In one of my previous articles in this blog, I outlined the need for a global food management agenda involving multilateral agencies like the United Nations. However, the results on that front in the last several decades do not inspire confidence. The limelight in the United Nations is often stolen by military and geopolitical issues. Nuclear paranoia and the Cold War overshadowed agendas like global food security while people starved around the world in the first few decades of the United Nations. The drama surrounding the Cuban Missile crisis, for example, got way more attention than food scarcity in Asia or Africa. India got bilateral help from countries like the United States in the food area. However, future historians may well have to answer the question as to why a country like India that sent its soldiers to do peacekeeping in Korea did not receive adequate food help from UN agencies. Or why Prime Minister Nehru did not make India's participation in peacekeeping in Korea conditional on receiving adequate food aid from the UN in a world where countries like the United States, Canada and the Soviet Union had enormous areas available for agriculture, probably way beyond what they needed for their own populations.
After the end of the Cold War, the record has been even more dismal in many ways. Several African countries have faced historically high starvation levels and have not received adequate food through UN agencies. Of course, UN agencies like the World Food Programme are not going to meet full success unless the question of resource allocation for agriculture at the global level is also addressed. And that question has met with scant or no attention.
The future of the world food supply is likely to be even more precarious, not only due to climate change, but also due to other factors like the depletion of minerals necessary for fertilizer production. In such a scenario, and given the inertia of institutions like the United Nations, nations that are likely to face severe food problems may do well to bargain with nations that are likely to be comfortable in food production and reach accords in the area of economic exchange. For example, mineral-rich countries can try to strike agreements with food-rich countries about stipulated exchanges of crucial resources ( like minerals and food ) in advance. Public management of food resources and mineral resources will be crucial in this regard. Leaving everything to the whim of market forces will prove disastrous. These kinds of agreements about crucial resources will be meaningless in a fully capitalistic framework since one cannot control when and how capitalistic agents will engage in exchange. While market agents can use instruments like futures to ensure supply price stability, these instruments are unlikely to solve overall problems of food scarcity inside a nation. Also, futures cannot eliminate the shortage of food and cannot prevent its price from rising due to scarcity. Also, poor people in food-scarce countries cannot be left to the whims of capitalistic forces in this kind of world. It is time for governments of countries to act to save public land for agriculture and mineral extraction. And even consider fair ways to nationalize agricultural land and mines, if need be, keeping economic justice priorities in mind. This kind of nationalization can be unpopular among both rich landowners and small landowners. However, experts need to determine both the need for nationalization, the amount of fair compensation etc. Public awareness needs to be built about the need for nationalization in countries with scarce agricultural resources. In countries like India, where hundreds of millions of people lack entitlement to food, such measures ( that are likely to be unpopular with landowners ) may become necessary if the future well-being of the masses are to be ensured. The current system of minimum support prices can run into serious difficulty in achieving its aims in scenarios of more serious food scarcity. The government will then have to pay exorbitantly high prices for its public distribution system and it may still not be able to buy enough food to provide for the very needy. In other words, the combination of capitalistic agriculture combined with the minimum support price system that the government has in place will fall woefully short if, for example, the world supply of phosphate fertilizers is seveely constrained and no alternative is found. Heavily indebted governments running already huge deficits will not be able to afford the exorbitant payments if food prices skyrocket. Also relevant here is the extent to which governments can prevent misallocation of land for uses other than agriculture when there is concern about severe food scarcity in the future.
Governments that own and manage large areas of land for agriculture will find it much easier to deal with a world of severe food scarcity. In order to obtain control of significant amounts of agrocultural land, several countries will have to face the thorny question of compensation to landowners. Also, when the country is likely to face severe food scarcity, significant sacrifice may be required from very rich farmers. While nationalization of significant areas of agricultural land is an extreme step, some countries may be able to meet their aims with more benign arrangements like requiring rich farmers to donate a substantial part of their produce to national food funds. Nationalization is a less throny problem in the area of minerals since national ownership of mines is often a norm. Countries that have embarked on divestment or denationalization drives for things like mines will need to re-examine these policies. As mentioned earlier, significant national ownership of these resources will allow food security diplomacy to proceed on a bilateral basis between countries. The ability to institute such arrangements may well prove crucial to avoiding mass hunger given the stepmotherly treatment that UN food agencies receive from rich and food-rich countries.
by C. Jayant Praharaj
The Global Analyst ( Commentary about economic, environmental, political and other topics )
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
The return of Malthus
Washington consensus hype and neo-liberal hype are rampant in newspapers, magazines and the electronic media in countries like India where rural economies with overwhelming poverty and elitist urban economies exist side by side. Never mind the fact that few good mechanisms exist for trickle-down to transfer the benefits of urban, service-sector growth to the rural areas that are dependent on agriculture in countries like India. Never mind the yawning gap between per capita urban sector growth and per capita rural sector growth. Never mind the existence of migration from rural to urban areas that create severe strains on the urban economy and urban infrastructure. Never mind the fact that the rural sectors are teeming with unskilled and illiterate labor that is ill-prepared to take advantage of any trickle-down mechanisms that may exist.
Year-on-year high growth rates are a modern phenomenon, something that began with the Industrial Revolution. As for per capita growth rates, decrease in population growth rates and population stabilization have also been crucial, and the provision of basic health care has proved crucial in this regard. However, this kind of transformation has not happened uniformly around the globe, no matter how loudly certain opinion makers shout that the world has become flat. The middle class economy has become flat around the world to some extent. However, the prevalence of mass poverty and food insecurity is proof that the modern world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is far from being flat in the field of economic prosperity or economic entitlement. And we are not talking about the run-of-the-mill income distribution kind of non-flatness. We are talking about two-tiered economies where significant, if not total, decoupling between urban and rural sectors is a reality. But there is an entire opinion-making industry that is pushing for this myth of flatness as the reality of the world we live in. Journalists, heads of state and experts trained in elitist institutions and steeped in ultra-capitalistic logic speak of a world where economic growth is the panacea for all the remaining economic problems. Never mind the fact that several of the countries with significant levels of poor populations like India have not followed the same development trajectory as Western nations. Never mind the fact that agricultural technology and literacy levels have had widely dissimilar histories in advanced Western economies and in countries like India. And never mind the fact that basic food security is a matter of serious concern in countries like India while it is a topic that is not even on the radar screen in the advanced economies.
