Food Security

Where do we stand?

By Indeewara Thilakarathne

[email protected]

Professor P. R. D. Silva who is the Professor and Head of the Department of Agricultural Engineering, University of Peradeniya, in an exclusive interview with Sunday Observer explains the challenges the country faces against the backdrop of global warming, climatic changes and its consequences.

He emphasized that Asia will be adversely affected by climate change and therefore Asians should prepare to ensure food security.

Professor P. R. D. Silva is also a Consultant to FAO and World Food Programme of the UN on Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Assessment. He has worked as a consultant for FAO in Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Sri Lanka on Food Security. He is a member of the global Food Security Network (FSN).

Here is an excerpt of the interview

With the global climate change, it is increasingly clear that countries can no longer rely on the import of their basic food items. What is Sri Lanka’s position with regard to food security?

Climate change is likely to affect people in Asia more than anywhere else in the world. There are ample evidences to show the change of the variability of hydrological regime and increased temperature in the environment even though solid facts are yet to be found in confirming the persistent uni-directional change in climatological events. The situation is similar in most of the countries in Asia and worse in South Asia including Sri Lanka.

It is evident that the food crop production in Asia, particularly in South Asia has been significantly affected by the change of climate. Frequent natural calamities in the Asian region aggravate the problem further.

Short duration, high intensity storms are very frequent in recent times causing soil erosion in agricultural lands which ultimately lead to poor soil environment for crop growth.

It also causes flash floods and inundates crop lands and damages the delicate food crops. Prolonged dry spells which we experience regularly adversely affect the agricultural productivity.

Most of our food imports are procured from Asian countries and there is an obvious reduction in agricultural production in the region. It is unavoidable that any country where there is a deficit between production and consumption would face a serious food crisis and Sri Lanka is no exception.

The restrictions imposed on food distribution in conflict areas would further deepen the crisis making our population vulnerable to food insecurity.

The diversities of political, social, economical and ecological aspects of each individual country call for different measures and policies, both short and long term. The immediate or short term solutions such as blanket approach of humanitarian aid, subsidies, social safety nets and trade policies continue to be relevant as far as we are lacking precise information in addressing this core issue.

The government should get directly involved in food distribution, marketing and storage to prevent the country getting deep into the crisis. This approach should manifest in immediate policy measures, such as price control on key staple food products through regulation, actual buying, importing and selling by stated-owned enterprises, progressive release of food kept in public food reserves.

The only medium and long term solution to the problem of food insecurity and vulnerability is the introduction of policy framework aiming at overall improvements of our agricultural sector, with a special focus on improving productivity in food production, and increasing the efficiency of food marketing.

More emphasis should be placed on the production of staple food in the policy frame work and the government should promote the production of rice by creating markets in the rural areas, build infrastructures that support the farmers to produce more, continue to provide limited subsidies for the fertilizers while promoting the use of organic manure, avail loans to farmers, improvement and increase yields through bio-fortification and make policies that motivate farmers to produce more rice.

These approaches should be supplemented with a national nutritional promotion that emphasizes on the importance of rice in our daily dietary needs.

Has the country really prepared for an impending worldwide food shortage?

Although, there have been reasons given to attribute the rising food prices to economic boom in nations such as India and China, creating increased demand for cereals, rise in oil and energy prices which affect the entire value chain of food production, from fertilizer to harvesting, storage and delivering, and changes in consumption pattern including urban population growth, use of food crops for bio-fuel, specially the increased intake of consumable corn and oilseeds, poor food and trade policies in the world, etc., it should be noted that there are unique country specific reasons that can be blamed for the soaring food prices at country levels in addition to global challenges.

The globalization of the marketplace which favours those that are more powerful and is damaging to the food self-dependency of the poorer.

Indiscriminate land use changes depriving the highly productive agricultural lands for the nation pose a serious challenge for our preparation for impending food crisis in the world. Introduction of donor driven policies promoting diversification of paddy lands, destruction of the established infrastructure for paddy marketing, irrational rice import policies have also added additional dimensions into the problem.

Changing our food preferences, due to factors such as urbanization, exotic taste, transformations of our lifestyles altered the regular dietary composition of our meals and placed less prominence of the food security through the self sufficiency of our staple food. Until recently, the farm gate prices of rice had not increased appreciably, yet the cost of farm inputs became very high and was not subsidized.

