The Hindu Business Line : An unenviable mandate

The National Food Security Mission is hardly in a position to fulfil its mandate and measure up to the challenges facing the agricultural sector. Food security is as much a matter of ensuring enough to eat as guaranteeing nutritional quality.

Sharad Joshi

Between an event to mark World Food Day and an engagement relating to the seventh one-day cricket match against Australia in an already lost series, the Agriculture Minister, Mr Sharad Pawar, held consultations with the State Ministers of Agriculture to review the operation of the National Food Security Mission.

The Minister had also sent an alert to the West Bengal government on the reported diversion of foodgrains meant for the public distribution system, to Bangladesh

At about the same time, 12 ships were stranded for over a week at Kakinada following the decision of the Union Government to impose a ban on the export of non-basmati rice.

The same day, newspapers carried reports on the Planning Commission’s finding that 36 per cent of foodgrains are lost in the PDS pipeline. The electronic media, later in the day, telecast pictures of 25,000 farmers and tribals on a march from Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh to Delhi . They were people displaced by various projects and special economic zones, protesting against their agricultural land being acquired by the government.

All-bureaucrats Mission

The National Food Security Mission, apparently inspired by the Oilseeds Mission, was created by the Ministry of Agriculture last month. The chairman and its members are from the bureaucracy that has been responsible for the food imbroglio. An all-bureaucrat mission would hardly lend strength to the hands of the Minister. However, the State Ministers were happy that the cheques for the first instalment of funds under the scheme were delivered at the meeting itself.

Now, back to the consultation meeting which was reminiscent of the ‘Grow More Food’ meetings that used to be held till as late as 1980. The agenda was all about increasing the acreage and productivity and ensuring supply of inputs such as seeds, fertilisers and electricity to that end. The Minister for Agriculture asserted that the production of both wheat and paddy was satisfactory last year and that this year also it was expected to be a record crop. Ensuring food security is not, if the information given by the Minister is correct, a matter of increasing production but of improving access to food. Therein lies the rub.

Getting MSP wrong

The Minister also conceded that the procurement last year was poor in spite of the fact that the government had announced an unprecedented hike in the procurement price of wheat. He also did have a dig at the predecessor NDA government for having increased the minimum support price (MSP) for wheat by just Rs 50 in four years. As against this, he said, during the UPA regime, the MSP had increased significantly.

Objectively speaking, the increases in the procurement prices of wheat during the NDA days were, indeed, paltry. But the fact remains that the NDA Food Minister was able to ensure satisfactory procurement and did not need to resort to any imports of foodgrains. On the contrary, the price decisions of the present Government have little rationale. Last year, it increased the procurement price to Rs 850 with reference to the Chicago Board Trade (CBOT) contract for March 2007, rather than May 2007, when the bulk of the procurement takes place.

The procurement price should have been fixed at around Rs 1,100 per quintal, the price that prevailed during the period of procurement. That explains the quasi-disaster in the procurement of wheat last year.

Safe wager

The mistake has been repeated this year. Recently, the government announced an MSP for wheat at Rs 1,000 per quintal. Even as the Ministers of Agriculture from Haryana and Punjab expressed satisfaction about this, the morning newspapers carried a report that the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) had demanded that if the MSP was not raised to Rs 1,240 per quintal, the union would ensure that not a grain of wheat was delivered to the government procurement agencies. The demand of the farmers’ union corresponds to the CBOT contract prices for March and May 2008.

It would be a safe wager that history will repeat itself and that, in the coming season, the procurement would be poor. Private traders would offer a price above Rs 1200 and the government would be forced, once again, to buy and import inferior wheat from abroad, at around Rs 1300 per quintal.

According to the plans prepared by the Food Security Mission, specific districts have been earmarked in each State for quantum jumps in the production of wheat, paddy and pulses. The schemes were drawn up by the Centre, with the States simply accepting them. As usual, while the production targets have been highlighted, no failure standards have been fixed.

As a result, at no point will the government be required to admit that its mission has failed.

Food security is not only about carbohydrates. It is about nutrition. It is rather surprising that the deficiency in edible oils and oilseeds does not figure in the plans of the Food Security Mission. India will, probably, have to continue importing oilseeds and edible oils for many years to come.

The Oilseeds Mission, founded in the days of Rajiv Gandhi, has succeeded in bringing about transfers of irrigated lands from food-grains to oilseeds.

If the deficiency in nutrition is to be removed, the production of oilseeds will have to increase substantially. If this means a diversion of food-grain growing areas to oilseeds, that might affect the area under food-grain crops.

Looming crisis

The whole world is talking about global warming and climate change, issues that won the Nobel Peace prize this year. Extreme vicissitudes of temperature and skewed distribution of precipitation are expected to result in drastic changes in the crop map of the world.

If India as a tropical country ceases to be a food-grains producer, the entire perspective of food security will undergo a paradigm change. The Mission’s agenda does not even mention a contingency plan to face this kind of a crisis.

The Mission does not outline any projects or schemes for the development of varieties of seeds that can withstand extreme variations in temperature as also humidity. There is no reference to the probable collapse of the White Revolution that would be brought about by the vulnerability of crossbred cows to high temperatures.

Similarly, the Mission Plan does not provide for the development of alternative technologies for food processing that would replace the technologies that produce greenhouse gases. Nor is there any attempt to shift the habits and patterns of consumption from temperate climate food-grains, such as wheat, to food-grains such as jowar and bajra that can withstand higher temperatures.

The position of the Food Security Mission is unenviable. It has been called upon to come out with remedies in a situation where agriculture has been stagnating. A person of Sam Pitroda’s stature would be able to measure up to such a challenge. Instead, the Mission is run by those largely responsible for the agricultural quagmire. The mandate of the Mission does not include instruments that would provide incentives for farmers to produce more. One wonders what the Mission can achieve with its hands tied thus.

(The author is Founder, Shetkari Sanghatana and Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha). He can be reached at sharad.mah@nic.in)

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