While all this noise about growth and trickle-down is taking place despite the glaring disconnect with reality in countries like India, there is a real possibility that governmental apathy and ineptitude in countries like India can lead to the revival of some old economic bugbears. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Robert Malthus talked about population being stabilized by a balance between several forces like reproduction, disease, food availability and war. Two hundred years have passed since Malthus propounded his ideas. Since then, the world has seen unprecedented economic transformation and the introduction of amazing technologies. Terms like “ the post-industrial society “ have sunk into the public consciousness in the advanced economies, the same economies that produce the economists who dole out economic advice to governments of poorer countries and who often prescribe ready-made formulas to these poorer countries during times of economic stress. Malthusian ideas have become irrelevant to the noise-makers. They are regarded as relics of a past era of economic want that is best forgotten. However, those who follow the economic scene in countries like India know that the complex interactions between population, economic want, health and food security are mechanisms that are only too relevant to the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Sub-Saharan Africa presents a similar picture.
The world population is expected to stabilize around 9 billion or 10 billion depending on the projection you want to go by. Most of the arable land in the world has been brought under cultivation. Converting pasture land or forests to agricultural land has its own serious problems. Combine this with the fact that the food production capabilities of the world, current and projected, are dependent on inputs of inorganic fertilizers like phosphates and nitrates. Consider the fact that there are limited reserves of phosphate rock, the primary source of phosphate fertilizers. Consider also the fact that most of these reserves occur in the United States, Russia, China and Morocco. Consider the fact that the United States is expected to become a net importer of phosphate rock in the next few decades. Consider the fact that China’s need to provide agricultural output for its own population may well mean that its phosphate rock reserves may become unavailable for the rest of the world. The situation in Russia may not be all that different. Consider the fact that extraction of off-shore phosphate rock reserves may be uneconomical. You have a situation where, in the next few decades, the world’s agricultural output may be in peril due to lack of inorganic fertilizers. The technology of organic substitutes for phosphate and nitrate fertilizers is not well developed.
Malthus will most likely rear his head again, albeit in a different form than in the early eighteenth century. And elitist policies being pursued and pushed around the world do not inspire confidence that the lives of poor people will be free from Malthusian effects very easily.
by C. Jayant Praharaj
Year-on-year high growth rates are a modern phenomenon, something that began with the Industrial Revolution. As for per capita growth rates, decrease in population growth rates and population stabilization have also been crucial, and the provision of basic health care has proved crucial in this regard. However, this kind of transformation has not happened uniformly around the globe, no matter how loudly certain opinion makers shout that the world has become flat. The middle class economy has become flat around the world to some extent. However, the prevalence of mass poverty and food insecurity is proof that the modern world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is far from being flat in the field of economic prosperity or economic entitlement. And we are not talking about the run-of-the-mill income distribution kind of non-flatness. We are talking about two-tiered economies where significant, if not total, decoupling between urban and rural sectors is a reality. But there is an entire opinion-making industry that is pushing for this myth of flatness as the reality of the world we live in. Journalists, heads of state and experts trained in elitist institutions and steeped in ultra-capitalistic logic speak of a world where economic growth is the panacea for all the remaining economic problems. Never mind the fact that several of the countries with significant levels of poor populations like India have not followed the same development trajectory as Western nations. Never mind the fact that agricultural technology and literacy levels have had widely dissimilar histories in advanced Western economies and in countries like India. And never mind the fact that basic food security is a matter of serious concern in countries like India while it is a topic that is not even on the radar screen in the advanced economies.
While all this noise about growth and trickle-down is taking place despite the glaring disconnect with reality in countries like India, there is a real possibility that governmental apathy and ineptitude in countries like India can lead to the revival of some old economic bugbears. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Robert Malthus talked about population being stabilized by a balance between several forces like reproduction, disease, food availability and war. Two hundred years have passed since Malthus propounded his ideas. Since then, the world has seen unprecedented economic transformation and the introduction of amazing technologies. Terms like “ the post-industrial society “ have sunk into the public consciousness in the advanced economies, the same economies that produce the economists who dole out economic advice to governments of poorer countries and who often prescribe ready-made formulas to these poorer countries during times of economic stress. Malthusian ideas have become irrelevant to the noise-makers. They are regarded as relics of a past era of economic want that is best forgotten. However, those who follow the economic scene in countries like India know that the complex interactions between population, economic want, health and food security are mechanisms that are only too relevant to the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Sub-Saharan Africa presents a similar picture.
The world population is expected to stabilize around 9 billion or 10 billion depending on the projection you want to go by. Most of the arable land in the world has been brought under cultivation. Converting pasture land or forests to agricultural land has its own serious problems. Combine this with the fact that the food production capabilities of the world, current and projected, are dependent on inputs of inorganic fertilizers like phosphates and nitrates. Consider the fact that there are limited reserves of phosphate rock, the primary source of phosphate fertilizers. Consider also the fact that most of these reserves occur in the United States, Russia, China and Morocco. Consider the fact that the United States is expected to become a net importer of phosphate rock in the next few decades. Consider the fact that China’s need to provide agricultural output for its own population may well mean that its phosphate rock reserves may become unavailable for the rest of the world. The situation in Russia may not be all that different. Consider the fact that extraction of off-shore phosphate rock reserves may be uneconomical. You have a situation where, in the next few decades, the world’s agricultural output may be in peril due to lack of inorganic fertilizers. The technology of organic substitutes for phosphate and nitrate fertilizers is not well developed.
Malthus will most likely rear his head again, albeit in a different form than in the early eighteenth century. And elitist policies being pursued and pushed around the world do not inspire confidence that the lives of poor people will be free from Malthusian effects very easily.
by C. Jayant Praharaj
The food supply problem and population control
The population of the world may cross the 10 billion level by 2100. Providing food and nutrition for everybody while accounting for regional variations in agricultural resource availability and food production will pose a major problem for national governments and for international humanitarian agencies. Currently, the World Food Programme is struggling to meet its aims of providing food to groups that lack the means to afford it. In scenarios of much higher population, possible severe constraints on fertilizer supply ( discussed in other articles ) and nation to nation variations, providing food security will most likely become an overwhelming challenge.
All national governments may do well to examine the projections regarding availability of agricultural land, the possibility of shifting land allocation from non-agricultural uses to agricultural uses, the scarcity level of phosphate rock and the effects on inorganic fertilizer production, the amount of land on which real estate development can be allowed etc. However, depending on their projections for agricultural and industrial manufacturing, certain nations may find it difficult to meet nutrition standards despite their best efforts ( I am not referring here to scenarios of apathy and unresponsiveness of governments that fail to arrange proper food distribution despite the availability of food supplies ).
It may well become necessary for specific nations of different sizes to embark on policies of population control similar to those in place in China, at least for certain periods of time. China’s one-child policy has contributed to population stabilization and may well become a major factor that determines its future economic trajectory ( although a one-child policy can lead to its own long-term problems like plummeting working age population or even uncontrollable and sudden decrease in population if followed for too long ). Other nations may have to adopt the same policy or policies similar to it for certain lengths of time. For example, a national policy that results in one and a half child per couple by using lottery systems to allow half of the couples a quota of one child while allowing the other half a quota of two children can be a policy option for nations that need some population stabilization, but not to the extent of a one-child policy. Minor details like how the policy will work in case of divorce etc can be thrashed out by experts. These and other variations may need to be examined if the food supply situation becomes too precarious, either at the the national or at the international level.
