ), much of it vulnerable to inundation when seal levels rise. A 40 C rise in temperature is predicted to cause a sea level rise of up to 6.6 feet, causing devastation in urban centers and destroying agriculture along and inland from the coast. Indian rivers, many dependent on the Himalayan glaciers are facing a crisis as the glaciers show evidence of melting with global warming. Less water in the rivers will mean less water for agricultural, domestic and industrial use.

And finally, the monsoons which are the mainstay of India’s economy. Given this dependence, any change in the pattern of the monsoon arising due to climate change, does not bode well for the country. For all these reasons, India must be at the vanguard of forging an international agreement that will lead to concrete reductions in green house gases. Its domestic agenda must be of a piece with this position. The consequences of not being able to halt temperature rise, will be catastrophic for developing countries, particularly in South Asia. It is crucial that India take leadership in determining the outcome at South Africa.

Hot, dry, hungry

Suman Sahai

Despite the India Meteorological Department’s brave pronouncements, the monsoon this year is looking to be as disturbed as it was last year. A disturbed monsoon has a direct correlation with a deficit in food production. This happened last year and in all likelihood will happen again this year unless the monsoon in north India picks up immediately. These weather uncertainties are being attributed to climate change, a result of anthropogenic or manmade factors. The anticipated changes in climate and its impact on agriculture and food production are of great concern to tropical countries like India. The developing countries in the tropics are less able to adapt and are more susceptible to climate change damage than the temperate countries, many of which will be beneficiaries.

There is a broad consensus that tropical areas are slated to see an expansion of arid zones. This will be accompanied by a contraction of 31-51 million ha of favourable cultivation areas and a significant reduction in food production in the most vulnerable areas where population density is high and food already scarce. Nearly one billion affected people live in these vulnerable environments, dependent on agriculture. These vulnerable populations have limited capacity to protect themselves from the environmental hazards that will accompany climate change, like drought and floods, and will suffer most from land degradation and biodiversity loss.

The Polluter gets Paid
Climate related impacts on food production will be geographically unevenly distributed. In a perverse irony, the developed (industrialised) countries will experience an increase in agriculture productivity potential as temperate regions get warmer. The regions which because of their industrialisation and huge emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) are responsible for the climate change phenomenon will actually end up being its beneficiaries with respect to food production. On the other hand, today’s developing world in the tropics, which has not contributed to creating this climate hazard, will be its worst victim, and will suffer a loss in agriculture productivity, with serious consequences for food availability and hunger.About 40 poor and food-insecure countries, with a projected total population (in 2080) of one to three billion, will lose 10-20 per cent of their cereal-production potential. Of these, Africa will be the worst affected followed by South Asia. Crop production losses as a result of climate change could further worsen the prevalence and depth of hunger. This burden will fall disproportionately on the poorest. To compound the damage, the overall trend of reduced food production will create market imbalances, which will push up international prices, making it even more difficult for governments of food scarce countries to access food for their poor.

According to estimates, a little less than half the production potential in certain developing countries could be lost. In South Asia, the biggest blow to food production is expected to come from the loss of multiple cropping zones. The worst affected areas are predicted to be the double and triple cropping areas like Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh from where the surplus grain for our buffer stock comes. This means areas where two to three crops are produced in a year and which are predicted to turn into single crop zones, where only one crop can be taken in a year because the rest of the season will be too hot and dry for cultivation.

Coping with wheat loss
For South Asia, particularly India, one of the most serious impacts is anticipated in wheat production. Wheat is the single largest winter crop of north India and states like Punjab, Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh produce the surplus wheat that goes into the PDS. Wheat is a particularly temperature sensitive crop and it has been estimated that for every one degree rise in temperature, wheat producing areas in India and South Asia will lose about four to five million tonnes of production. This will have a cascading effect on food for the poor.

