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Companies 122 30 39 188 227 202 110 38 47 150 154 8 2 66 60 40 115 9 123 434 19 26 58 298 212 303 70 46

Industry Overview The Indian Agriculture Industry is on the brink of a revolution that will modernize the entire food chain, as the total food production in India is likely to double in the next ten years. As per recent studies the turnover of the total food market is approximately Rs.250000 crores (US $ 69.4 billion) out of which value-added food products comprise Rs.80000 crores (US $ 22.2 billion). The Government of India has also approved proposals for joint ventures, foreign collaborations, industrial licenses and 100% export oriented units envisaging an investment of Rs.19100 crores (US $ 4.80 billion) out of which foreign investment is over Rs. 9100 crores (US $ 18.2 Billion). The agricultural food industry also assumes significance owing to India's sizable agrarian economy, which accounts for over 35% of GDP and employs around 65 per cent of the population. Both in terms of foreign investment and number of joint- ventures / foreign collaborations, the consumer food segment has the top priority. The other attractive features of the indian agro industry that have the capacity to lure foreigners with promising benefits are the deep sea fishing, aqua culture, milk and milk products, meat and poultry segments. Excellent export prospects, competitive pricing of agricultural products and standards that are internationally comparable has created trade opportunities in the agro industry. This further has enabled the Indian Agriculture Industry Portal to serve as a means by which every exporter and importer of India and abroad, can fulfill their requirements and avail the benefits of agro related buy sell trade leads and other business opportunities. This Indian agro industry revolution brings along the opportunities of profitable investment and agriculture-industryindia.com provides you the B2B platform with agro related catalogs, trade leads, exporters & importers directory etc. that help you make your way to profit easy. To lead yourself to the destination of profit through the Indian Agriculture Industry, know maximum about the EXIM policy, programs & schemes, price policy, seed policy and statistics at the Indian agro portal and harvest benefits from India, world's second largest producer of food and a country with a billion people. From canned, dairy, processed, frozen food to fisheries, meat, poultry, food grains, alcoholic beverages & soft drinks, the Indian agro industry has dainty areas to choose for business.

Import and Export of Agriculture Commodities vis-a-vis Total National Imports and Exports during 1990-91 to 2000-01 Commodity 1 Pulses Wheat Rice Other Cereals Cereal Preparation Milk & Cream Cashew Nuts Fruits & Nuts Excluding Cashew Nuts Spices Sugar Oil Seeds Vegetable Oils Fixed (Edible) Vegetable & Animal fats Cotton (Raw & Waste) Jute (Raw) Tea Wood & Wood Products Total Agricultural Imports Total National Imports % Share of Agricultural Import in National Imports

Commodity 1 Pulses Wheat Rice Other Cereals Cereal Preparation Milk & Cream Cashew Nuts Fruits & Nuts Excluding Cashew Nuts Spices Sugar Oil Seeds Vegetable Oils Fixed (Edible) Vegetable & Animal fats Cotton (Raw & Waste)

April 90 - March 91

April 91 - March 92

Value (Rupees in crores) April 92 - March 93

Quantity

Value

Quantity

Value

Quantity

Value

2 791.95 65.95 66.06 1.59 118.75 0.98 81.72 # 12.10 484.58 0.31 # # # #

3 473.24 24.19 39.19 0.28 86.99 3.38 132.37 107.67 # 9.44 6.42 @ 322.22 0.47 # # # # 1205.86 43170.82 2.79

4 312.61 Neg. 12.12 1.35 174.30 2.13 106.08 # 2.59 226.05 0.40 # # # -

5 255.27

6 382.62 1363.70 102.38 1.18 145.87 9.43 134.99 # 1.34 102.77 0.47 138.13 # # -

7 334.37 710.06 73.32 0.19 182.19 44.79 376.33 188.92 # 0.43 10.64 166.88 1.53 216.49 # # 570.11 2876.25 63374.52 4.54

April 93 - March 94

10.94 0.22 162.26 8.01 266.68 100.05 # 0.83 9.65 @@ 247.79 1.02 # # # 415.55 1478.27 47850.84 3.09

April 94 - March 95

(Continued) April 95 - March 96

Quantity

Value

Quantity

Value

Quantity

Value

2 628.16 241.70 75.52 0.53 85.03 2.55 191.32 25.68 0.35 114.36 0.64 3.82

3 567.01 125.65 55.26 0.11 109.87 16.53 482.70 217.82 75.72 0.45 6.98 166.63 1.69 18.39

4 554.27 0.54 6.99 0.99 71.85 0.95 228.18 20.27 13933.95 346.75 0.75 80.80

5 592.73 0.38 8.55 0.34 83.06 5.72 691.29 313.60 54.97 2283.12 5.35 624.24 1.96 506.90

6 490.75 8.24 0.08 1.04 55.65 5.09 222.82 24.28 150.63 1061.99 0.94 69.62

7 685.57 10.39 0.05 0.24 69.48 37.01 760.08 330.86 74.12 215.89 36.17 2261.93 3.24 521.23

Jute (Raw) Tea Wood & Wood Products Total Agricultural Imports Total National Imports % Share of Agricultural Import in National Imports