Since education, literacy, awareness, availability and adoption of contraceptives and availability of gainful employment at different age levels are all factors that determine population growth rates in societies that do not have child quotas for couples, governments that do not want to adopt quotas will have to make even more serious efforts in all these areas. Poor couples in villages where the economy and the educational system does not afford good opportunities for upward mobility can act in a risk averse fashion and produce lots of children if child mortality rates are high, as they are in India, for example. Also, if poor villagers need the labor of male children beyond a certain age in India more than that of female children, they may over-produce children. A holistic approach that includes the following measures will become indispensable.
1. Drastic reduction or elimination of child mortality by providing comprehensive basic health care facilities, something that has not happened in sixty years of independent India and several other countries.
2. Education of rural and urban population regarding population control and birth control measures.
3. Providing at least rudimentary food and health security options, and possibly advanced ones, so that villagers do not have very strong preference for the male child, will also help.
4. Similarly, the institution of at least rudimentary and preferably more sophisticated safety nets for old people will obviate the need for villagers to try to have more male children ( male rural children in India, for example, care for the parents when they are old while the rural females often have no resources to help parents after they are married and leave home ).
Even after all these holistic measures are taken, a quota system may still be needed because certain couples may still over-produce and benefit from the possible positive externalities of having more children if a lot of people start voluntarily practicing population control. Public awareness messages about the dangers of population explosion are of little use if the short-term economic incentives for producing more children are present. In other words, even if public awareness messages convince villagers that producing to many children can lead to fallacy-of-composition problems, there may be no good mechanism to overcome the free-rider or externality problem.
The best scenario is one where all the four steps mentioned above are adopted and a concerted effort is made to make a speedy transition to a kind of economy where the incentive for having more than the replacement level of birth rate is absent. Such a speedy transition has proved to be difficult in India, for example. However, the Indian experience has more to do with apathy, shoddy implementation and lack of a holistic approach. Even if the holistic approach is adopted, getting some people to stop piggyback riding on the positive steps taken by others can be a difficult problem, at least for a while. That should not deter adoption of the holistic approach, however, since the net gain is likely to be positive.
In India, the Below Poverty Line ( BPL ) card and the associated food programs are a good beginning, but they are not a substitute for more comprehensive security nets. Further, the prevalence of poverty and starvation despite the BPL card program in India is an indicator that it nowhere approaches a comprehensive security system.
The one-child policy in China has sometimes been maligned based on charges that preference for the male child combined with sex determination prior of the fetus leads to abortion of female fetuses. One possible solution is to ban sex determination of the fetus and to strictly enforce the ban. As for female infanticide, the legal system of the country should provide the disincentive to eliminate this kind of practice. Female infanticide is also reported in countries like India which do not have any limits on the number of children per couple, most likely due to the economic considerations mentioned above. Countries that limit the average number of children per couple will also need to follow the holistic guidelines for a security net in addition to law enforcement if they want to deal effectively with the problem of female infanticide or abortion of female fetuses.
Countries that do not want to mandate the maximum number of children for couples, or have serious political difficulties for doing so, also have the option of trying approaches involving incentives. For example, giving cash incentives to couples who adhere to specific limits for the number of children is one way to encourage population control. This can be done concurrently with the holistic approach outlined previously. It is one way of countering the free-rider problem, but it is difficult to predict its efficacy.
There is no easy solution to this problem of ensuring population stability in times of serious concern about the food supply. One-child policy or other policies similar to it have the stability problems on the lower side as discussed earlier, be it for overall population or for the ability of working age population to support a large old age population. On the other hand, using non-mandatory approaches necessitates holistic frameworks that have proved difficult to implement in poor countries with population problems, and produce the obvious stability problems on the higher side, leading to neo-Malthusian outcomes. Careful modeling of population trajectories, strict implementation of development objectives, constant monitoring of progress or lack thereof and raising the levels of awareness about the population issue may well become the pressing problems of countries in a new age of food supply paranoia and resource paranoia. Those opinion makers and policy framers in developing countries that constantly harp on high elitist growth and trickle-down as the solution to the development problems need to note that this attitude can lead to disastrous outcomes. The point has probably been reached where governments need to assure poor people that enough of a social security net will be available to people so that they do not need to produce excessive number of children and the governments need to follow through on these social security assurances. Trickle-down, even with high growth in the elitist sectors of the economy, cannot produce the necessary changes in old-age security, for example, that are necessary ingredients in the complex problem of population stabilization and poverty reduction. Trickle-down is not going to solve the problem of child mortality at the required rate. For example, with hundreds of millions living at the edge of starvation in a country like India, it will take a very long time before trickle-down can give abjectly poor people the resources necessary to afford basic health care for themselves and for their children. A government that ignores the overwhelming importance of providing free or very cheap and affordable basic health care, and leaves such things to the whims of trickle-down, is inviting disaster in the areas of population, poverty and food security for the overall economy.
by C. Jayant Praharaj
All national governments may do well to examine the projections regarding availability of agricultural land, the possibility of shifting land allocation from non-agricultural uses to agricultural uses, the scarcity level of phosphate rock and the effects on inorganic fertilizer production, the amount of land on which real estate development can be allowed etc. However, depending on their projections for agricultural and industrial manufacturing, certain nations may find it difficult to meet nutrition standards despite their best efforts ( I am not referring here to scenarios of apathy and unresponsiveness of governments that fail to arrange proper food distribution despite the availability of food supplies ).
It may well become necessary for specific nations of different sizes to embark on policies of population control similar to those in place in China, at least for certain periods of time. China’s one-child policy has contributed to population stabilization and may well become a major factor that determines its future economic trajectory ( although a one-child policy can lead to its own long-term problems like plummeting working age population or even uncontrollable and sudden decrease in population if followed for too long ). Other nations may have to adopt the same policy or policies similar to it for certain lengths of time. For example, a national policy that results in one and a half child per couple by using lottery systems to allow half of the couples a quota of one child while allowing the other half a quota of two children can be a policy option for nations that need some population stabilization, but not to the extent of a one-child policy. Minor details like how the policy will work in case of divorce etc can be thrashed out by experts. These and other variations may need to be examined if the food supply situation becomes too precarious, either at the the national or at the international level.
Since education, literacy, awareness, availability and adoption of contraceptives and availability of gainful employment at different age levels are all factors that determine population growth rates in societies that do not have child quotas for couples, governments that do not want to adopt quotas will have to make even more serious efforts in all these areas. Poor couples in villages where the economy and the educational system does not afford good opportunities for upward mobility can act in a risk averse fashion and produce lots of children if child mortality rates are high, as they are in India, for example. Also, if poor villagers need the labor of male children beyond a certain age in India more than that of female children, they may over-produce children. A holistic approach that includes the following measures will become indispensable.