In addition, the perennial neglect of the local rice research programmes led to the departure of qualified scientists into other lucrative agri-businesses and the lack of conservation programme for genetic diversity of rice led to poor productivity in paddy farming.

The extension arm of the Department of Agriculture was made redundant and the paddy farmers were left with no support for their field problems including their vulnerability to devastation especially by new diseases and pests as well as the decline in soil productivity.

Traditional varieties which could be cultivated in upland conditions have been extinct and paddy crop has been converted to a high water demanding crop making it impossible to cultivate under rain-fed conditions.

Our rural agricultural economy dominated by subsistence farming was not very much sensitive to the emerging trends of food scarcity. Even in early 1970’s, we were in a position to curtail agricultural imports and meet the food needs from our own national production.

The paradigm shift in the subsequent governments focusing more on industrial and service sectors through liberalized trade and import policies in place of agricultural sector made us vulnerable to regional or global food crisis today.

Although Sri Lanka is a predominantly Agriculture country, can the country claim self sufficiency in food?

There are enough evidences in the history to suggest that we have been self sufficient in food. Even in the recent past, we have reached the status of self sufficiency in our staple food. We have the potential and all the required attributes to be self sufficient in food provided that consistent national policy frame work is established targeting two main approaches.

There should be technology development and transfer with respect to the status of our local food crops in terms of varietal improvement for higher yields, tolerance for adverse weather conditions and resistance for pest and diseases.

Local crop research and experimentation stations should be upgraded and expanded with a qualified staff and a national research and development agenda should be developed with the inputs from the stakeholders. This would undoubtedly require strengthening agricultural education and extension in the country.

Secondly, the loss of the agricultural crops during harvesting and consumption should be minimized with the improved technological support. Even today, our postharvest losses of paddy amount to 30 - 40% of the total production and there is a potential to reduce these losses to a limit around 15%. Our milling out-turn is lower than some of the least developing countries. Our storage and transport mechanisms are below the acceptable standards.

With the extreme climatic conditions resulting from climate change, the situation would become further complicated. Established state owned institutions such as Institute of Postharvest Technology (IPHT), ITI, NERD should be supported with additional resources with a consistent agenda for research and development.

Marketing infrastructure could be improved to reduce the transport of food crops through various market centers. Overall quality improvement of the food industry should be achieved including the value addition at farm gate level. In addition, it is mandatory to launch social development programmes for farming communities to improve their overall life style and attitudes. It is myth that farming is not profitable.

The fact is that the way most of the farmers practice agriculture is not profitable. The farmers should be provided a comprehensive understanding and knowledge on farming systems, crop selection, input control, agronomic practices, harvesting practices, value addition and management of post harvest quality of food products.

In order to be self sufficient in food, the production should meet the demand where the production is seasonal and demand is more or less constant over time. The need for food preservation technologies storage of food plays an important role in self sufficiency of food. Most of our food industries cater only for western set of choices and no national food items are found in their production menus.

As researches and scientists, what are the strategies that have been mapped out to face this food crisis?

The top priority should be to assess the magnitude of the problem and look for solutions which combine immediate protection of the poor (whether rural or urban) from the disastrous impact of food price rises with the maintenance of food prices levels that encourage farmers to expand their production to meet growing demand, making sure through good market information that producers of all sizes can benefit from upward price movements.

In order to achieve long-term agricultural growth, developing-country governments should increase their medium- and long-term investments in agricultural research and extension, rural infrastructure, and market access for small farmers.

Rural investments have been sorely neglected in recent decades, and now is the time to reverse this trend. Farmers in many developing countries are operating in an environment of inadequate infrastructure like roads, electricity, and communications; poor soils; lack of storage and processing capacity; and little or no access to agricultural technologies that could increase their profits and improve their livelihoods.

Recent unrest over food prices in a number of countries may tempt policymakers to put the interests of urban consumers over those of rural people, including farmers, but this approach would be shortsighted and counterproductive. Given the scale of investment needed, aid donors should also expand development assistance to agriculture, rural services, and science and technology.

In the long run, food crop research programmes for developing new, high yielding, weather proof varieties to suit our local conditions should be funded and institutionalized. Conservation of genetic diversity of food crops and adoption of crop wild relatives through proper selection and breeding programmes need to be supported. Import of food crop planting materials should be controlled and the production of our own seed and planting materials should be encouraged.