Commodity 1 Pulses Wheat Rice Other Cereals Cereal Preparation Milk & Cream Cashew Nuts Fruits & Nuts Excluding Cashew Nuts Spices Sugar Oil Seeds Vegetable Oils Fixed (Edible) Vegetable & Animal fats Cotton (Raw & Waste) Jute (Raw) Tea Wood & Wood Products Total Agricultural Imports Total National Imports % Share of Agricultural Import in National Imports

Commodity 1 Pulses Wheat Rice Other Cereals Cereal Preparation Milk & Cream Cashew Nuts Fruits & Nuts Excluding Cashew Nuts Spices Sugar Oil Seeds Vegetable Oils Fixed (Edible) Vegetable & Animal fats Cotton (Raw & Waste) Jute (Raw) Tea

37.97 -

32.57 449.95 2327.33 73101.01 3.18

April 96 - March 97

67.93 # -

61.71 # 703.29 5937.21 89970.70 6.60

54.50 -

47.90 835.94 5890.10 122678.14 4.80

(Continued) April 98 - March 99

April 97 - March 98

Quantity

Value

Quantity

Value

Quantity

Value

2 654.91 612.68 Neg. 1.96 49.48 0.42 212.86 29.00 2.13 1415.79 0.77 2.92 48.08 -

3 890.34 403.76 0.02 0.50 82.67 2.60 687.57 456.03 97.14 3.18 4.70 2929.19 3.32 31.56 75.76 944.26 6612.60 138919.88 4.76

4 1008.16 1485.78 0.05 1.12 59.83 0.78 246.20 34.08 346.91 1265.75 0.99 9.97 45.54 -

5 1194.64 988.98 0.06 0.34 94.01 5.36 767.19 575.07 134.92 470.25 2.47 2764.67 4.58 80.65 50.54 1650.46 8784.19 154176.29 5.70

6 563.60 1803.70 6.65 2.02 38.45 1.89 243.35 61.12 900.47 2621.85 1.46 57.40 99.46

7 708.81 1164.78 5.40 1.07 39.20 12.31 968.76 670.39 298.58 1111.22 8.52 7588.93 6.89 381.11 86.38

-

1514.13 14566.48 178331.69 8.17

(Continued) April 99 - March 2000 April 2000-March2001 (P) April 2001-Oct. 2001 (P) Quantity

Value

Quantity

Value

Quantity

Value

2 250.77 1365.97 34.99 205.20 14.36 18.89 256.00 65.08 1181.18 4195.64 1.35 237.40 137.40 5.06

3 354.69 774.35 29.95 114.07 43.14 107.31 1198.26 590.84 294.10 1110.80 15.42 8046.05 10.07 1253.93 139.31 25.61

4 348.47 4.22 13.20 30.38 20.27 1.37 249.09 50.75 30.61 3974.64 2.04 212.07 73.37 6.40

5 493.79 2.87 17.79 15.61 48.90 7.66 962.14 803.99 249.60 31.36 7.89 5932.76 13.74 1183.15 82.57 41.49

6 1165.04 1.35 0.06 3.85 25.21 0.70 7.88 36.90 26.53 2776.24 9.30 236.72 33.56 6.22

7 1685.37 0.84 0.06 2.00 56.83 5.14 18.88 353.40 232.27 32.43 0.98 3985.01 22.39 1329.49 38.90 35.98

Wood & Wood Products Total Agricultural Imports Total National Imports % Share of Agricultural Import in

-

1958.83 16066.73 215528.53 7.45

-

2135.05 12030.36 226773.47 5.31

-

1511.58 9311.55 141989.68 6.56

# : Commodity not reported @ : Other Oilseeds. @@ : Oilseeds P : Provisional Source:- Director General of Commercial Intelligence & Statistics,Ministry of Commerce,Kolkata.

Interaction between nutrition and agriculture in India S.G. Srikantia. National Institute of Nutrition Jayalakshmipuram, Mysore. India Abstract Production of food grains Upgrading nutrient quality Meeting nutritional needs References

Abstract Nutrition is an important environmental factor that influences health, and adequate food intake is a prerequisite for good nutrition. Agricultural production is of crucial importance in ensuring that food needs are met. Countries with a high rate of population growth need to develop suitable agricultural strategies to increase food production. In addition to this quantitative aspect, there has to be concern for the qualitative dimension of food production. The mixed bag of produce should be able to satisfy "recommended allowances" of all nutrients needed for optimal nutrition. Food production in India has increased substantially over the years. All food grains have, however, not increased uniformly. Production of cereals and millets has increased substantially but not that of pulses and oilseeds. In a country where the inclusion of pulses is important in increasing dietary protein content and for improving protein quality, this is a disturbing trend. At current levels of production, the recommendation of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMP) (1968) that a balanced diet should contain 70 grams of pulse, cannot be met. The revised balanced diet (1980) contains only 50 grams and this level can barely be met. Unless special efforts are made to increase pulse production, there is a real risk that recommended dietary allowances of pulses cannot be met. Another qualitative aspect of food production has been India's efforts to identify, evolve, and propagate food-grain varieties with more-thanaverage nutrient content. Protein and lysine have received special attention. High protein/high lysine lines of cereals and millets have been identified, but have often been found not to breed true, for reasons not fully understood. Improving protein content and quality of staples was conceived as a method of improving the quality of diets, at a time when habitual Indian diets were considered to be protein-