The immediate challenge is to find a substitute for wheat as the dominant winter crop for north India and other parts where wheat is cultivated. Tubers like potato, can be part of the solution. These could fill the shortfall to some extent but the cereal deficit will have to be made up by some other cereal. Corn could be suitable as a supplementary crop and a partial wheat replacement. Millets are as yet an unexplored option and have not been assessed for potential. Although millets typically grow during the summer in Asia, there are also several millet types which are cultivated at high altitude. Such millet germplasm could form the basis of developing new varieties suited for cultivation during the winter season of a changed, warmer climate regime.

The ability of a country to cope with the impact of climate change on agriculture will depend on a number of factors. The total amount of arable land and available water resources will be critical determinants of the ability of regions to adapt to the changes brought by a warming world. Apart from land, the availability of water could become a critical limiting factor. For instance, the impact of global warming on the Tibetan plateau and Himalayan glaciers will affect the 10 or so main rivers like the Indus, the Mekong, the Yangtze and the Brahmaputra that come out of there and flow into China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma. Harnessing these river waters as the ice caps and Himalayan glaciers recede and the water flow in rivers diminishes, will need skilful diplomatic negotiations so that river waters can be shared in such a manner as to ensure that requirements of agriculture are met in all affected countries.

India has technical skills in agriculture and a sophisticated farming community capable of combining indigenous knowledge with recent scientific advances. The country is rich in biodiversity and community experiences from diverse agro ecological zones offer a number of options to find solutions. All this would enable the agriculture of the region to cope with climate change impacts provided a comprehensive and effective policy response is put into action right away.

- Dr Suman Sahai, a genetic scientist who has served on thefaculty of the Universities of Chicago and Heidelberg, isconvenor of the Gene Campaign

What is Causing the Global Food Crisis?

Suman Sahai

Just because news of the food crisis has gone off the front pages and prime time television, does not mean the crisis has gone away. The crisis of food availability (not necessarily that of food production) remains and inexcusably large numbers of the poor across the world remain hungry. The Millennium Development Goals (MDG), far from showing signs of relief for the poor, are actually in a decline and a larger number of poor people are now below the poverty line than before. So, is food scarce? Not if you look at the statistics of global food production. At the height of the food crisis, farmers produced 2.3 billion tonnes of food grain worldwide. This was more than the production the year before. So shortfall in grain production was not a limiting factor. Neither was there a surge in population increase as compared to the growth in food production . Whereas cereal production has gone up three times after the Green Revolution, the population has only doubled.

Despite the ill-informed comments of George W Bush, food consumption by the Chinese, the Indians or anyone else, did not exceed food production. Rice consumption remained below the total production, as did the consumption of meat, oils and fats and dairy. Wheat consumption matched the production. At no time was there a shortage in the food production, nor did consumption exceed production. So why was there a food crisis? Here is what happened, it all began in America, that land of plenty.

When the sub-prime housing crisis opened up in the US and its full impact was felt, the US stock market collapsed. ‘Hot’ , speculative money invested in the stock market fled to seek new places to park itself. Temporarily, this parking space was the oil market which saw a surge back to back and running parallel to the food crisis. But hot money very quickly moved into food commodities and grain futures, sending the prices spinning. The price of wheat increased by 130 per cent in this period and the price of rice doubled. The price of all other food items like fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy increased tremendously. This is what happens when cartels control a commodity. They hoard it, manipulate the market and send the prices soaring, to make huge profits on their investments.

Did the big grain and food traders make profits during the food crisis? They certainly did. In April 2008, Cargill announced that its profits from commodity trading in the first quarter of 2008 were 86 per cent higher than the profits it made in the first quarter of 2007. The Syngenta Corporation saw profits increase by 28 per cent in the first quarter of 2008 and Thailand’s largest food trader, Charoen Pokphand Foods is expecting a revenue growth of 237 per cent for 2008. So, every corporation in the global food chain is making a killing as developing countries struggle to battle the food crisis. The table says what there is to say.

