📍El Nino is not the only threat, there’s AMOC too

Grappling with El Niño, Super El Nino this year, we are au courant with factors that affect our climate and what climate change is doing to our weather, our resources and our well-being. There is another rather huge factor affecting our climate that we know considerably less about. That factor is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. That is quite a mouthful isn’t it? Let’s just work with AMOC, it’s easier.

AMOC is a broad swath of ocean currents in the Atlantic which is crucial to keep the waters of the world’s oceans circulating. Many parts of the global climate depend on this circulation and the ocean currents doing their thing properly. The AMOC swath carries warm water, salt and nutrients from the tropics to Europe and the Arctic and brings back cold water from deeper ocean layers back to the tropical region. When the cold water from the north enters the Indian and Pacific oceans, it directly impacts weather patterns in the Asia–Pacific region. One weather pattern that is impacted significantly is the Indian monsoon. 

The bad news is that the AMOC has been slowing down in recent years. Scientists are warning that this slowdown is now such that it could ultimately lead to the collapse of the AMOC itself. Slowdown is bad enough, a collapse would have dire consequences for every region of the world. A slowing or collapse of the AMOC would disrupt the redistribution of heat across the globe, leading to widespread turbulence in the climate. 

If the warm waters of the south were not to reach the north, Europe would see considerable cooling and the east coast of America would witness a rise in sea levels. According to climate models, in the Asia- Pacific region there would a southward shift in the rainfall belts and changes in the timing of when that rain comes. The monsoon systems could see massive disruption, with the Indian SW monsoon system being particularly vulnerable. 

With the unchecked rise in global warming the AMOC is likely to be weakened more rapidly. If this happens , the southward shift of the current rainfall belts will intensify and take away the rain from current monsoon regions. What that means is that the Indian monsoon could slip off the subcontinent. One need not spell out how dire that scenario is and how severe its implications will be. Judging by the global lack of commitment to do anything about arresting global warming, the only choice that India and the countries of the Asia-Pacific have, is to prepare adaptation plans. Plan aggressively for water conservation on a massive scale.

📍Ken-Betwa Link: Development or more mindless discrimination?

Linking the Ken and Betwa rivers has become an issue once again. Members of the communities living along these rivers are protesting this in novel ways, lying on simulated funeral pyres in the river waters, starting hunger strikes in a submerged state, or standing in the river with nooses around their necks. “We’ll turn into Durga and Kali,” say the women protesting in chest-deep water. The images are powerful, disturbing, they tell you how much this move has upset those who live along the river and venerate it.

I have travelled through this landscape a few times over the years. In Panna the Ken river flows with a rare serenity, almost stillness. The forests are alive with biodiversity, the terrain rugged yet beautiful, and the river sustains not only wildlife but entire communities of farmers, fishers, forest dwellers and pastoral families. To stand on the banks of the Ken is to understand that rivers are not merely channels of water to be engineered on drawing boards. They are living ecological systems. Which is why the Ken-Betwa river-linking project is deeply troubling.

The project is being promoted as a solution to Bundelkhand’s water crisis, with promises of irrigation and drinking water for drought-prone districts. But beneath the language of development lies a familiar and disturbing reality: Forests will be destroyed, the ecology dented. Thousands of people will lose their homes and ancestral lands, and they will lose their livelihoods. India’s track record on rehabilitating persons displaced by dams and development projects is very poor, in fact rehabilitation in India has rarely been just or complete. Rather than equitable development, this project too, like earlier dam projects, will help some and discriminate against many others.

Independent estimates suggest that more than 22 villages would be displaced, affecting over 7,000 families in Panna and Chattarpur districts, and of these, 20 villages would be completely submerged by the Ken-Betwa project, many of them Adivasi communities dependent on forests and river ecosystems for survival. The Daudhan dam, the cornerstone of the ₹45,000 cr Ken-Betwa Link Project (KBLP), alone will submerge large areas, including parts of the Panna Tiger Reserve. The irony is painful: a project meant to solve distress in one region will create another geography of suffering elsewhere.

This is a familiar playbook and India has seen it before. When the Bhakra-Nangal dam was built after Independence, it was hailed as one of the “temples of modern India”. It is located on the Sutlej along Bilaspur in Himachal Pradesh and Rupnagar in Punjab. Yet behind that grand national narrative lay the 371 submerged villages which took away everything from some 36,000 families — their homes, assets and livelihoods.