deficient. This concept has changed and the primary bottleneck is now believed to be energy. Cereal-pulse based diets have been found to be capable of meeting protein needs, when consumed in amounts that satisfy energy needs. The relevance of efforts to improve protein quality, therefore, needs re-evaluation. At the national level, food production appears to be adequate to meet demands, provided there is equitable distribution. In actual practice many households do not get enough food because of poor purchasing power Among families whose daily per capita income is below Rs 3/-, over one half consumes an energy-deficient diet. A proportion of such households do not get enough protein either - a finding that explains the widespread childhood energy-protein ma/nutrition. The impressive buffer stocks of food grains held in recent years is a reflection of this low consumption. They would disappear should the purchasing capacity improve. Current levels of production under such circumstances would not be enough to build reserves. Due to increased agricultural production, food-grain import has, normally, all but stopped. What has been achieved in the Indian agricultural situation has been the prevention of serious famines, which occurred in earlier years. But it does not appear to have made much impact on the widespread chronic malnutrition. To be able to reduce chronic malnutrition, increase in food production has to be of a magnitude larger than that seen at present. This alone will not suffice. Food grains have to be within the price range of the great majority. Also, national nutrition policy and national agricultural policy will have to be more compatible. Nutrition is an important environmental factor that influences health and well-being. Consumption of diets adequate both in quantity and quality is a prerequisite for the maintenance of good nutritional status. Agricultural production that determines food availability is, therefore, an important determinant of food consumption, though not a critical one if food imports can be assured. Self-sufficiency in food production is of particular importance for developing countries, not only because they tend to have high rates of population growth, but also because such countries have malnutrition as a public health problem. The quantitative aspects of food production are undoubtedly of primary concern, but it cannot be forgotten that the qualitative aspects are extremely important, if optimal nutrition is to be provided. The interphase between agriculture and nutrition, therefore, acquires considerable practical importance. Some aspects of this interphase as they relate to India are briefly presented here.

Production of food grains

Food-grain production in India has risen considerably over the last three decades. The increase has indeed been spectacular - from around 50 million tons in 1951 to over 130 million tons in 1980 representing as it does a 2.5-fold rise. The true significance of this becomes apparent when it is viewed in terms of per capita availability at the national level. This has jumped from about 350 grams a day to around 470 grams, after allowances are made for food losses and reservation of seeds (table 1). The increase in production in the earlier part of the period was of a magnitude greater than the increase in population, and has subsequently kept pace with the population rise. The increased production has been achieved largely through an increase in the yield of grain per hectare, rather than from an increased cultivated area. The increase in production has been the result of widespread cultivation of new high-yielding varieties coupled with a package of agricultural inputs that permit the genetic expression of their high yield potential. As a result, from cereals, millets, and pulses alone (excluding oilseeds, sugar, roots, and tubers) dietary energy availability has gone up from 1,180 calories per capita daily, to 1,650 calories. TABLE 1. Per Capita Food-grain Availabilitya in India: 1951-1980 Year

Total Net availability production (million tons) (million tons)

Per capita availability (g/day)

1951

50.8

44.4

337

1956

66.9

58.5

392

1961

82.0

72.3

430

1966

72.3

63.3

351

1971

108.4

94.9

473

1975

100.0

87.5

420

1978

126.4

110.0

475

1979

131.4

115.0

482

1980

132.0

115.5

470

a.

Excluding oilseeds, sugar, roots, tubers, milk, and milk products Sources: Bulletin of Food Statistics 1975, 1979; Agricultural Situation in India, 1980

The increase in the production of different types of food grains has, however, not been uniform. While that of wheat has registered a sixfold increase from 6.4 million tons in 1951 to over 35 million tons in 1980, those of rice and millets have been less marked (table 2). This is particularly so since 1961, the increase in rice production between then and 1979 being around 60 per cent and that of millets only 30 per cent. Although the nutrient composition of rice, wheat, and millets does differ in several respects, and

though the digestibilities of these staples are different, it is unlikely that this would have demonstrable nutritional significance. What, however, is of considerable nutritional importance is the failure of pulse production to increase between 1961 and the present. Following a 50 per cent increase between 1951 and 1961, there has been virtually no change over the last two decades. As a consequence, the per capita availability of pulses which stood at 70 grams per day in 1961, has now dropped sharply to about 45 grams (table 3). With an increase in cereal-millet availability, the pulse-cereal ratio has shown a marked distortion, falling from about 20 per cent to half that figure at present (table 4). TABLE 2. Production of Rice, Wheat, and Millets in India: 1951-1979 (million tons) 1951 1961 1971 1976 1979 Rice Wheat Millets

a

a.

20.6

34.6

42.2

48.7

53.8

6.4

11.0

23.8

28.9

35.0

12.9

20.7

27.8

26.2

27.1

Bajra, barley, jowar, maize, ragi, and small millets. Source: Agricultural Situation in India, 1980.

TABLE 3. Per Capita Availability of pulses in India: 1951-1980 Total Net availability Per capita production (million tons) availability (million tons) (g/day)

Year

1951

8.4

7.3

55

1956

11.0

9.7

69

1961

12.7

11.1

70

1971

11.8

10.3

51

1976

13.1

11.5

51

1980

12.2

10.8

43

a.

pulses are important sources of protein, lysine, riboflavin, and trace metals in the Indian diet Source: Agricultural Situation in India 1980.