1. Drastic reduction or elimination of child mortality by providing comprehensive basic health care facilities, something that has not happened in sixty years of independent India and several other countries.
2. Education of rural and urban population regarding population control and birth control measures.
3. Providing at least rudimentary food and health security options, and possibly advanced ones, so that villagers do not have very strong preference for the male child, will also help.
4. Similarly, the institution of at least rudimentary and preferably more sophisticated safety nets for old people will obviate the need for villagers to try to have more male children ( male rural children in India, for example, care for the parents when they are old while the rural females often have no resources to help parents after they are married and leave home ).
Even after all these holistic measures are taken, a quota system may still be needed because certain couples may still over-produce and benefit from the possible positive externalities of having more children if a lot of people start voluntarily practicing population control. Public awareness messages about the dangers of population explosion are of little use if the short-term economic incentives for producing more children are present. In other words, even if public awareness messages convince villagers that producing to many children can lead to fallacy-of-composition problems, there may be no good mechanism to overcome the free-rider or externality problem.
The best scenario is one where all the four steps mentioned above are adopted and a concerted effort is made to make a speedy transition to a kind of economy where the incentive for having more than the replacement level of birth rate is absent. Such a speedy transition has proved to be difficult in India, for example. However, the Indian experience has more to do with apathy, shoddy implementation and lack of a holistic approach. Even if the holistic approach is adopted, getting some people to stop piggyback riding on the positive steps taken by others can be a difficult problem, at least for a while. That should not deter adoption of the holistic approach, however, since the net gain is likely to be positive.
In India, the Below Poverty Line ( BPL ) card and the associated food programs are a good beginning, but they are not a substitute for more comprehensive security nets. Further, the prevalence of poverty and starvation despite the BPL card program in India is an indicator that it nowhere approaches a comprehensive security system.
The one-child policy in China has sometimes been maligned based on charges that preference for the male child combined with sex determination prior of the fetus leads to abortion of female fetuses. One possible solution is to ban sex determination of the fetus and to strictly enforce the ban. As for female infanticide, the legal system of the country should provide the disincentive to eliminate this kind of practice. Female infanticide is also reported in countries like India which do not have any limits on the number of children per couple, most likely due to the economic considerations mentioned above. Countries that limit the average number of children per couple will also need to follow the holistic guidelines for a security net in addition to law enforcement if they want to deal effectively with the problem of female infanticide or abortion of female fetuses.
Countries that do not want to mandate the maximum number of children for couples, or have serious political difficulties for doing so, also have the option of trying approaches involving incentives. For example, giving cash incentives to couples who adhere to specific limits for the number of children is one way to encourage population control. This can be done concurrently with the holistic approach outlined previously. It is one way of countering the free-rider problem, but it is difficult to predict its efficacy.
There is no easy solution to this problem of ensuring population stability in times of serious concern about the food supply. One-child policy or other policies similar to it have the stability problems on the lower side as discussed earlier, be it for overall population or for the ability of working age population to support a large old age population. On the other hand, using non-mandatory approaches necessitates holistic frameworks that have proved difficult to implement in poor countries with population problems, and produce the obvious stability problems on the higher side, leading to neo-Malthusian outcomes. Careful modeling of population trajectories, strict implementation of development objectives, constant monitoring of progress or lack thereof and raising the levels of awareness about the population issue may well become the pressing problems of countries in a new age of food supply paranoia and resource paranoia. Those opinion makers and policy framers in developing countries that constantly harp on high elitist growth and trickle-down as the solution to the development problems need to note that this attitude can lead to disastrous outcomes. The point has probably been reached where governments need to assure poor people that enough of a social security net will be available to people so that they do not need to produce excessive number of children and the governments need to follow through on these social security assurances. Trickle-down, even with high growth in the elitist sectors of the economy, cannot produce the necessary changes in old-age security, for example, that are necessary ingredients in the complex problem of population stabilization and poverty reduction. Trickle-down is not going to solve the problem of child mortality at the required rate. For example, with hundreds of millions living at the edge of starvation in a country like India, it will take a very long time before trickle-down can give abjectly poor people the resources necessary to afford basic health care for themselves and for their children. A government that ignores the overwhelming importance of providing free or very cheap and affordable basic health care, and leaves such things to the whims of trickle-down, is inviting disaster in the areas of population, poverty and food security for the overall economy.
by C. Jayant Praharaj
The need for a serious global food management agenda
Starvation is a reality in the world we live in for billions of people around the world. With the Great Recession leading to severe economic difficulties and with welfare systems under attack due to stubborn, elitist mindsets, food security has become a matter of concern even in more advanced countries, albeit to a much smaller extent than in poorer countries. At the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, the future of world food security presents an even scarier picture. And present and future overpopulation have become bigger matters of concern than ever before.
Concerns about overpopulation have been raised by analysts in the past, for example, by Paul Ehrlich. However, euphoric thinking and complacency about energy and resources led to these warnings being ignored. New oil reserves were being discovered around the world. Nuclear power was being advertised, and is still being advertised, as a long-term energy solution despite the safety problems that several experts ascribe to it. Universities and national laboratories were advertising the potential advantages accruing from a possible breakthrough in controlled nuclear fusion, a kind of holy grail of energy wherein the mechanism that powers the sun is harnessed in a controlled manner to provide unprecedented amounts of energy. Unlike the last two decades, global warming was not a pressing item on the radar screen of environmental analysts prior to that because the scientific establishment was just beginning to grapple with the problem. Large parts of Asia and Africa starved. However, it seems the thinking was that it was merely due to underdevelopment in several regions, and that as more land was brought under cultivation and as food distribution systems improved, this problem would be solved. Overpopulation is a term that can only be understood in the context of the standards of living sought and the resources available for the same. It also needs to be understood in the context of stages of development. Since the advertisement on the resources front was optimistic, the bugbear of overpopulation was drowned out by the noise surrounding growth and development.
But the population picture, the resources picture and the environment picture have all changed in significant manners in the last couple of decades. Scientific euphoria has bitten the dust before a slew of economic and environmental problems. While dogged determination still marks the thinking in several quarters, the analysts as well as the public are beginning to realize the severe limitations of conventional approaches to the exploitation, management and development of resources. The real picture is decidedly pessimistic and worrisome. New and smarter ways of scientific and technological thinking are necessary if the world is to be able to cope with rising populations, environmental problems and resource scarcity. The very concept of standard of living will probably need significant redefinition, and people may well have to find meaning and add meaning to life in ways other than those heavily dependent on material abundance and breakneck progress in big technology. All may not be lost. People may well start thinking along new, fruitful lines about how to order their lives in an age of resource scarcity. And that may turn out to be a good thing.
