Canada hosted this year?s G-20 and as a follow-up it had a conference for Speakers of Second Chambers?or of unicameral ones where relevant?from September 2-5. The theme was Food Security and Financial Crisis.
The burden of the speeches was predictable. Food security for most people is about agriculture and its protection. It is about food production and everyone wished they could grow more food. Others took a neo-Malthusian line that the problem was too many people. Others urged a simpler lifestyle. China spoke of its aid for African countries to help them grow more food and reminded the world that its own foodgrain output exceeded 500 million tonnes. Saudi Arabia complained about speculation in commodity markets that caused spikes in food prices in 2007 and 2008.
One can see why this is appealing but may not be the answer. There is a lot of sentimentality about land and why peasants must never be made to sell land on which food can be grown. But the countries where there is greatest food security are not those with a lot of people engaged in agriculture but often where they are a small percentage of the population. This is because what matters is productivity per acre and per person. The smart country invests in raising productivity in agriculture, removes surplus people from agriculture and finds them productive work, which helps them buy the food they need.
Food security also needs to be seen in the context of climate change, which did not get much mention at the G-20 Meeting. The world community is still sleepwalking through climate change challenges. The mistake, in my view, was to emphasise global warming in terms of mean temperature. What really matters is the impact on soil and sea level differentially across the world. This, as well as the volatility of climate, will severely affect the capacity of the world to produce food.
Rising sea levels will pose the biggest problem since low-lying areas such as the Maldives, parts of Bangladesh and many sea-side areas in India will sink. The need for finding host countries that can receive the masses of people displaced by rising sea levels is a global issue that has not been confronted. There are countries that are virtually empty while others are overpopulated. But immigration has become a dirty word everywhere and it is not even on the agenda of G-20. Australia?s population does not exceed that of Mumbai and Canada?s is not more than Mumbai plus Kolkata. This is not to say they should throw open their doors, but someone needs to take a global view of the coming catastrophe. It will affect food production and the demand for food.
One recent trend that is a substitute for people movement is the leasing of large tracts of land in countries that are land surplus by countries that know a lot about intensive food cultivation. Although this is immediately denounced as land grab or neo-colonialism, it is a welcome way to increase food output by making idle land or land where cultivation is extensive rather than intensive, more productive of foodgrains. The host country, of course, needs to charge the appropriate price for the land leased. But it is a win-win situation, as the World Bank seems to have recognised recently.
There will also be desertification and warming of colder climates. This will change the geography of food supply over the next 25 years. But apart from British joy at being able to grow good dry white wine in Kent, we do not see much understanding of what might be the consequence. This may make surplus food grain producers deficit countries or increase the demand for water in the drying regions to a great extent. Water wars are being forecast, although one must hope that with some forethought they can be avoided.
India is about to embark on food security on massive scale but in India?s case what we mean by food security is not macro food security but food entitlements to the section considered below poverty line (BPL). There seems to be a Dutch Auction as to how many BPL families there are?28.5% (NSS), 37.5% (Tendulkar), 50% (rural development ministry) or 77% (Arjun Sengupta). It seems a perverse race in which the more poor you find the closer you are to the powers that be in the Congress. (Is it a matter of pride for the Congress that even after 63 years of Independence in which the Congress ruled for all but 20 years, BPL numbers are so high?)
The real trouble is not just that money and food will be wasted in these schemes but that India seems to be taken for granted that supply of foodgrains is guaranteed. That may yet prove a fatal mistake.
The author is a prominent economist and Labour peer