TABLE 4. Per Capita Availability of Cereals and pulses Ratio 1951-1980 Cereals and Pulses g/day Total g/day Pulses as ratio millets: g/day of total 1951

282

55

337

19.5

1961

360

70

430

17.5

1971

422

51

473

19.5

1976

403

51

454

12.5

1980

427

43

470

10.7

The habitual Indian diet is predominantly vegetable-based, and foods of animal origin do not usually find a place because of their high cost. The inclusion of pulses in cerealmillet-based diets is critical not only in increasing the protein content, but also in improving the nutritional quality of the protein. pulses are also rich sources of several trace metals, whose essentiality to human beings is no longer in doubt. The present situation has, therefore, to be viewed with considerable concern. The balanced diet recommended by the Indian Council of Medical Research in 1968 contained 70 grams of pulses for an adult subject (Gopalan and Narasinga Rao 1968). A 25 per cent higher production level is needed to support availability at the individual level since allowances have to be made for losses. wastage, and seed purposes. At no time during the last three decades could the production level permit the inclusion of 70 grams of pulses daily. This figure was perhaps unnecessarily high, and, using linear programming, the least-cost balanced diet recommended recently (ICMR 1981) provides for only 40 grams of pulses per day. To be able to achieve this, the production level has to be over 50 grams a day - a figure that just about matches current production (table 5). This is indeed a disturbing situation, and proper corrective measures have to be introduced urgently if the situation is not to become worse. The danger is real, in the face of the very low per capita availability of foods of animal origin, including milk and its products. TABLE 5. Per Capita Production Levela of Calories and Pulses: g/day 1951 1956 1961 1966 1971 1976

1980

Cereals

395

470

504

411

570

534

560

Pulses

63

76

78

45

60

57

49

Upgrading nutrient quality A qualitative dimension to food production was built into Indian agriculture when attempts were begun years ago, to improve the nutritive value of cereals and millets through genetic engineering, made possible by the discovery of genes that control the concentrations of nutrients. Malnutrition is a major public health problem in India, particularly among pre-school children, and the major reason for this is the consumption of diets that do not provide adequate amounts of several nutrients. Among deficiency diseases, protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) is the most widespread, and based upon the belief then that the diets of children in whom PEM was prevalent, were deficient in protein - both in terms of quantity and quality - emphasis was laid on developing varieties of food grains that had higher-than-average protein content and a higher amount of lysine-the limiting amino acid in cereals. It was the discovery of high levels of lysine and tryptophan in the opaque 2 mutant maize, which initiated a search for similar characteristics in other foods, and subsequently varieties of cereals and millets with high protein and high lysine have been identified. When grown under apparently similar agronomic conditions in different parts of the country, they appear not

to breed true. For example, when the same five varieties of sorghum were grown in two different locations - Dharwar and Indore - under the Co-ordinated Sorghum Project, those grown in Dharwar had lower amounts of protein than those grown in Indore. The extent of difference was not uniform. values were lower by 21 to 86 per cent, depending upon the variety (table 6). Values for lysine were lower in all varieties grown in Indore, a finding to be expected considering the known inverse relationship between protein and lysine concentrations . But the differences in lysine between the two locations could not all be accounted for by differences in protein alone, The concentration of leucine in the protein also showed changes from marginal to considerable. TABLE 6. Nutrient Content of Five Sorghum Varieties Grown in Two Locations Variety

Protein g/100 g

Lysine

Leucine g/16 g

Da

Ia

D

I

D

I

CSV-1

7.7

9.8

2.6

1.9

11.7

9.7

CSV-2

7.0

10.7

2.3

1.6

11.5

12.4

CSV-6

7.7

13.1

2.1

-

11.0

13.9

SPV-8

7.6

12.6

2.2

1.5

11.1

12.3

SPV-40

6.0

11.2

2.5

1.9

13.1

13.0

a.

D= Dharwar; I = Indore. Source: National Institute of Nutrition 1977.

This was also true of the nutrient content of red gram. Three varieties of red gram grown in four different locations showed that the protein content could vary by over 20 per cent without corresponding changes in either leucine or methionine, but with substantial differences in their riboflavin content. Another variety of red gram, C 11, grown in five locations, showed again that protein content could vary by over 28 per cent, the concentration of methionine by 55 per cent, and that of tryptophan by 100 per cent. Differences in the amino acid content seemed not to be related to differences in protein content (table 8). TABLE 7. Nutrient Composition of Three Red Gram Varietiesa Grown in Four Different Locations Location

Protein g/100 g

Lysine

Leucine

Methionine

g/16g N

Nicotinic acid

Riboflavin

mg/100 g

Aurangabad

23.7

6.86

6.18

1 15

2.54

0.18

Delhi

21.7

6.88

6.27

1.34

2.55

0.20

Jabalpur

18.7

7.64

6.74

1.37

0.27

0.17

Hyderabad

21.5

6.65

7.05

1.21

2.47

0.15

a. Pusa-Ageti, Mukta-R 60 and AS-3, grown under similar agronomic conditions. Source: National Institute of Nutrition 1975. TABLE 8. Nutrient Composition of Red Gram Variety C-11, Grown in Five Locations Location