Globalisation and its iniquitous policies and unbridled capitalism unbridled capitalism of the kind that smashed Wall Street and led to the collapse of America’s flagship banks , is the root cause of several catastrophes, including the global food crisis. US policies of diverting corn and soybean to agro-fuel production has exacerbated the situation. It has also set off a wave of perverse “Ape the US” national policies on biofuels. India leads from the front on this. Still insecure on food security, it has framed an ambitious biofuel policy that will compete with food crops for land and water. The consequences of following such a policy are going to be grim. To guard itself against a food crisis at home, India must rededicate itself to solving age-old problems like land reform, food sovereignty, income generation and supportive policies for agriculture. It must also rise to the challenge of new problems like climate change and global warming.

India Silent on Biosafety in International Negotiations

Suman Sahai

Gene Campaign was the only Indian organisation to attend the fourth Meeting of Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (MOP 4),held in Bonn from 12 to 16 May 2008.This was disappointing since the MOP presents an opportunity to not just follow the global negotiations but also to intervene with suggestions. Unlike the closed WTO process, negotiations of the Biosafety Protocol allow accredited NGOs to play a role. This could have been an opportunity for the many Indian groups involved with genetically engineered (GE)crops and products,to learn and to help influence the outcome in favour of developing country interests.

What was really scandalous though was the non- performance of the Indian delegation.They were not prepared, had nothing to contribute and did not open their mouths during the four-day,heftily contested negotiations, which focussed on developing a legally binding,international regime for Liability and Redress. India's silence during the entire debate, disappointed many that had hoped to see it in a leadership role, fighting for the environmental and health safety of people in all countries where GEOs are being produced.

As it was, Malaysia led the developing country efforts supported by the Philippines,Colombia and other Latin American countries and very decisively the African countries who were vocal, with firm arguments. To add strength to their case, the developing countries formed a block of 80 countries called the Like Minded Group of which India was a member.

The opposition to the international liability regime was consistent and led by Japan, Peru and Brazil. A strong liability regime is of crucial relevance to developing countries because it could provide them a means to protect their farmers and consumers from any damage caused by GE crops and foods. It is vehemently opposed by the biotechnology industry and countries like the US (which is a non-party),Canada, Australia and their friends like Brazil and Japan.

At a point it appeared as though the talks would break down. It was again the Malaysian delegation that fought hard to keep the talks going and asked for several closed-door meetings with allies to thrash out a counter strategy to the Japan-Brazil-Peru led opposition. Ultimately, the talks could be saved with an agreement to continue discussions in early 2009.However, after four days of negotiations at the Fourth Meeting of Parties it was not possible to get an agreement on liability. For now, the biotech industry and the developed countries have succeeded in blocking the emergence of a legally binding international liability regime.

Gene Campaign,which has been working on developing components of a liability law for India,had organized a panel discussion on developing components for a liability regime,on the sides of the MOP4 meeting in Bonn.Some key consensus recommendations to emerge from that discussion are:

i)the adoption of a strict liability regime for damage from GEOs, where liability could be imposed, without the necessity to prove fault or negligence on the part of the defendant,(barring usual exceptions such as Act of God etc.);

ii)the term "damage" to be given the widest possible interpretation and to include environmental damage, damage/risks to human and animal

health as well as socio-economic damage including loss of income, damage to food security and livelihood,and to culture and livelihoods of indigenous and local communities;

iii) the liability for damage caused as a result of introduction of GEOs to be channeled to the agencies producing and approving the technology. This will include public and private sector research agencies and the regulatory bodies of the state granting approval;

iv) absolute liability to operate in the case of genetic contamination in areas that are crop centers of origin and where maximum genetic diversity is found. This stringent provision is in accordance with the principles of natural justice and inter-generational equity, which invokes safeguarding the environment and resources for coming generations;v)in the case

of damage caused by GEOs, the time limit should take into consideration the fact that damage in biology may only appear after several generations. As such, an absolute time limit of 50 years (a period during which effects on two generations could be manifest)should be considered and vi)Civil Society Organisations (CSO)acting in the public interest should have the right to bring a claim for damages on behalf of those directly or indirectly affected.

These recommendations have been submitted to the secretariat of the Meeting of Parties as inputs from civil society.