Families were promised cultivable land, rehabilitation and a better future. Decades later, many oustees were still fighting legal battles for proper compensation and land rights. Reports have documented how displaced families were pushed onto barren or disputed lands, while many landless workers and labourers were excluded entirely from compensation because they did not possess formal land titles. This pattern repeated itself across India. 

The Hirakud dam in Odisha displaced more than one lakh people and submerged over 300 villages. Many never received proper rehabilitation.

The Pong dam displaced more than 30,000 families from Himachal Pradesh, many of whom were relocated to Rajasthan with promises of fertile agricultural land. Several families reportedly received arid land without irrigation or clear ownership rights. Some are still fighting for justice after half a century.

The Narmada Valley Development Project, which includes large structures like the Sardar Sarovar Dam and other dams on the Narmada river, led to massive displacement. Over two lakh rural and tribal people lost their homes and lands to reservoir submergence without fair compensation. The Narmada project also caused severe environmental damage, like submergence of dense forests, destruction of local wildlife habitats and obstructed the migration paths for fish. Official statements usually assert that rehabilitation has been completed, but independent investigations document missing land allotments, fake registries, uncultivable plots on a large scale and thousands of excluded families. Even today, many displaced families continue to seek their just dues and compensation. This is the history of “development” and discrimination in India.

Such discrimination results in livelihood collapse. The forest gatherer loses access to forest produce. The fisher loses the river. Tenant farmers, artisans, cattle grazers, boatmen and agricultural labourers disappear from official compensation records because they do not exist in government records. This is why people in the Ken-Betwa region are anxious. They know of the government’s track record on rehabilitation.

Equally worrying is the ecological blindness underlying the river-linking approach itself. Experts have warned repeatedly that the hydro-dynamics of Indian river systems are still inadequately understood. Climate change has already altered rainfall behaviour across India. Rivers that appear “surplus” today may not remain so tomorrow. Yet massive irreversible interventions are being pursued with astonishing confidence.

Bundelkhand’s water crisis is real. But it cannot be solved through ecologically disruptive mega-projects. Destroying the environment and upsetting the natural balance can never provide sustainable solutions, which is what we should be seeking, not shortcuts that have failed time and again. Rivers are not pipelines. Their flow patterns, seasonal rhythms, sediment loads, groundwater recharge functions and biodiversity relationships are deeply interconnected.

Dry regions in India built sustainable systems to ensure water access using decentralised water systems — tanks, ponds, watershed structures, forest protection and groundwater recharge practices adapted to local ecology. Instead of strengthening such systems and improving them, we choose to chase gigantic engineering solutions because they appear politically dramatic. The tragedy is that in such projects, the benefits and burdens are rarely borne by the same people. Water and electricity flow somewhere else, to urban centres and commercial agriculture. But the people who surrender their forests, villages and ancestral lands are often left with nothing more than broken promises.

This appeared in The Asian Age: https://www.asianage.com/opinion/columnists/suman-sahai-ken-betwa-link-development-or-more-mindless-discrimination-1981618

The Indian monsoon, the lifeblood of India’s very survival, has been wobbling for some years now. Climate change is responsible for the turbulence in the monsoon system which has existed, according to some estimates, for 25 million years. This system has been the bedrock of our agriculture, water security and livelihoods for millennia. When climate change begins to disrupt its timing and intensity, it is not simply a weather anomaly; it is a signal that is putting us on alert that the happy, secure systems that were built around the monsoon are becoming unreliable, that the earlier rhythm is disrupted and we must prepare urgently to deal with it.

Preparations to adapt to the new monsoon should have begun earlier. Any further delay in recognising its growing unpredictability will have very serious implications. Agriculture, water security and rural livelihoods are already under stress. We need urgently to establish climate resilient agriculture systems in different agro-climatic zones. We know what is required: greater genetic diversity in the field, both within crops and across the number and range of crops being planted; better soil management, water conservation and sustainable use etc.