Protein g/100 g

Tryptophan 8/16 g N

Methionine

Nagpur

25.2

0.8

0.9

Akola

25.1

0.4

-

Coimbatore

24.0

0.8

1.0

Aurangabad

22.8

0.5

-

Jabalpur

18.1

0.5

1.4

Source: National Institute of Nutrition 1978. Such locational differences do not seem to be limited to nutrient composition. They seem to apply also to the concentration of the unusual amino acid ß-oxalyl aspartic acid, present in Lathyrus sativus and believed to be the toxin responsible for neurolathyrism (table 9). They also seem to apply to the potential for supporting the in vitro production of the fungal toxin, aflatoxin (table 10). TABLE 9. Toxin Content (ß-Oxalyl Aspartic Acid in Varieties of Lathyrus sativus Grown in Different Locations Variety Range of toxin in nine locations mg/100 g

Fold variation

LSD-1

104-393

3.8

LSD-2

155-600

3.8

LSD-4

166-476

2.9

LSD-5

104-642

6.2

LSD-6

93-590

6.4

207-559

2.2

P-24

Source: National Institute of Nutrition 1978. TABLE 10. Locational Differences in Aflatoxin Production Potential of Maize Varieties Location Aflatoxin production potential (ppm)

Variety

Shakti

Andhra Pradesh

510

IARI, Delhi

403

DHM-10

B-19

B-23

Andhra Pradesh

455

IARI, Delhi

208

Andhra Pradesh

406

IARI, Delhi

162

Andhra Pradesh

480

IARI, Delhi Ganga-5

63

Andhra Pradesh

495

Rajasthan

112 These findings suggest that it would not be easy to predict with any degree of confidence the nutrient composition of a variety of food grain that has a high protein potential. Apart from this practical consideration, improving protein content and protein quality was conceived as a method of improving the quality of the diet at a time when it was believed that protein was the limiting nutrient in Indian diets. This concept has now changed and the primary limiting nutrient is believed to be energy. Cereal-pulse-based diets of the type commonly eaten have a protein-energy ratio which is capable of meeting protein requirements, when consumed in amounts that satisfy energy requirements. It must be stressed that this is not to imply that there is no inadequacy of dietary protein. A fair proportion of subjects do have low protein intakes, but this is almost exclusively because total food intake is so low that both protein and energy become limiting (table 11). The relevance of efforts to improve protein quality by genetic manipulation, as a priority measure, therefore, needs re-examination, at least in the Indian context. Whether upgrading the lysine content is relevant may also be questioned, since in cereal-pulsebased diets, the first limiting amino acid is not lysine, but the sulphur-containing amino acids. TABLE 11. Adequacy of Protein and Calorie Intake among Families in 1977 Category Percentage of families in: Karnataka

Maharashtra

West Bengal

Uttar Pradesh

Protein adequate calorie adequate

69.2

57.8

59.0

60.9

Protein inadequate calorie inadequate

17.4

14.8

25.9

6.8

Protein adequate calorie inadequate

11.6

27.4

14.1

32.3

Protein inadequate calorie adequate

1.8

0.1

1.0

0.1

Source: National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau 1978 Turning to the availability of agricultural produces other than cereals and pulses, particularly edible oils and sugar, the situation is not an encouraging one. The per capita availability of both has gone up: that of edible oils and fats from 7.7 grams per day in 1951 to 13 in 1979, and that of sugar from 8.2 grams per day to 19.8 (table 12). Though

higher now than three decades ago, these are still considerably lower than what the leastcost balanced diet recommends, which is 30 grams per capita per day (tables 13 and 14). These low availabilities are not without nutritional implications, particularly in the feeding of young children. The caloric density of cereal-pulse based diets is low - often around 1 to 1.2 calories per gram of cooked food, and a three-year-old child will have to consume over one kilogram of food to meet its energy needs. Bulk has, in fact, been known to be one of the constraints in satisfying the nutrient requirements of such children, unless the frequency of feeding is increased. A practical and easy way of increasing calorie density is to include fats and sugar - except that these two commodities are today not only in short supply, but also expensive. The recommended per capita intake of each of these food items is 30 grams per day and the effort needed to produce these quantities would be truly enormous. TABLE 12. Per Capita Availability of Edible Oils and Sugar in India, 1951-1979 Edible oils and vanaspati Sugar kg/year

g/day

kg/year

g/day

1951

2.7

7.7

3.0

8.2

1956

3.2

8.8

5.0

13.7

1961

4.0

10.9

4.7

12.9

1966

3.5

9.6

5.7

15 9

1971

4.5

12.3

7.3

20.0

1976

4.3

11.8

6.2

17.0

1979

4.8 13.1 7.2 19.8 Source: Statistical Outline of India 1980. TABLE 13. Per Capita Requirement of Food (g/day) at the National Level on the Basis of Least-cost Balanced Diets Food Physiological Retail level Production level level Cereals

386

436

490

Pulses

43

47

53

Leafy vegetables

58

64

72

Other vegetables

45

49

55

Roots, tubers

40

44

50

200

220

248

Fats, oils

31

34

38

Sugar, jaggery

31

34

38

Milk

Source: Recommended Dietary Allowances ICMR 1981. TABLE 14. Calculation of National Food Requirements

Per capita production = Per capita recommended dietary allowance at physiological level x 1.1 (10 per cent kitchen and other waste) x 1.125 (for seeds and losses) Provided that: Distribution is according to requirements; There are no constraints on purchasing power.