On the food front, the world is faced with a serious food security problem in the fifty to hundred year timeframe. An examination of land use around the world shows that there is very little cultivable land that has been left unexploited. While the agricultural output can be increased in the already cultivated areas, the picture is not that comforting when climate change is taken into account. Desert areas, inaccessible mountainous areas, forest areas or ice-covered and snow-covered land make up the remainder of the land. Futuristic ideas about doing agriculture in desert areas cannot be the basis of serious planning for the future at this moment. For example, scientists are yet to develop cheap food crops that can grow in areas with minimal water supply like deserts. As for forest areas, they are precious resources because they act as carbon dioxide sinks and provide other resources like timber. In several areas, they also help prevent excessive flooding. In other places, they help prevent desertification. Mountainous terrains have their own problem when it comes to agriculture, and are subject to problems of erosion, especially if trees are cut to make way for agriculture. Ice-covered or snow-covered terrains like Siberia are not very amenable to agriculture either. Conversion of pasture land to agricultural land will have its own economic constraints and it is a topic that cannot be dealt with in detail in this article. Further, the cutthroat competition of modern capitalism can easily lead to irresponsible real estate construction and appropriation of precious land for industrial uses. Lack of planning in economies that have deregulated land use policies can lead to irreversible land use misallocation. A lot of the agriculture in today’s world is dependent on inorganic fertilizers that help replenish essential nutrients in the soil. However, there are serious sustainability questions about agriculture based on inorganic fertilizers. While nitrate fertilizers can be made from chemical sources that are either relatively abundant or renewable, phosphate fertilizers depend on supplies of phosphate rock or phosphorite for their production. The United States, Russia, China and Morocco have most of the phosphate rock deposits in the world. A heavily populated country like India has very limited phosphate rock deposits. In the countries that have large deposits of phosphate rock, phosphorite supplies can run out in a few decades based on current consumption rates. For example, the United States is likely to become a net importer of phosphate rock in a couple of decades. Internet resources suggest that phosphorite deposits on land may last about 100 years at current rates of extraction ( although there are significant uncertainties regarding matching of dates for extraction and deposit determination in the sources that this writer found ). Off-shore deposits may be adequate for another 200 years. However, the costs of extraction are likely to be significantly higher, if not prohibitively expensive. Also, there may be significant errors in the estimates for the off-shore deposit amounts. Further, it is not clear how economical extraction is or will be in the region of North Africa in and around Morocco, which supposedly have the largest deposits. Also, as the population of the world increases from near 7 billion to 9 or 10 billion, the extraction rate will most likely increase, leading to faster depletion of phosphorite. This means the phosphorite reserves on land may last much less than 100 years. Given the complacent attitude so far about other scarce resources, it will not be surprising if this timeframe may well get reduced to something like 50 years due to scientific errors in projection and due to escalation in production. Further, for countries that do not own phosphorite, the cost of procuring phosphorite on the international markets can increase significantly. Phosphorite economics, or for that matter the economics of other similar mineral resources, may become as important as the economics of petroleum.
The use of phosphate and nitrate fertilizers becomes necessary because nitrogen and phosphorus are crucial requirements for the biological processes involved in the production of food grains, fruits, vegetables etc. Organic fertilizers can be more expensive to manufacture, and it is not known to what extent they are good substitutes for inorganic fertilizers like phosphates. It is not clear to what extent or whether manure derived from animal dung or compost is a good substitute for inorganic fertilizers in different areas of agriculture.
If phosphorite production and increasing population cause severe strains on the world food supply, new areas for food production may need to be explored. Countries with large areas of unused land will be at an advantage in this regard, although due importance needs to be given to preserving crucial forest resources. Several poor countries may be at even greater disadvantage than now when it comes to providing food for their populations. The inadequacy of current systems like the World Food Programme in the area of hunger mitigation means that new and more powerful global systems may be needed. Since national governments may resist internationalist interventions in land allocation and food production policies, serious humanitarian problems can arise. The idea is to allocate land for food production beyond the capitalistic allocation in order to provide the disentitled or non-entitled populations with enough food till growth and development gives everybody the cash resources to afford enough food and nutrition on the global food market.
Will the United Nations address this issue with the seriousness it deserves or will it be caught in a morass of underfunding and apathy like it has so often been in the past about so many of the positive agendas ? Will international economic agencies like the International Monetary Fund keep basic agricultural and industrial requirements of beleaguered nations while doling out their monetary and fiscal prescriptions or will they remain insouciant to these fundamental concerns ? The answers to these questions may well determine if modern civilization is going to conform to minimum standards of humaneness in the area of food. There can be no bigger failure for the United Nations than to remain apathetic to looming problems in the area of national food self-sufficiency and in the area of food transfer to countries that have difficulty achieving food self-sufficiency in the short run.
The current economic paradigm is one of economic management at the national level and trade at the international level governed by certain rules. As for economic management at the national level, most of the ideological debate has focused on the question of growth and distribution. And as for trade at the international level, the debate has been about whether trade should be conducted under multilateral rules or bilateral rules. However, little or no attention has been paid to the question of scarcity problems and distribution problems that transcend international borders for basic and crucial items like food and basic medicine. Countries caught in a certain stage of development may well find it difficult to provide basic food security and health security to its masses for years to come. If food scarcity becomes a more ubiquitous phenomenon worldwide due to the land use and fertilizer scarcity scenarios outlined above, the current approach involving underfunded and struggling programmes like the World Food Programme will become even more questionable. An international framework to ensure the right allocation of land and to ensure proper food distribution across international borders will probably become necessary. How this will intermesh with national politics is uncertain. When it comes to such basic items as food, how the United Nations deals with intransigence regarding sharing resources across borders may well become the litmus test of its relevance.
As for countries that fail to provide decent amounts of food and nutrition to their own hungry masses while advertising self-sufficiency in the areas of food production, the option of economic sanctions against them should be considered seriously as a human rights measure. Hundreds of millions of people are malnourished or live and die in starvation in countries with apathetic governments that fail to provide food to the people even though the resources exist. The long-term consequences of this apathy can be, and often are, more serious than those of wars or genocides or weapons proliferation. While the latter are serious issues that the United Nations needs to deal with, it needs to come up with mechanisms using which it can put pressure on national governments to meet achievable food distribution aims by creating the proper distribution channels and by eliminating corruption.
by C. Jayant Praharaj
Concerns about overpopulation have been raised by analysts in the past, for example, by Paul Ehrlich. However, euphoric thinking and complacency about energy and resources led to these warnings being ignored. New oil reserves were being discovered around the world. Nuclear power was being advertised, and is still being advertised, as a long-term energy solution despite the safety problems that several experts ascribe to it. Universities and national laboratories were advertising the potential advantages accruing from a possible breakthrough in controlled nuclear fusion, a kind of holy grail of energy wherein the mechanism that powers the sun is harnessed in a controlled manner to provide unprecedented amounts of energy. Unlike the last two decades, global warming was not a pressing item on the radar screen of environmental analysts prior to that because the scientific establishment was just beginning to grapple with the problem. Large parts of Asia and Africa starved. However, it seems the thinking was that it was merely due to underdevelopment in several regions, and that as more land was brought under cultivation and as food distribution systems improved, this problem would be solved. Overpopulation is a term that can only be understood in the context of the standards of living sought and the resources available for the same. It also needs to be understood in the context of stages of development. Since the advertisement on the resources front was optimistic, the bugbear of overpopulation was drowned out by the noise surrounding growth and development.