In view of the large population of subsistence farmers and the problem of land fragmentation and small plot sizes, it is not possible to maintain high consumer: produce ratio in the agricultural sector. More and more people should be engaged in agriculture even at the home garden level.

The cultivation of food crops on every inch of land should be encouraged and classical extensive 2 dimensional agriculture should be extended to 3 dimensions introducing vertical expansion of agriculture in multi-layer cropping systems. Urban agriculture practices can also be promoted to avoid total dependency of urban population on food markets.

In addition, the scientists and researchers in all related disciplines of agriculture should develop an integrated agriculture development programme for the country.

This should include the efforts on improving productivity in the agronomic and live stock sectors, controlling pest and diseases, maintaining land, soil and water productivity, improving and conserving genetic diversity and genetic resources of food crops, developing appropriate farm machinery, implements and technologies for local conditions, introducing market infrastructure to minimize the gaps between consumer price and farm gate price, establishing effective communication and extension network and directing the government policy instruments towards a both farmer and consumer protection, etc .

Mainstreaming of food security with links to promotion of staple food, poverty alleviation, policy planning, control of malnutrition, improving health, water and environmental sanitation inputs, etc is extremely essential in such an integrated approach.

Are there new breeds of rice that have been developed to resist food, salinity and some harsh weather especially in the face of looming food crisis? Are these varieties will help to cultivate in hitherto uncultivatable lands?

In spite of limited investments on agricultural research in the country, our research scientists have managed to develop number of new paddy varieties to improve the rice production.

Drought resistant, ultra short maturity varieties like BG 250, diseases resistant and high yielding AT 307, general all weather, year round cultivation varieties like BW303, and varieties with regional focus such as BW 364 for low country wet zone and BG406 for Northern regions are some of new developments in our rice breeding programmes in the recent past.

It is the responsibility of the government to extend the benefit of these new developments to improve the profitability of farming industry and prevent the exploitation of these resource base by multinational companies already established in the agriculture sector.

With the introduction of new and improved varieties which can adopt to diverse land and whether conditions would undoubtedly compel the farming community to uncultivated land and support to improve the national food production targets.

What are the vital areas in the agriculture that Sri Lanka should develop in order to increase agricultural productivity to feed the growing population?

In fact, this should be the essence of our national agricultural policy which should not be politicized with changing governments. Government support and patronage should be extended to improve the production and productivity of our staple food.

Indiscriminate land use changes without considering the land suitability and capability should be avoided and the farmers should be supported in the selection and choice of crops for their cultivation depending on the location, climatic forecast and impending market behaviour through an extensive extension service for agriculture.

In view of this, provisions should not be made for the profit oriented multi-national companies to monopolize the agricultural extension service in the country.

Capacity building programmes for farmer, strengthening farmer organizations and corporative market structure, developing and promoting entrepreneurships in rural agricultural sector and product quality improvements and value addition at the farm-gate level should be an integral part of such an approach. The government should also invest on the other support services and rural infrastructure to strengthen the rural economy.

Import of food items should be restricted and the timing of essential food imports should be regulated to avoid any negative impact on the local production.

Import of low quality exotic fruits and vegetables should be totally banned and local fruits and vegetable production should be promoted while sustaining the agricultural and ecological environment.

Market infrastructure should be developed to avoid any unnecessary transport of perishables. This can be easily achieved through the introduction of regional market centers and market facilities. Postharvest losses should be minimized and there should be stringent regulations in place for nutritional and keeping quality control of food crops.

Improvements of water productivity are mandatory, especially in the large irrigation systems where there are emerging conflicts in water and other resource allocations. Sustainable farming systems should be introduced and farmers should be encouraged to adopt Good Management Practices (GAP) in all agricultural operations.

Education on nutrition is another important area where government should focus the attention. Food security is meaningless unless nutrition security linkages are highlighted in national policy statements. Most of the nutrition programmes and interventions are oriented towards either supplementation or fortification with little nutrition education on the important of diet diversification.

In these programmes, it is often neglected the energy aspect of the individual needs which can be provided by staple food consumption. Staple food can also provide substantial amount of other important nutrients needed by the body and assist in combating most of the nutrition related problems.

However, in the face of rising food prices and imminent food crisis, a single government in a developing country cannot achieve much success unless both developing and developed countries play a role in creating a food secured world where all people have enough food for a healthy and productive life.