The Hindu Business Line : Economics of nutritional security

Thirty years since India achieved food security, the country is nowhere near attaining nutritional security for millions of its people. In a clarion call to the nation, the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, said: "We must ensure that the benefits of food security translate into nutritional security of the poorest of the poor — that's the challenge."

But it is no mean challenge. The actual stocks of foodgrains, such as wheat and rice, have been more than three times the buffer-stock norms prescribed by the Government during 2001-02, 2002-03 and 2003-04. However, the stock fell below the norm by July 2005 due to extraneous reasons, though much of the shortfall was made up by October 2005. As a norm, India has been carrying food stocks far in excess of the norms. Despite the huge subsidy burden involved, the vast foodgrains stock remains an indicator of the country's food security.

Tough task ahead

But the attainment of food security, which is no small achievement by a nation that is hit by recurrent droughts, floods and famines, seems a far easier task than what lies ahead — nutritional security. The principal trigger to the Green Revolution was access to fundamental agricultural research done by credible institutions within and outside the country and its technology spin-offs at affordable costs. The first generation of agricultural research in the country was mainly the by-product of the public sector system, Dr Manmohan Singh pointed out. However, today, both agricultural research and most science and technology advances, are being increasingly privatised. While the Green Revolution of the 1960s came virtually free to the farmers, these days almost all agricultural advances come at a huge cost, often beyond the reach of the common farmer.

A major contributor and a necessary pre-condition to the Green Revolution was the infusion of high-yielding dwarf wheat varieties from Mexico that resisted most plant pests and diseases and yielded two to three times grain of traditional strains. Scientists and institutions such as the Indian Agricultural Research Institute helped in propagating the technology and seeds, as well as the facilitating conditions such as fertiliser application and pesticides.

Today, the situation has changed so dramatically that even the Government is constrained to make available new technology-improved seeds and other inputs to farmers at a price, ensuring it is affordable.

Dr Norman Borlaug, whose 20-year research efforts helped to identify and evolve the Mexican dwarf variety, doubts whether the poorer farmer can afford most of 21st century's top biotech agricultural products. In an interview to ActionBioscience.org, Dr Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, admitted: "In spite of biotech's great potential, access is a problem. Most of the research in crops conducted by private enterprises and corporations hold patents on their inventions. Farmers in developing nations have little resources. How can they afford these patented products? Global government needs to seriously address the problem."

Dearth of research

This has created a vacuum at the bottom of the pyramid. Fundamental research on productivity increases of staple foodgrains and cereals has been limited. For coarse cereals, which constitute the mainstay of a significant section of the population, there has been hardly any.

The attention and returns are on value addition, as evidenced in certain aspects of the genetically engineered vitamin A rich golden rice debate. The middle-class constitutes the most significant consumer segment, both in terms of volumes as well as in purchasing power. It is the prime target of avant-garde agricultural and biotech research institutions, often at the cost of the poorer segments.

The increasing purchasing power of the middle-class has ensured that there is an immediate and substantial appetite for value addition for fine cereals such as wheat and rice, few strains of which are cultivated extensively across the world. The vast geographical regions with different agro-climatic conditions where few similar and related cereal varieties can be cultivated and consumed, ensures that the returns on incubating new value-added strains are lucrative enough and continue to kindle the interest of corporate and private research institutions.

Even as the golden rice debate rages, science journal Nature reports that scientists at the International Rice Research Institute and the University of California have isolated a gene that enables rice plants to survive under water for two weeks — twice the period they can survive submerged now. Rice is the staple food for close to half the world's population and though rice production has doubled over the past 40 years, demand is continuing to grow.

Loss due to floods

Signalling the importance of the finding, scientists have said that farmers in South-East Asia alone lose an estimated $1 billion each year from paddy field flooding. Several traditional rice varieties had exhibited greater tolerance to submergence, but attempts to breed that tolerance into commercially viable rice strains had failed for the past 50 years.

Dr Pamela Ronald from the University of California was quoted as saying: "Our research team anticipates that these newly developed rice varieties will help ensure a more dependable food supply for poor farmers and their families." Will it?

It is still a long way for the new gene isolated in the laboratories to the farmers' fields. First the gene has to be incubated into rice varieties cultivated in the region before seeds can be produced in commercially viable quantities.

But even before that, economic viability questions have to be addressed.

Who will pump in resources?

For one, the final beneficiary would be the marginalised peasants and labourers who live along the periphery of cultivable land, in harsh and hostile climatic conditions. Will the corporate and private research institutions be interested in pumping their resources and take the research finding forward for such paltry returns?

The farming community that would be the immediate buyer and beneficiary of the superior seeds is an impoverished lot, eking out a living on marginally arable land, therefore, it, obviously, cannot put in the resources.

Critically, the technology is neither applicable nor essential across all rice-growing regions but only for marginal land prone to recurrent rain and flooding. The volumes are also not likely to kindle the interest of major research institutions.

As Dr Borlaug said, unless the global governments step in, the research findings might remain confined to the corridors of research institutions.

Science and technology, which ushered in the Green Revolution and fostered food security, may not be a potent tool for fostering nutritional security. The economics does not seem to be in its favour. But where science and technology seem to have failed, other economic doctrines could prove successful.

Most often, India has a huge stock of foodgrains and an equally large number of impoverished people living at the margins. There is also a huge demand for infrastructure, both urban and rural. It is time one re-visited the Keynesian doctrine by extending employment to the rural masses, partly through food and partly in wages.

Once the dormant rural demand is kindled, the spark might ignite the development potential in India's vast hinterland.

Science and technology, which ushered in the Green Revolution and fostered food security, may not be a potent tool for ensuring nutritional security. The economics does not seem to be in its favour.

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