But the population picture, the resources picture and the environment picture have all changed in significant manners in the last couple of decades. Scientific euphoria has bitten the dust before a slew of economic and environmental problems. While dogged determination still marks the thinking in several quarters, the analysts as well as the public are beginning to realize the severe limitations of conventional approaches to the exploitation, management and development of resources. The real picture is decidedly pessimistic and worrisome. New and smarter ways of scientific and technological thinking are necessary if the world is to be able to cope with rising populations, environmental problems and resource scarcity. The very concept of standard of living will probably need significant redefinition, and people may well have to find meaning and add meaning to life in ways other than those heavily dependent on material abundance and breakneck progress in big technology. All may not be lost. People may well start thinking along new, fruitful lines about how to order their lives in an age of resource scarcity. And that may turn out to be a good thing.
On the food front, the world is faced with a serious food security problem in the fifty to hundred year timeframe. An examination of land use around the world shows that there is very little cultivable land that has been left unexploited. While the agricultural output can be increased in the already cultivated areas, the picture is not that comforting when climate change is taken into account. Desert areas, inaccessible mountainous areas, forest areas or ice-covered and snow-covered land make up the remainder of the land. Futuristic ideas about doing agriculture in desert areas cannot be the basis of serious planning for the future at this moment. For example, scientists are yet to develop cheap food crops that can grow in areas with minimal water supply like deserts. As for forest areas, they are precious resources because they act as carbon dioxide sinks and provide other resources like timber. In several areas, they also help prevent excessive flooding. In other places, they help prevent desertification. Mountainous terrains have their own problem when it comes to agriculture, and are subject to problems of erosion, especially if trees are cut to make way for agriculture. Ice-covered or snow-covered terrains like Siberia are not very amenable to agriculture either. Conversion of pasture land to agricultural land will have its own economic constraints and it is a topic that cannot be dealt with in detail in this article. Further, the cutthroat competition of modern capitalism can easily lead to irresponsible real estate construction and appropriation of precious land for industrial uses. Lack of planning in economies that have deregulated land use policies can lead to irreversible land use misallocation. A lot of the agriculture in today’s world is dependent on inorganic fertilizers that help replenish essential nutrients in the soil. However, there are serious sustainability questions about agriculture based on inorganic fertilizers. While nitrate fertilizers can be made from chemical sources that are either relatively abundant or renewable, phosphate fertilizers depend on supplies of phosphate rock or phosphorite for their production. The United States, Russia, China and Morocco have most of the phosphate rock deposits in the world. A heavily populated country like India has very limited phosphate rock deposits. In the countries that have large deposits of phosphate rock, phosphorite supplies can run out in a few decades based on current consumption rates. For example, the United States is likely to become a net importer of phosphate rock in a couple of decades. Internet resources suggest that phosphorite deposits on land may last about 100 years at current rates of extraction ( although there are significant uncertainties regarding matching of dates for extraction and deposit determination in the sources that this writer found ). Off-shore deposits may be adequate for another 200 years. However, the costs of extraction are likely to be significantly higher, if not prohibitively expensive. Also, there may be significant errors in the estimates for the off-shore deposit amounts. Further, it is not clear how economical extraction is or will be in the region of North Africa in and around Morocco, which supposedly have the largest deposits. Also, as the population of the world increases from near 7 billion to 9 or 10 billion, the extraction rate will most likely increase, leading to faster depletion of phosphorite. This means the phosphorite reserves on land may last much less than 100 years. Given the complacent attitude so far about other scarce resources, it will not be surprising if this timeframe may well get reduced to something like 50 years due to scientific errors in projection and due to escalation in production. Further, for countries that do not own phosphorite, the cost of procuring phosphorite on the international markets can increase significantly. Phosphorite economics, or for that matter the economics of other similar mineral resources, may become as important as the economics of petroleum.
The use of phosphate and nitrate fertilizers becomes necessary because nitrogen and phosphorus are crucial requirements for the biological processes involved in the production of food grains, fruits, vegetables etc. Organic fertilizers can be more expensive to manufacture, and it is not known to what extent they are good substitutes for inorganic fertilizers like phosphates. It is not clear to what extent or whether manure derived from animal dung or compost is a good substitute for inorganic fertilizers in different areas of agriculture.
If phosphorite production and increasing population cause severe strains on the world food supply, new areas for food production may need to be explored. Countries with large areas of unused land will be at an advantage in this regard, although due importance needs to be given to preserving crucial forest resources. Several poor countries may be at even greater disadvantage than now when it comes to providing food for their populations. The inadequacy of current systems like the World Food Programme in the area of hunger mitigation means that new and more powerful global systems may be needed. Since national governments may resist internationalist interventions in land allocation and food production policies, serious humanitarian problems can arise. The idea is to allocate land for food production beyond the capitalistic allocation in order to provide the disentitled or non-entitled populations with enough food till growth and development gives everybody the cash resources to afford enough food and nutrition on the global food market.
Will the United Nations address this issue with the seriousness it deserves or will it be caught in a morass of underfunding and apathy like it has so often been in the past about so many of the positive agendas ? Will international economic agencies like the International Monetary Fund keep basic agricultural and industrial requirements of beleaguered nations while doling out their monetary and fiscal prescriptions or will they remain insouciant to these fundamental concerns ? The answers to these questions may well determine if modern civilization is going to conform to minimum standards of humaneness in the area of food. There can be no bigger failure for the United Nations than to remain apathetic to looming problems in the area of national food self-sufficiency and in the area of food transfer to countries that have difficulty achieving food self-sufficiency in the short run.