Meeting nutritional needs At the national level, food production appears to be sufficient to meet the country's needs (table 13). In actual practice, however, food consumption does not follow normal distribution but is skewed. A large number of families with a daily income of Rs 2 or less consume diets that do not provide enough energy, and of these, a proportion do not get enough proteins - a finding that explains the widespread PEM among young children. The primary reason for such inequitable distribution is lack of purchasing power. The impressive stocks of food grains, amounting to about 18 million tons, held in recent years, is, in fact, a reflection of this low buying power and consumption. Stocks would have been far less impressive if people could have afforded to buy what they needed. Wages and incomes have gone up over the years but they do not seem to have kept pace with the rising costs of even essential food commodities. Data collected by the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau show that food consumption has not changed significantly over the last few years. Due to increased agricultural production in the country, food-grain imports have progressively come down and, during recent years, have all but stopped. The agricultural situation has also been able to prevent the serious widespread famines that used to occur in earlier years. Both are no mean achievements. But increased production seems to have made little impact on the widespread chronic malnutrition in the country, with all its health and developmental implications. The mean birth weight of infants born to mothers belonging to poor rural groups, which was 2.7 kg in 1951, has remained so even today. The proportional mortality rate whereby one-third of all deaths in the country in 1951 occurred among children below the age of five years, continues to be as high even today. Severe forms of protein-energy malnutrition such as kwashiorkor and marasmus were seen in 3 to 5 per cent of children of pre-school age three decades ago. Prevalence rates are not different now (table 15). Limited data available on mean body weight and height of adults show little improvement. There are, therefore, no indications that malnutrition has been contained in any way, despite improved food production. TABLE 15, Nutritional Status of Pre-school Children

State

Percentage of children Normal

Grade 1

Grade 2

Grade 3

Clinical

Karnataka

9.7

41.6

42.6

6.1

6.6

Maharashtra

7.5

38.2

43.9

10.4

1.5

West Bengal

7.2

40.1

45.1

7.6

4.0

Uttar Pradesh

16.8

40.0

34.2

9.0

1.8

Source: National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau 1977. Should it be possible to achieve a more equitable consumption of food in the coming years, the level of production, which apparently looks adequate at present, would cease to be so, for two main reasons. Buffer stocks can no longer be maintained at satisfactory levels. Also, children who from birth get enough food, would be able to fully express their genetic potential for growth and become bigger toddlers, bigger adolescents, and bigger adults, with clearly bigger food needs. The level of production would have to increase at a rate faster than that which the country has been able to achieve in the immediate past. Increased agricultural production is a key factor in ensuring adequate food supplies. The agricultural policy of a country will have to take care of the relevant aspects of its nutrition policy, if the food needs of the population have to be met. Imbalances in production of different commodities have to be corrected and more importantly food has to be made available at a cost that the great majority can afford. Until such time, adequacy of agricultural production will be more apparent than real. It must not be forgotten that factors outside agriculture also have a role in influencing nutrition.

U.S. about to become net food importer A little over a year ago The Wall Street Journal (31 Jan 2005) reported that the U.S. would become a net food importer on a more or less permanent basis by the end of 2005. To me, this is an immense challenge to our food security, but also marks a great opportunity for the U.S. to rebuild its food markets. I'm interested in how others see it. Trade data for December have not been released yet. When they are, we'll know if the Journal's prediction is true. Still, one look at USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) numbers shows the trend is upon us. The U.S. enjoyed an agricultural trade balance of $12 billion four years ago. By November 2005, we barely had a surplus, after a slide of $5 billion in one year. It seems to be a matter of when, not if. I like to eat great cheeses and wines from France and Italy, and I enjoy tropical fruits in the middle of winter. When the U.S. was a dominant food supplier, this seemed rather like the natural order of things. But now U.S. imports of meat and grains -- to name two commodities that used to be our strength -- are rising. America now imports two dollars of feed grains for every three dollars of exports, and imports $2.5 billion more red meats than it exports, ERS data show. I work with farmers and others striving to build local food markets across the country. In my travels, I have picked up a few glimpses of what changes are afoot: •

•

•

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In the Central Coast of California (south of the Bay Area), as NPR reported a year ago, it is cheaper to buy an artichoke grown in South America than to buy one from one of the massive local farms near Watsonville that specialize in this crop. The state of California, long viewed as the source of food for much of the U.S., now imports a net of $5 billion of food per year. New competitors in China, Japan, and elsewhere in Asia are emerging as cheaper producers of staples like raspberries. The average food item sold in the Midwestern heartland travels 1,500 miles from producer to consumer, as the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture reports. Farmers in Minnesota have lost $1 billion each year over the past seven years producing crops and livestock, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

If America becomes a net food importer, we'll face greater costs. We'll spend more for the energy needed to bring food to our tables. Already we spend about $139 billion each year paying for the energy required to grow and distribute food. That's far more than cost of the first year of the war in Iraq.

Moreover, Congress is about to write a new Farm Bill in 2007. Our increasing dependence on food imports will force us to completely rewrite our subsidy programs. For one thing, our farm policy assumes that our government can effectively intervene in food markets. This will not be the case when we are net food importers. Further, the World Trade Organization has ruled our farm subsidies a violation of global trade policies. The U.S. government is inclined to ignore this ruling, but will have a tougher time doing so when we are dependent on others for food. I believe reducing these subsidies will be good for America. As it is, government programs create a situation where farmers suffer big losses. Subsidies end up taking more money out of rural communities than they put back in. They have shaped America's economy so farmers produce food commodities as raw materials for industry very efficiently -- but where only one half of one percent of all foods raised are sold directly by farmers to consumers. An Iowa State University study shows that subsidies play a large role in raising land prices higher than farmers can pay from growing food. Traders benefit far more than farmers or rural communities. And in the post-Katrina era, amidst an expensive war, it is not clear where the money will come from. I find myself hoping that this new emergence of food imports will serve as a wake-up call to all of us who eat. I hope it will encourage us to learn more about where our food comes from, to get acquainted with more farmers, and to invest in more localized food processing and distribution. The reward will be healthier urban and rural citizens, and, assuming we reclaim our ability to feed ourselves, a stronger economy.

