World Food Crisis, Agrarian Distress & Question of Sustainble Agriculture In The Age of Changing Climates (Part 1) – Asit Das
One need not say that one of the most severe food problems and agrarian crisis is the dominating socio-economic phenomenon in India and third world with the onset of economic reforms under globalization since the early 1990s. According to official statistics, more than 2.5 lakh farmers have committed suicide in India, (until March 2010) both under the NDA and UPA regimes. For the past two years we are witness to widespread food riots all over the third world. In India we are seeing unprecedented rise in the price of food grains and vegetables. With dal vanishing from the poor and lower middle-class households, we now face a qualitative change in our most fundamental economic relationship – the delivery of food. This situation has arisen from an extended process rooted in the sharp growth in inequality that has accompanied the extension of capitalist social relations in the period of economic reform. The condition of the majority of the population has been steadily weakening over the last decades, becoming ever more undernourished. At the same time, the governmental tools available to respond to a food crisis have been under continuous attack, and are no longer able to fulfill their role. According to the UNICEF report “The State of the World Children 2009” India has the highest rate of child malnutrition in the world. On an average, children in rural areas are twice as likely to be underweight compared to children in urban areas. The rate of child malnutrition is higher than that of Sub-Saharan Africa. This is the base line from which we can begin to asses the consequences of the failed monsoon.
The crisis has been building up for some time. Grain output has been stagnating for over a decade. For the five years from 2002-07, the average annual growth rate in agriculture has been a meager 2.2 percent, hardly more than India’s 1.5 percent annual population growth. Per capita availability of food grains in terms of kilograms per year was 162.5 in 2006, below the level of 1972 figure of 171.1. However, the availability of food grains does not give the real picture of the food question; access to food is the main criteria. The decline in per capita availability marks a yet more severe decline for the disadvantaged sections – the inevitable result of the neoliberal dogma of rationing scarce goods by ability to pay, that is by firmly entrenching market relations. The vast extent of the numbers living in extreme poverty is a known fact to everyone, but it simply does not appear in business press. Every politician and policy maker talks of poverty reduction. But if we follow international criteria, more than 50 percent of Indians are extremely poor. Arguably, the most significant achievement since independence was the extension of food security to this immense sector of the population through the public distribution system, assuring the minimum level of supply. The PDS achieved, at least to a considerable extent, the rationing of scarce but necessary goods without making the means of payment the decisive consideration. But only the shadow now remains.
Food prices have been steadily rising in the five years since 2004. In these years, between 2004 and 2008, when India had some good monsoons and record production of food grains was claimed, the price of rice went up by over 46 percent, that of wheat by over 62%, atta (wheat flour) 55%, salt 42%, and so on. By March 2008 the average increase in the price of such items was already well over 40 percent. Then these prices rose again till a little before the 2009 polls and have risen dramatically in the past six months. Inflation based on year-on-year variation in consumer price indices has increased since June 2008. Various measures of consumer price inflation remained high in the range of 8.6-11.5% during May/June 2009, and 8.0-97% in March 2009, as compared with 7.3-8.8% in June 2008. For the most disadvantaged who have fallen out of the wreckage of the PDS system, and we are talking of crores, the last years of price rise for foods have meant a steady gradual increase in hunger and malnutrition.
We are officially told that half the country is suffering from drought. The question at issue is not unpredictable weather in one month or another, it is the consequences of what the ecologists have told us is certain—that facing us today are the results of global climate change and irresponsible market driven practices in the absence of planning. Not only this year, but even in the years ahead, there will be crises arising from water shortage. A study published in Nature in August this year recounts that a satellite survey shows that ground water reserves in northern India have dropped sharply between 2002 and 2008. This depletion, primarily due to irrigation, is accelerating over time. And even in the absence of consensus on a casual linkage between global warming and bad monsoons, there is consensus on the increased prevalence of extreme weather variation, i.e., that the previously rare event (such as a failed monsoon) will be more frequent. Once again, the future has arrived.