The current economic paradigm is one of economic management at the national level and trade at the international level governed by certain rules. As for economic management at the national level, most of the ideological debate has focused on the question of growth and distribution. And as for trade at the international level, the debate has been about whether trade should be conducted under multilateral rules or bilateral rules. However, little or no attention has been paid to the question of scarcity problems and distribution problems that transcend international borders for basic and crucial items like food and basic medicine. Countries caught in a certain stage of development may well find it difficult to provide basic food security and health security to its masses for years to come. If food scarcity becomes a more ubiquitous phenomenon worldwide due to the land use and fertilizer scarcity scenarios outlined above, the current approach involving underfunded and struggling programmes like the World Food Programme will become even more questionable. An international framework to ensure the right allocation of land and to ensure proper food distribution across international borders will probably become necessary. How this will intermesh with national politics is uncertain. When it comes to such basic items as food, how the United Nations deals with intransigence regarding sharing resources across borders may well become the litmus test of its relevance.
As for countries that fail to provide decent amounts of food and nutrition to their own hungry masses while advertising self-sufficiency in the areas of food production, the option of economic sanctions against them should be considered seriously as a human rights measure. Hundreds of millions of people are malnourished or live and die in starvation in countries with apathetic governments that fail to provide food to the people even though the resources exist. The long-term consequences of this apathy can be, and often are, more serious than those of wars or genocides or weapons proliferation. While the latter are serious issues that the United Nations needs to deal with, it needs to come up with mechanisms using which it can put pressure on national governments to meet achievable food distribution aims by creating the proper distribution channels and by eliminating corruption.
by C. Jayant Praharaj
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Inorganic fertilizers and the sustainability of world agricultural production
That competition for land use in capitalistic paradigms leads to elitist outcomes is obvious. However, with the advent of environmental problems and the concerns about paucity of resources of different kinds, the allocation of land for different kinds of production becomes a matter of serious concern. In this article, I intend to outline one specific aspect of this land allocation problem, namely, agricultural production and the need for inorganic fertilizers.
As I discussed in another of my articles called " Recalibrating Food Security and Development ", capitalistic resource allocation does not allow for the creation of agricultural production buffers. In other words, since capitalistic resource allocation allocates land use for that production technology and that end use which leads to the maximum profit, there is a real possibility, especially in scenarios of large and rapidly increasing populations, that enough land may not be left to allow sufficient food production for everyone. Already, with billions around the world not in a position to afford food, there is a real possibility that available land may be used up for all kinds of uses other than agricultural production and that the total maximum food production in the world may fall well short of that needed to provide the world population with sufficient nutrition.
Now add to that the problem of fertilizer production. Soil that is used repeatedly for food production without allowing it to lie fallow gets depleted of crucial nutrients. Inorganic fertlizers are often used to replenish the soil with the needed nutrients so that continuous food production become possible on the agricultural land. Organic fertilizers have also come up, but it is not clear how effective they are, how easy it is to manufacture them, how cheaply they can be produced, whether they can compete well with inorganic fertilizers or whether they can serve as a good long-term alternative for replenishing the nutrients in the soil. As for inorganic fertilizers like phosphate fertilizers, we need to consider the serious issue of whether the mineral resources available on earth, and the extraction technology and the energy resources we have, will together enable the production of inorganic fertilizers for long enough time to avoid worse food production scenarios than what we already have.
Genetically modified crops and high-yield varieties may be possible solutions. However, it all depends on whether the increase in yield is sufficient to compensate for paucity of agricultural land. Also, many genetically modified varieties may require even more fertilizer and even more irrigation resources in order to produce the higher-yield crops. So, given the uncertainty about the ability of our technology to produce inorganic fertilizers in a sustainable fashion given possible mineral resource constraints, the future of the world food production may be in serious jeopardy.
Crop rotation, allowing land to lie fallow before reusing it or growing legumes interchangeably with the other crops are possible solutions. However, when there is very little extra agricultural land available, crop rotation and similar techniques can lead to a drastic drop in food production and can lead to mass hunger. An elite that refuses to recognize these dangers and tries to appropriate the food supply for itself can be faced with catacylsmic consequences.
The development, understanding and proper use of renewable fertilizers like organic fertilizers ( including manures ) may well prove crucial for our ability to provide the planet with sufficient nutrition. Since industrial production, service sector production and the development of renewable energy itself are all dependent on an uninterrupted supply of food resources, ending the dependence on inorganic fertilizers may well be the only route to ensuring global food security.
by C. Jayant Praharaj
As I discussed in another of my articles called " Recalibrating Food Security and Development ", capitalistic resource allocation does not allow for the creation of agricultural production buffers. In other words, since capitalistic resource allocation allocates land use for that production technology and that end use which leads to the maximum profit, there is a real possibility, especially in scenarios of large and rapidly increasing populations, that enough land may not be left to allow sufficient food production for everyone. Already, with billions around the world not in a position to afford food, there is a real possibility that available land may be used up for all kinds of uses other than agricultural production and that the total maximum food production in the world may fall well short of that needed to provide the world population with sufficient nutrition.
Now add to that the problem of fertilizer production. Soil that is used repeatedly for food production without allowing it to lie fallow gets depleted of crucial nutrients. Inorganic fertlizers are often used to replenish the soil with the needed nutrients so that continuous food production become possible on the agricultural land. Organic fertilizers have also come up, but it is not clear how effective they are, how easy it is to manufacture them, how cheaply they can be produced, whether they can compete well with inorganic fertilizers or whether they can serve as a good long-term alternative for replenishing the nutrients in the soil. As for inorganic fertilizers like phosphate fertilizers, we need to consider the serious issue of whether the mineral resources available on earth, and the extraction technology and the energy resources we have, will together enable the production of inorganic fertilizers for long enough time to avoid worse food production scenarios than what we already have.
Genetically modified crops and high-yield varieties may be possible solutions. However, it all depends on whether the increase in yield is sufficient to compensate for paucity of agricultural land. Also, many genetically modified varieties may require even more fertilizer and even more irrigation resources in order to produce the higher-yield crops. So, given the uncertainty about the ability of our technology to produce inorganic fertilizers in a sustainable fashion given possible mineral resource constraints, the future of the world food production may be in serious jeopardy.
Crop rotation, allowing land to lie fallow before reusing it or growing legumes interchangeably with the other crops are possible solutions. However, when there is very little extra agricultural land available, crop rotation and similar techniques can lead to a drastic drop in food production and can lead to mass hunger. An elite that refuses to recognize these dangers and tries to appropriate the food supply for itself can be faced with catacylsmic consequences.
The development, understanding and proper use of renewable fertilizers like organic fertilizers ( including manures ) may well prove crucial for our ability to provide the planet with sufficient nutrition. Since industrial production, service sector production and the development of renewable energy itself are all dependent on an uninterrupted supply of food resources, ending the dependence on inorganic fertilizers may well be the only route to ensuring global food security.
by C. Jayant Praharaj
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Recalibrating food security and development
There was a New York Times article yesterday which states that the world population will stabilize at around 10 billion in 2100 and not at 9 billion as previously projected. That means the error for the projected addition to the current population is around 50%. A 3 billion increase instead of a 2 billion increase as previously thought. In any scenario, this is a significant adjustment and should raise serious questions about the way the old and the new research were conducted. But in a world where billions live in or on the edge of poverty, the implications are huge.
