The Hindu Business Line : All's not well on the farm front

AMID the heat and fury of the elections, there are rumblings on the farm front, which, unfortunately, none seems to pay heed to. First is the overall food situation, and second, what the monsoon augurs for the country.

A look at the first issue. When India was blessed with a bountiful South-West monsoon, last kharif, there was cheer on the farm front and the BSE Sensex galloped, sending the message that the economy had, finally, `arrived'. Set against a global downtrend in farm production, India seemed blessed with a very welcome reprieve, from the misery of the previous year's punishing drought.

Farmgate prices soared, and as pockets filled all over India rather `wild' speculation was aired by the ruling elite in New Delhi that the country was set to grow at 10 per cent-plus until warning signals started to appear on the horizon. Scorching March temperatures not only dried the hopes, but called to question the very concept of India `shining'.

One of the previous prime ministers called it India `burning' and not `shining'. Of course, he may have had other ideas, about the `burning' and not `shining' India, besides economy. Literally, India has been burning with temperatures soaring, devastating crops in many states, making potable water an ordeal to get.

By mid-April, the time of baisakhi in North India, wheat arrivals at the Khanna mandi — the biggest grain market of Asia, dominated by Punjab and Haryana — had touched 7.82 million tonnes. In comparison, last year, just about 50 per cent of this quantity had arrived in the mandi. Never before in the history of wheat cultivation in North India, primarily Punjab and Haryana — the "wheat bowl" of India — had so much grain arrived by this date.

The euphoria of the kharif bountiful harvest, primarily rice, seems to have all but evaporated on the disappointing wheat yield, which on an average, is 30 per cent less per acre. Poorly filled and lanky and shrivelled grains have pushed the wheat harvest date by almost three weeks.

Every extra day the wheat crop spends in the field for gradual maturing and field drying translates into about 50 kg extra grain, meaning nearly half a tonne of extra grain per hectare. Given the fact that the wheat crop was in the field for about ten days, and the scorching March temperature, 5-6 per cent above the normal, hastened maturity by almost three weeks, pulling the yield down. And the abrupt maturity means about 15 million tonnes of lost wheat grains assuming that India has about 28 million hectares of sown wheat crop. And `top' agricultural scientists have been incapable of factoring in this abrupt change in the weather pattern, using meteorological data, satellite pictures, water level in the reservoirs, summer showers, and so on. Once again, it has been proved beyond doubt that agriculture was, and still remains a gamble on the monsoon. And no perceptibly significant technology breakthrough has happened in a long time; not since November 28, 1966 when the dwarf "miracle" rice IR 8 (IR 8 abbreviated for the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines) ushered in the so-called "Green Revolution" that led to yield breakthroughs.

Recently, the All India Rice Research Group, which met in New Delhi, recommended seven new rice varieties for release by the Central Variety Release Committee of the Union Ministry of Agriculture.

None of these, by any stretch of imagination, is more high-yielding than the originals of the 1960s, though, it must be admitted that two of them are aromatic and two others non-aromatic but of fine grain texture.

In the "International Year of Rice" that is 2004, as declared by the UN General Assembly, giving a unique distinction to rice, in the history of the UN, one would have wished that after nearly four decades of rice research in India, and colossal sums of money expended from the national kitty, something far more spectacular would have been offered to the nation by the rice researchers.

But, that disappointedly, is not the case. The story with wheat is no different. It is against these facts that one must critically scrutinise the situation on the farm front.

It can be safely said that the country is no longer facing the "problem of plenty" — its origin being a dubious minimum support price (MSP) programme, launched by New Delhi and thoroughly exploited by the grain-rich States of Punjab, Haryana,n Uttar Pradesh (Western) and Andhra Pradesh.

Stocks with the Food Corporation of India have fallen by a massive 38 per cent as on March 1, 2004 to 22.48 million tonnes from the previous year's 36.2 million tonnes.

hat is alarming is that against the minimum buffer stock norm for April 1 of 16 million tonnes for both rice and wheat (rice 12 million tonnes and wheat 4 million tonnes, in a ratio of about 3:1), the stocks at 19 million tonnes seem all right, but the 15 million tonnes of anticipated loss in wheat harvest due to the scorching March temperature has not been factored in. That should set the alarm bells ringing.

The latest official data on grain stock show that it is the wheat stock that has fallen by a massive 54 per cent, while that for rice it is about 33 per cent. Obviously, it was the "export charade" of the past years, letting millions of Indians starve, while selling grains at below the poverty line (BPL) price, that has led to this catastrophic situation. Until now, the country exported close to 35 million tonnes of grain, principally wheat, fetching the nation about $4 billion, which on the surface looks rosy, until one examines it very critically — grain sold at about Rs 5 a kg, less than at the price sold to the poor BPL.

It is a shame that during the last five to six years, nearly 20 millions of undernourished Indians were added on to the already unenviable figure of more than 220 millions of starving Indians, that is, about one-third of the world's total.

In fact, in 2003-04 alone, exporters lifted from the FCI godowns, a total of 10.14 million tonnes, and this despite the Government's decision to suspend fresh allocations for exports from the central pool with effect from August 13, 2003.

With China, the largest consumer of rice in Asia , willing to buy 100 per cent B grade rice from Thailand at $230 a tonne, which translates to about Rs 11 a kg, it would be no surprise if big export houses , with political and financial clout and their front operators, persuade New Delhi to let them `export' Indian rice and make a real `killing'.

The bountiful rice harvest last kharif and another expected to follow this year, thanks to optimistic predictions by the Indian Meteorological Department on the rainfall pattern, can, together, swell the wallets of the exporters.

It appears nobody's concern that during , the rate of foodgrain production plummeted to 1.2 per cent from 1.5 per cent during the earlier Congress/United Front Government regimes. Of course, an annual growth of 1.5 per cent is nothing to write home about, especially when one realises that population growth in the last decade hovered around 2 per cent, setting in motion the Malthusian theory of population growth outstripping the rate of food growth production.

The second important point , given the optimistic forecast of the IMD on the South-West monsoon, is the country gearing up to a sensible and strong strategy on the farm l front, especially the food ?

The MSP for the kharif season has not been announced, and if global agricultural production is going to be on the upswing the coming year — there are all indications to that effect — and that coincides with our own, and with the quantitative restrictions (QR) in place, the farmers will be in for a big shock.

Markets will be flooded with imported farm products, our low quality products will be elbowed out, prices will crash, the buoyance on the farm front following bountiful kharif harvest in 2003, will simply evaporate. India, may well be headed with various parties promising little in their manifestos.

(The author was formerly Professor, National Science Foundation, Royal Society, Belgium, and can be contacted at Nair_KPP@yahoo.com)