Our preparedness to cope must improve quickly. Although the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has gotten much better at forecasting the monsoon’s vagaries and extreme weather events, these are of little use when authorities do not act on the warning and response remains tardy. Our infrastructure remains inadequate to deal with the changing conditions like the large volumes of water after a cloudburst. Our drainage and flood management systems belong to another era when the monsoon was the benign, predictable system we were familiar with. All that has changed. It’s high time we acted.

👉 A recent article by Murali Krishnan makes an interesting read. https://www.dw.com/en/disrupted-monsoons-force-india-to-face-climate-threat/a-78324753

We are getting so used to things like pollution and the turbulent changes in the climate, that we have begun to perceive these as normal. That is scary since it dents our will to act against harmful changes. 

As for the climate, each generation is inheriting a warmer, more degraded environment, so yesterday’s extremes are quietly becoming today’s normal. This “shifting baseline” is one of the more dangerous dimensions of climate change because it is invoking a reaction from the brain. When ecological loss becomes normalised, our ability to recognise the crisis, and demand action, diminishes with it.

I recently came across this insightful article from McGill University that examines why climate change is failing to generate the urgency it demands. The article posits that our brains are poorly equipped to process a threat that is gradual, dispersed and not immediately visible. Our brains are conditioned to focus on an immediate threat not so much on a situation that is worsening gradually and that does not appear immediately threatening. Each generation is only experiencing a somewhat worse, somewhat more damaging degradation of the environment or the biosphere, no generation actually sees the complete degradation or the total loss. So it does not jump up to intervene, and the damage continues.

Link to the article https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/environment/how-do-you-squeeze-climate-change-inside-human-brain

❗The Silent Pest Invasions Driven by Climate Change

One of the effects of global warming has been an increase in pest populations and the appearance of new pests and diseases in agriculture. This is because rising temperature can prompt insects to mature faster, reproduce earlier and cause population explosions. This makes a minor pest a major one. 

 

Pest populations also migrate to new areas where the earlier cooler conditions were not hospitable. The altered weather conditions become favourable to the pests and pathogens that were not adjusted to the earlier habitats. For example, pests that were historically found in the warmer tropical and subtropical regions are now moving north to cooler temperate areas because these have become more inviting thanks to a warming world.

 

The biting cold of our North Indian winters has acted to some extent as a natural regulator, killing off pests and limiting the size of the population and hence the scale of infestations. But now, as temperatures rise and winters become milder, more pests can survive the winter, extend their breeding seasons and expand into regions where colder temperatures previously restricted them. Warming climates are inviting new, often invasive pest species to migrate into agricultural zones where they were previously unknown. 

 

What is urgently needed is an early warning system that can sound the alert as soon as  anew pest is detected in a region. This will enable agencies to introduce measures to tackle the nascent population before it becomes a full blown infestation. The work of breeding new pest resistant varieties should start much earlier though, in anticipation of possible attacks from new pests.  FAO for instance, tracks the movement of the two significant fungal diseases Wheat Rust and Wheat Bunt and warns countries if they are found approaching their areas so that prophylactic measures can be put in place,

 

The scale of the threat from new pests is already alarming. According to the FAO, up to 40% of global crop production is lost to plant pests and diseases every year, costing the global economy more than US$220 billion annually. And the danger could grow significantly as the planet warms. The International Plant Protection Convention estimates that losses in major crops such as wheat, rice and maize due to insect pests could increase by 10–25% for every additional degree of global warming. Even a single unusually warm winter, an FAO-IPPC scientific review warns, can help an invasive pest establish itself in a new region.

 

An ICAR review states that 20–30% of India’s potential crop production is destroyed by insect pests, diseases, weeds and rodents. Another ICAR publication estimates that pests and pathogens alone account for 15–20% yield losses in major field and horticultural crops, while noting that the profile of key pests and pathogens is changing rapidly due to factors including climate change.

 

India has already seen how quickly a new pest can invade its agricultural landscape. Fall Armyworm, a pest native to the Americas, was first officially reported in India in 2018. By June 2019, it had spread to 20 states and affected more than 376,000 hectares.

Climate proofing agriculture in mountain regions!

Faced with global warming and climate change, the yields of rice and wheat are set to decline. It is the traditional grains like millets, which can provide climate resilient harvests and food and nutrition security. According to climate estimates, agriculture in the productive areas of South Asia will be amongst the most adversely affected. The worst brunt of climate change on food production will be borne by farmers in the dry land and mountanious regions where agriculture is rain fed and conditions are marginal. Coping with the impact of climate change on agriculture will require careful management of resources like land, water and biodiversity and improving cultivation practices.