Already, in countries like India, an apathetic elite has jettisoned the aims of rural development amidst advertisements about economic growth. Greater than 10% annual growth in the service sector combined with 2% annual growth in the agricultural sector in India means that the stage is set for possibly the biggest divergence in living standards between two groups inside the same country in modern history. After accounting for population growth, the 60% of the Indian population that depends on agriculture sees little or no per capita growth. The article does not state how much of the population growth is going to be in India, but given India’s previous lackadaisical attitude towards the population issue and its inability to come up with or implement holistic rural development plans, this recalibration needs to be studied in detail by the country’s experts to understand how it impacts India.
As for Africa, the implications cannot be overstated. The article states that Africa’s population will go from 1 billion to 3.6 billion by 2100. In a continent that has seen recurring famines and ethnic conflicts, this recalibration has serious implications for development aims and national economic policies. It will be interesting to observe to what extent the new projections are consistent with national census and projection statistics. Country by country breakup of the population growth numbers will become necessary to enable right prioritization and resource allocation, both as regards internal resource allocation and as regards how external aid is spent.
As for the United Nation’s efforts to tackle poverty around the world, the picture is likely to become grimmer. The World Food Programme is already struggling to provide even basic sustenance to people in several areas of the world. Food production projections that this writer has come across on the internet do not paint a very optimistic picture even at the 9 billion stabilization level. The new population projection means that availability of agricultural land, long-term sustainability of food-crop production ( soil fertility after prolonged fertilizer use, soil fertility after prolonged growing of genetically modified crops, availability of irrigation resources for crop varieties that require a lot of water ) and poor people’s entitlement to food in a world where the rush towards ultra-capitalistic paradigms is becoming rampant will pose overwhelming challenges.
Capitalistic modes of production do not encourage the creation of food production buffers. Land use is likely to be appropriated quickly for other uses even though billions are starving because the rich are able to pay for houses and industrial activity while the poor cannot pay for food. Countries like India use minimum support prices for food grains. That should achieve the goal of allocating more land to food production than an ultra-capitalistic mode would. However, at the same time, the results as regards food security for the broad masses are not impressive. People still starve while food rots in granaries due to the lack of proper systems to ensure that food gets to the hungry masses. Food riots have taken place in recent times in India due to the unresponsive nature of the government’s welfare systems in the food area. People with Below Poverty Line ( BPL ) cards should get food from the government. However, the occurrence of food riots indicates that not enough effort has been made to make this system work in the proper way. In a country where water resources ( and as a result, irrigation resources ) are becoming scarcer, a significant increase in future population beyond the previously expected numbers can spell disaster for a food security system that is already failing badly. And with the advent of neo-liberal policies, it will not be surprising if greed for real estate development and other elitist uses of land result in a disastrous misallocation of resources as regards land use. Given India’s track record in the population area and the food security area, it is time for the nation’s policy framers to take a serious look at current and future land use, and to determine if serious changes to capitalistic resource allocation are needed to ensure that the country is not faced with severe food scarcity in the future. Land that is used for real estate or industrial development or for dams will be impossible to reclaim for agricultural use. This needs to be taken into account in any serious examination of land-use and land rights policy by the government. Correct assessment of this issue is paramount if India and other countries in similar situations are to have the agricultural resources and output necessary in the future to sustain manufacturing sector output or service sector output.
by C. Jayant Praharaj
Already, in countries like India, an apathetic elite has jettisoned the aims of rural development amidst advertisements about economic growth. Greater than 10% annual growth in the service sector combined with 2% annual growth in the agricultural sector in India means that the stage is set for possibly the biggest divergence in living standards between two groups inside the same country in modern history. After accounting for population growth, the 60% of the Indian population that depends on agriculture sees little or no per capita growth. The article does not state how much of the population growth is going to be in India, but given India’s previous lackadaisical attitude towards the population issue and its inability to come up with or implement holistic rural development plans, this recalibration needs to be studied in detail by the country’s experts to understand how it impacts India.
As for Africa, the implications cannot be overstated. The article states that Africa’s population will go from 1 billion to 3.6 billion by 2100. In a continent that has seen recurring famines and ethnic conflicts, this recalibration has serious implications for development aims and national economic policies. It will be interesting to observe to what extent the new projections are consistent with national census and projection statistics. Country by country breakup of the population growth numbers will become necessary to enable right prioritization and resource allocation, both as regards internal resource allocation and as regards how external aid is spent.
As for the United Nation’s efforts to tackle poverty around the world, the picture is likely to become grimmer. The World Food Programme is already struggling to provide even basic sustenance to people in several areas of the world. Food production projections that this writer has come across on the internet do not paint a very optimistic picture even at the 9 billion stabilization level. The new population projection means that availability of agricultural land, long-term sustainability of food-crop production ( soil fertility after prolonged fertilizer use, soil fertility after prolonged growing of genetically modified crops, availability of irrigation resources for crop varieties that require a lot of water ) and poor people’s entitlement to food in a world where the rush towards ultra-capitalistic paradigms is becoming rampant will pose overwhelming challenges.
Capitalistic modes of production do not encourage the creation of food production buffers. Land use is likely to be appropriated quickly for other uses even though billions are starving because the rich are able to pay for houses and industrial activity while the poor cannot pay for food. Countries like India use minimum support prices for food grains. That should achieve the goal of allocating more land to food production than an ultra-capitalistic mode would. However, at the same time, the results as regards food security for the broad masses are not impressive. People still starve while food rots in granaries due to the lack of proper systems to ensure that food gets to the hungry masses. Food riots have taken place in recent times in India due to the unresponsive nature of the government’s welfare systems in the food area. People with Below Poverty Line ( BPL ) cards should get food from the government. However, the occurrence of food riots indicates that not enough effort has been made to make this system work in the proper way. In a country where water resources ( and as a result, irrigation resources ) are becoming scarcer, a significant increase in future population beyond the previously expected numbers can spell disaster for a food security system that is already failing badly. And with the advent of neo-liberal policies, it will not be surprising if greed for real estate development and other elitist uses of land result in a disastrous misallocation of resources as regards land use. Given India’s track record in the population area and the food security area, it is time for the nation’s policy framers to take a serious look at current and future land use, and to determine if serious changes to capitalistic resource allocation are needed to ensure that the country is not faced with severe food scarcity in the future. Land that is used for real estate or industrial development or for dams will be impossible to reclaim for agricultural use. This needs to be taken into account in any serious examination of land-use and land rights policy by the government. Correct assessment of this issue is paramount if India and other countries in similar situations are to have the agricultural resources and output necessary in the future to sustain manufacturing sector output or service sector output.
by C. Jayant Praharaj
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