The Green Devolution India's population is growing faster than farm output, threatening one of its most prized achievements. Sept. 4, 2006 issue - The furnace Australia sailed into Chennai last month carrying a load of wheat and, some warned, ill tidings. India's first wheat imports in six years marked a reversal in the march toward "food independence" that the country began in the 1970s. To M. S. Swaminathan, one of the agronomists credited with sparking the socalled Green Revolution, the return of grain imports should be seen as "a wake-up call" for a country that has in recent years taken its ability to feed its people for granted. Though India's government officially dismissed the return of grain imports as a passing event, Swaminathan and other experts saw it as the latest sign of a long-term decline. The growth rate of grain production has fallen from 1.5 percent before 1995 to 1 percent today, due to a combination of bad management, unpredictable weather and a growing water shortage. Meanwhile, the growth rate for all crops has fallen to 1.25 percent a year, the lowest level since India gained independence in 1947, says Ramesh Chand, acting director of India's National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research. That's too slow to keep pace with a population now growing, according to United Nations estimates, at a rate of 1.5 percent a year. Chand says the threat to India's food independence is manageable, if the government makes the right moves. These are sobering indicators for the Green Revolution, which was originally inspired by grave threats to the food supply in India. After back-to-back droughts put the country in danger of massive starvation in 1966, a U.S. presidential-advisory commission called for an "effort unprecedented in human history" to raise farm output around the world. And so it did, as scientists produced new strains of rice and wheat that boosted yields by a factor of five, with the help of heavy irrigation and applications of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. In India, an initially well-executed campaign raised grain output from 82 million metric tons in 1960 to 176 million tons in 1990 and cut imports to zero by 2000. That is, until the trend reversed last month.

Now production gains are slowing as the water supply dwindles, overzealous use of fertilizer and pesticides taints the soil and excessive irrigation waterlogs the land along canals in the showpiece states of India's Green Revolution, like the Punjab and Haryana. Because irrigated land is two and ahalf times more productive than rain-fed land, many of the gains of the Green Revolution were produced by an increase in the area under irrigation. But as India's population and economy grow, water supplies are shrinking. Already, the World Bankestimates, India meets most of its irrigation and household demand by tapping groundwater—a practice that is "no longer sustainable." Similar threats haunt China and other developing nations that were big beneficiaries of the Green Revolution. China has responded by relaxing its commitment to being completely self-sufficient in the production of food—encouraging farmers to grow more lucrative fruits and vegetables, while importing wheat and soybeans. To free-trade advocates, this approach makes sense—why obsess over "food independence" in an increasingly global free market, if others grow wheat more efficiently than you do? Focus on the goods, agricultural or not, that you grow most efficiently.

Indeed, when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called in January for a "second Green Revolution," his concern focused on raising farm incomes, not securing the food supply. He called for a fresh emphasis on fruits, vegetables and new plant varieties that would command higher prices in export markets. He also encouraged measures to harvest rainwater more efficiently, improve the soil and spread the benefits of agricultural technology, including genetically modified seeds. But the basic position of the Singh government is that India normally produces more grain than it consumes, and soon will again. As for the recent return to imports, officials dismissed it as a procurement snafu: this year, for the first time, India allowed private buyers, including multinationals, to buy wheat directly from farmers. That helped push up prices, and the government responded by refusing to match the prices offered by private buyers. It wound up buying less wheat than usual for the federal program that provides subsidized grain to 150 million poor Indians. When supplies fell short, the government had to turn to imports—temporarily, officials insist.

Critics argue that Singh and his government are missing the big picture. Farm-policy analyst Devinder Sharma complains that "the people who govern this country believe technology is the answer to every problem," and are pushing a second revolution without examining why the first "has collapsed." Chand says the key going forward is to target backward states like Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, which have done little to modernize their farms, and thus have "huge potential" to reverse the slowdown in output. One reason for these problems is that over the past decade India, as part of its effort to reduce the state role in the economy, has cut back significantly on investment in farms. Public-sector investment fell from just over 2 percent of agricultural output in 1991 to less than 1.5 percent in 2001. That slashed funds for upgrading Green Revolution technologies and for the extension programs that teach farmers how to make it all work. By the late 1980s, when the early gains made in rice and wheat had slowed, India attempted to extend its success to pulses (peas and beans) and oilseeds. Though it did manage to produce high-yield seeds, the program failed to supply enough of these seeds to farmers, and poor oversight allowed corrupt traders to pass off ordinary seeds as high-yield hybrids, says Delhi University agricultural economist Usha Tuteja. With its vegetarian tradition India is the world's largest consumer of protein-rich pulses, but now ranks near the bottom in the production of these crops. Swaminathan urges leaders to focus on what he calls an "evergreen revolution." The goal would be to correct the damage wrought by the first Green Revolution: adoptingnew methods like the use of natural predators instead of chemicals to eliminate pests, and switching to organic fertilizers and more efficient drip irrigation. He also says Singh should promote crops that require less water, including native Indian grains such as finger millet (ragi), pearl millet (bajra) and sorghum (jowar).