 

Recognizing India’s vulnerability to climate change, the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) has created eight focus areas or ‘missions’. Three of these, the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture, National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem and the Water Mission underline India’s vulnerabilities and are about initiating measures to secure agriculture and livelihoods in the face of climate change. The Himalayan region is acknowledged to be of special concern where adaptation measures are required urgently and the focus on agriculture admits that we have concerns about food production and food and nutrition security. 

 

Uttarakhand’s State Action Plan on Climate Change (SAPCC) has emphasized the need for adaptive measures in agriculture, livestock and animal husbandry as well as forest and biodiversity. The SAPCC lists the following aspects as priorities in adapting agriculture to climate change: Promotion of sustainable agriculture; soil and water conservation; improvement of soil health; promotion of nutritious traditional grains, pulses and oilseeds; conservation of agrobiodiversity and documentation and conservation of traditional knowledge, among others.

 

Agriculture, which is the mainstay of the people of Uttarakhand remains marginal and highly vulnerable to challenges like climate change. Women who are the principal carriers of agricultural activities are seldom included in programs as main actors, thus excluding their experience and knowledge and rendering them financially weak. They must be made the cornerstone of interventions.

 

Agricultural research specifically targeting Uttarakhand crops has been a neglected area. The most damaging aspect has been the lack of attention to millets and small grains which have been the hardy, climate resilient, nutritious grains that mountain communities were accustomed to eating. It is not a coincidence that the decline of millets in household diets has been accompanied by an alarming rise in malnutrition in women, children and even men in the state. 

 

Faced with climate turbulence, the yields of rice and wheat (particularly the latter) are set to decline. It is the traditional grains like finger and barnyard millets, which can provide climate resilient harvests and food and nutrition security. Millets are highly climate resilient crops. 

 

Being C4 crops, they have higher photosynthetic efficiency than most staple crops and they can produce a reasonable harvest even in marginal soils under water stress. Millet cultivation will increase food production from marginal fields, reintroduce nutritious foods into local diets and very importantly, provide opportunities for income generation by value addition and developing marketable products. Value added millet products have an appeal for the urban market. The current global popularity of traditional grains like quinoa show the growing consumer interest in natural foods originating in traditional societies and very particularly ‘super foods’ that are high in nutrition.

Millets have traditionally been a women’s crop and they have the knowledge and experience of its cultivation. Hence reviving millets provides us an opportunity to support the food production of women and their families. Developing a millet value chain and training women to produce interesting ‘super foods’ for urban markets will create income sources and provide an additional economic incentive to reviving millet cultivation to climate proof their agriculture.

 

Adaptation in Agriculture

Practices in agriculture will need to become mindful of high climate risk and pay attention to resource conservation and careful use. Soil health will need attention, as will rainwater conservation and conservative use of water. Soil management will need to focus on increasing organic matter to improve soil nutrition and water retention capacity, thus increasing crop productivity. Planting hedgerows of leguminous plants is important to fix nitrogen in the soil, 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 percent, saving on weeding costs. Contour bunding will be an especially useful intervention in the hill areas to increase water retention in terraced fields.

 

Aligning bunds against topographical contours facilitates the even and controlled distribution of rainwater run-off to the fields below. Contour bunding was a central component in regenerating degraded soils in Burkina Faso and is credited with as much as a 40 percent increase in agricultural production the first year after its implementation. 

 

Using Agromet Forecasts. 

To cope with turbulent weather patterns farmers will need information about altered weather conditions, especially regarding the monsoon. Such information now available from the meteorological department can be conveyed to farmers via mobile telephony, along with advisories on coping with new pest and disease outbreaks.

 

Studies in India have shown the positive effects that access to comprehensible Agromet data has had on smallholder farmers. Farmers trained to use these services reaped higher yields due to timely information on rainfall and weather as well as technical guidance on cultivation aspects, like selecting crop varieties and appropriate application of inputs. Training programs on the use of Agromet data and how to access this will go a long way in helping farmers cope with the turbulence of climate change.