Food Crisis Today – In 2006-08, food shortages became a global reality, with the prices of commodities spiralling beyond the reach of vast numbers of people. International agencies were caught flat-footed, with the world food program warning that its rapidly diminishing food stocks might not be able to deal with the emergency. Owing to surging prices of rice, wheat and vegetable oils, the food import bills of least developed countries (LDCs) climbed up by 37 percent from 2007 to 2008 – from 17.9 million US dollars to 24.6 million dollars, after having risen by 30 percent in 2006. By the end of 2008, the United Nations reported “the annual food import basket in LDCs lost more than three times that of 2000, not because of the increased volume of food imports, but as the result of rising food prices (United Nations, World Economic Situation and Prospects 2009). These tumultuous developments added 75 million people to the ranks of the hungry and drove an estimated 125 million people in developing countries into extreme poverty. (FAO briefing paper ‘Hungry on Rise’, United Nations, September 17, 2009.)
For some countries, the food crisis was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Some thirty countries experienced violent popular actions against rising prices in 2007 and 2008, among them Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Guinea, Indonesia, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, Somalia, Uzbekistan and Yemen. Across the continents, people came out in thousands against uncontrolled rise in the staple goods which their countries had to import owing to insufficient production. Scores of people died in these demonstrations of popular anger.
The United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects spoke about the crisis being the product of a perfect storm or an explosive conjunction of different developments; and speculative movements that brought about the global financial crisis that broke out in the summer of 2007 were implicated in the food crisis. According to the United Nations, the impact on food prices of speculation by financial investors in commodities and commodities futures markets has been considerable, it could be argued, said the report.
“That increased global liquidity and financial innovations has also led to increased speculation in commodity markets and, in addition, the United States dollar appreciated as part of the process of de-leveraging of financial institutions in major economics.
However, radical economists claim that speculation in agro-commodity futures was the key factor in the extraordinary rise in the prices of food commodities in 2007 and 2008. With the real estate bubble bursting in 2007 and trading in mortgage-based securities and other derivatives collapsing, hedge funds and other speculative agents, they asserted, moved into speculation in commodity futures, causing a sharp increase in inside trading and contracts unaccompanied by little or no increase in production of agricultural commodities. It was this move into commodity futures for quick profits followed by a move out after the commodities bubble burst that triggered the rise in the FAO food price index by 71 percent during only fifteen months between the end of 2006 and March 2008 and its falling back after July 2008 to the level 2006 (Peter Wahl “Food Speculation: The Main Factor of the Price Bubble in 2008”, Berlin: WEED, 2009).
KEY TRENDS OF AGRICULTURE AND FOODS CRISIS TODAY
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Increased diversion of corn grain and soybeans to produce meat as the world’s per capita meat consumption doubled in about forty years. As much as 95 percent of calories are lost in the conversion of grain and soybeans to meat.
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Decreased food production associated with poor countries adopting the neoliberal paradigm of letting the free market govern food production and distribution.
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Widespread “depeasantisation” partially caused by neoliberal reforms and IMF mandated “Structural adjustment” as conditions forced peasant farmers to migrate from the land into urban slums, where one-sixth of humanity now lives.
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Increasing concentration of corporate ownership and control over all aspects of food production – from seeds, pesticides and fertilizers, to the grain elevators, processing facilities and grocery stores.
One of more recent causes for the crisis is the diversion of large amounts of corn, soy, and palm oil into producing agrofuels, the term adopted by critics worldwide for industrial-scale biofuels based on agricultural crops as feedstocks. Agrofuel production looked very appealing as the United States and the European Union sought to break the influence of oil producing countries to promote “Greener” fuels. In 2008, some 30 percent of the entire corn crop in the US was used to produce ethanol to blend with gasoline to fuel cars.
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Disruption of nutrient cycles with the spread of capitalist agriculture and the more recent move towards large-scale, factory style animal production facilities.
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Ecological damage caused by chemical and fossil fuel-intensive agricultural practices.
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Great extent of consolidation (both horizontal and vertical integration) in the input and processing sectors of the agrifood system.
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Farmers increasingly working as labourers for agribusiness, often under contract to large integrated meat producing corporations.
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Role of genetically modified (GM) seeds in consolidating corporate control over the input sector and from practices overall.
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Difficulties presented to the third world by the various provisions of the World Trade Organization.
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Mass migration of peasants from the countryside of the third world (depeasantization) and into urban slums where there are few jobs available.
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Extent of hunger amidst plenty in the developed countries, with many anti-hunger organizations focusing on the most immediate emergencies, thus leaving the deeper issue of poverty unaddressed.
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Neglecting the importance of land reforms and the benefits of reducing or eliminating reliance on commercial fertilizers and pesticides.