This year’s heat alarm went off with the mercury touching 48.2°C in Banda in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh. This weather record must be treated as a shrill warning of dire things to come if we even now refuse to acknowledge that the consequences of global warning are going to border on catastrophic. And we better put adaptation strategies in place NOW.  

Schools shutting at 10 a.m., deserted streets, collapsing livelihoods, and the poor struggling to survive outdoors are no longer isolated episodes. They are signs of the widespread climate catastrophe that our country has entered without preparation, without safeguards, and worst of all, without seriousness. The May 2026 report on Banda’s extraordinary heatwave wasn’t just a weather report of a town; it is the evidence of decades of ecological neglect.

Bundelkhand has always been ecologically fragile, but decades of environmental degradation have pushed the region towards collapse. Deforestation, shrinking water bodies, relentless groundwater extraction, destruction of traditional tanks and ponds, declining tree cover and unsustainable agricultural practices have combined with global warming to create lethal conditions. Concrete expansion without ecological planning has intensified local heat islands. Rivers are drying earlier, soils are losing moisture-retaining capacity, and farming systems have become increasingly vulnerable. Heatwaves that were once occasional are now prolonged, harsher and more frequent.

This is exactly how climate change enters and affects human life; not dramatically in a single moment, but steadily, silently and then suddenly all at once. For years, climate change remained confined to policy seminars, global summits and bureaucratic reports. It was discussed in air-conditioned conference halls as if it were a distant future concern. That illusion no longer survives. Climate change is now inside our homes, affecting our health, livelihoods, food systems and daily survival. The poor laborer working outdoors, the farmer watching crops shrivel, the child unable to attend school because of unbearable heat, the elderly struggling through sleepless nights without cooling, are the real faces of global warming.

Extreme heat is not just uncomfortable, it is deadly. It accelerates water scarcity, destroys crops, reduces labour productivity, worsens malnutrition, and increases disease burdens. Urban centres become furnaces because trees have disappeared and wetlands have been buried under the concrete of development projects. Rural distress intensifies as rainfall becomes erratic and farming turns uncertain. Climate change is now directly linked to food insecurity, indebtedness and migration.

The science behind this crisis has been understood for years. What has been missing is political urgency and the failure to acknowledge ecological wisdom. Sustained work by scientists over decades has tried to draw attention to the fact that tampering with the ecological foundations of food and livelihood security will spell disaster. Repeated warnings were issued about the dangers of destroying biodiversity, replacing resilient local farming systems with monocultures, eroding traditional seed diversity and neglecting community- based natural resource management. We have known since long that bio resources and genetic diversity are not academic concepts but survival tools in an age of climatic uncertainty. But we have not acted.

Despite plenty of evidence that climate shocks would hit the poor the hardest because their survival is directly tied to natural resources — land, forests, water and biodiversity, development policies continued to privilege short-term gains over ecological stability. Rivers were treated as engineering projects, forests as real estate, and agriculture as an industrial input-output exercise divorced from nature.

And here we see the results unfolding before our eyes. Banda is not an exception, it is a warning about other events that are underway. Similar conditions are emerging across large parts of India; from Himalayan regions witnessing glacial instability to coastal belts facing cyclones and salinity intrusion; from drought-prone interiors to cities collapsing under extreme heat. We see that unabated construction is rampant in mountain states like

Himachal and Uttarakhand despite nature’s constant warnings. The climate crisis has moved from planning and prediction to lived reality today. The tragedy is that even now, responses remain fragmented and cosmetic. Responses are devoid of any ecological understanding We have plantation drives with abysmal survival rates of what was planted, infrastructure expansion without environmental safeguards, and climate rhetoric devoid of meaningful applicability. This will will not address the magnitude of the crisis we are facing. What is needed is a fundamental shift in planning the future, helping forests to regenerate, biodiversity conservation , ecological restoration, water security and climate-resilient agriculture rooted in local knowledge systems, these are the things we need.

Unfortunately, it appears that those responsible for shaping policy are still not listening with the seriousness the crisis demands. Nature’s warning signals have become impossible to ignore. The question is whether society and governments will act before ecological breakdown becomes irreversible. Banda’s unbearable heat is not just a temperature statistic; it is the sound of an ecological alarm bell ringing across India. What is truly heart breaking is that those least responsible for the crisis are paying the heaviest price.

https://open.substack.com/pub/sumansahai/p/48-degrees-c-in-banda-up-is-a-warning?r=6oq097&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Spiralling food prices? Blame speculators

 Suman Sahai

 

India must not pursue reckless high-growth policies at the cost of diverting attention and investment from agriculture and food production

2012 looks like a repeat of 2008. Food prices are soaring in India and the world. For food-importing countries to which India sometimes belongs, when the monsoons have been sub-optimal, as they have been this year, this brings a special burden.

Prices of agricultural commodities in the international market have risen from 20 to 30 per cent for corn and wheat. For soybean they have gone up by 40 per cent. All this means food imports will be even more expensive. This kind of food inflation is debilitating for the poor who can spend from 70 to 80 per cent of the total household income on food.

Global warming and climate change are part of the problem. Climate turbulence brings extreme weather conditions, like unprecedented drought conditions, as in the US this year, which has decimated the corn crop. In addition, drought conditions these last two years in major wheat-producing countries, like Australia, Russia and Ukraine, have led to short supply and spiralling prices for this staple.

Another major reason for food shortage and spiralling prices is the diversion of food grains to biofuel production and high-blending mandates in both Europe and the US. A 20 per cent blending mandate means a mix of 20 per cent biofuel and 80 per cent fossil fuel. This is resulting in increasing amounts of corn, canola and soybean being diverted for ethanol and bio-diesel production. Increasing ethanol production, especially in surplus-producing countries, hikes the demand for corn. This sets off a chain reaction, drawing in other foods, as substitution effects kick in, thus resulting in food shortages.

When corn is diverted to ethanol production, corn consumers shift to wheat and rice, increasing demand for these cereals and causing their prices to rise. Similarly, the diversion of corn to bioethanol causes shortages of animal and poultry feed; so these producers take wheat to feed their livestock, sending up the prices of wheat. In a related development, wheat and rice farmers see an assured market for corn, with attractive prices and shift to growing corn instead of rice and wheat, causing a shortage of rice and wheat stocks and, therefore, escalating prices of these cereals. A World Bank report of 2008 categorically states that the crop-derived fuels have been the major triggering factor of the food price crisis.

There is a third factor, which was beginning to be mentioned at the time of the 2008 food crisis but is acknowledged more openly now, and this is financial speculation. Financial speculation is now probably the most influential factor that is pushing food prices north in the short term. So who is investing ? A range of players, and not just the rich “high net worth individuals”, but also agencies as diverse as pension funds, public and private foundations

and university endowments, in addition to corporate investors, are all chasing the honey trail.

Looking at price rise this year, there is no question that the drought in the American Midwest played a role in the dramatic rise, but that is not the whole story. It is true that wheat prices in the international market began climbing this summer as soon as news of the US drought started circulating, but the hike is not explained by panic buying fearing shortages due to the drought. Analysts found that physical stocks of wheat were not so low as to be any cause for alarm and that the sharp rise in wheat prices was because of speculation by non-commercial investors, like hedge funds and pension funds.

This is a trend that has been consistent these past few years. Spiralling food prices appear to be influenced by heavy speculation rather than physical shortages. After oil and real estate, the commodities markets seem to be the new target of global speculators. When the commodities in question are food, the consequences are spiralling food prices, shortages in food-importing countries and increased hunger.

In addition to the usual reasons for food shortages, rising prices and hunger, exacerbated by climate change, the poor are now the victims of financial speculators. Global financial players are pouring their dollars into food (and other) commodities on the expectation that emerging economies will have to buy increasingly from the international market to satisfy their demand. By jacking up prices in this manner, they are causing unimaginable hunger and human distress across the vulnerable regions of the world.

The only way for us to counter this immoral and pervasive manipulation is to ensure that we strive to achieve food security at the national and household level. India must not pursue reckless high-growth policies at the cost of diverting attention and investment from agriculture and food production. Not just food security but food sovereignty (however much the economists try to rationalise it away) has to be upheld as a prime national goal. We need to keep in mind the old truism — a nation that is not food secure cannot be considered secure in any other sense.

The writer, chairperson of Gene Campaign, is a scientist and development activist.

Source: Asian Age, New Delhi, December 15, 2012 

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.