All goods may be freely imported or exported save for two 'Negative Lists'. The Negative List of Imports and Negative List of Exports place restriction on imports or exports of certain goods on the ground of public policy. • • • • •

•

Capital goods are freely importable without any restriction. Import of second-hand capital goods, except for few specified sectors (which include food processing industry, seafood and packaging/packaging material) require a license. Second-hand capital goods imported should not be more than 7 years old and should have a minimum residual life of 5 years. As mentioned earlier, foreign exchange for import of goods would have to be obtained from the market at market at market determined rates. Effective import duties currently range between 0 and 65 per cent. Lower duty rates are generally applicable to raw materials and intermediate goods in comparison with finished products. General machinery and project imports currently attract duty at the rate of 25%. The Government has announced its intention to progressively reduce duty rates over the next few years. Imports of raw materials and intermediates required for export production do not attract any import duties. Capital goods imported for export production are importable at concessional duties ranging between 15% and 25% of CIF value. Units located in free trade zones or 100% export-oriented units are exempted from all import duties. Certain sales to domestic units where the buyers earn or save foreign exchange for the country are termed as 'deemed exports' and such production/sales qualify for export- related incentives.

List Prohibited/Restricted for Imports in Food Sector The list of goods in this sector prohibited/restricted for import are as follows: AB-PROHIBITED • • • • • • • • • • • •

Tallow, fats and oils of animal origin Animal rennet AB-RESTRICTED Concentrate of alcoholic beverages Wines Saffron, Cloves, Cinnamon and Cassia Seeds, Plants and animals Insecticides and Pesticides Flavouring essences Perfumery compounds/Synthetic essential oils. AB-CANALISED (imports only through Government Agencies) Oils and seeds and all other material from which oil can be extracted. Fatty acids and acid oils Cereals

The Law For Food Facism: The Proposed Food Safety & Standards Bill, 2005 by Vandana Shiva February 21, 2005 Printer Friendly Version EMail Article to a Friend

Food laws and Food Safety for India’s diverse and local food economy The Government has drafted a Food Safety and Standards Bill 2005 as an “Integrated Food Law” which has been prepared with the intention to be contemporary, comprehensive, and ensure better consumer safety through food safety management systems and settling standards based on science and transparency as also meeting the dynamic requirements of international trade and Indian Food Trade and Industry. Clearly, the law has been designed to lubricate international trade and the expansion of the global agribusiness. Consumer health, nutrition, and food culture are not even mentioned as objectives of the integrated food law. PFA needs strengthening, not dismantling The case in the Indian Supreme Court filed by the Centre for public interest litigation shows how Coke and Pepsi are violating the Prevention of Food Adulteration Acts. We need strengthening the PFA, not diluting it or dismantling it through a new Food Law which floods India with toxics in foods and replaces our strict PFA and our natural food systems with toxic processed food. That is why we must reject the integrated food law which through Article 102 (overriding effect of this Act over all other food related laws) states The provisions of this Act shall have effect notwithstanding anything inconsistent therewith contained any other law for the time being in force or in any instrument having effect by virtue of any law other than this Act. In effect, the Food Safety Law 2005 is a dismantling of the PFA. It is in effect the legalizing of adulteration of our entire food system with toxic chemicals and industrial processing. There is no reference in the objectives to most distinctive aspects of India’s food systems – indigenous science, cultural diversity and economic livelihoods in local food provisioning. Ninety nine per cent of India’s food is processed naturally and locally for local consumption and sale. Our science of food is based on Ayurveda, not the reductionist science which has treated unhealthy food as safe. This “free economy” that serves local community is governed by community control, and local culture, is now to be regulated by the centralized rules and standards appropriate for a 1% industrialized large scale manufacture. The “integrated Food Law” is a law to dismantle our diverse, decentralized food economy. We need stronger food safety laws, especially in the context of toxics in food and the introduction of GMOs in food crops. The Prevention of Food Adulteration Act needs to be strengthened, not substituted by the proposed law. Industrial food systems produce food hazards and disease The case of Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola selling soft drinks with phosphoric acid, ethylene glycol, and huge amounts of sugar or High Fructose Corn Syrup shows that industrial food producers need to be regulated with strict safety laws designed

through democratic participation. The report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee following the disclosure of pesticides in soft drinks by the Centre for Science and Environment, as well as recent studies published in a large number of medical journals have clearly indicated that soft drink manufacturers have been using significant quantities of very harmful and toxic chemicals in their drinks in order to make them more attractive and addictive. They have been clearly pushing their sales and profits at the cost of public health. The sustained attempt by the Coke-Pepsi companies to refuse to disclose the contents and ingredients of their drinks, is clear Coke-Pepsi are refusing to abide by the order of the Rajasthan High Court ordering Coke-Pepsi to disclose the contents of their drinks (including pesticides) on CokePepsi labels, and instead resorting to endless review petitions and appeals. In fact the requirement to disclose the ingredients of all packaged food items on their labels has been there in the Prevention of Food Adulteration rules for a long time. The fact that it has not been enforced again shows how Coke-Pepsi subvert and undermine our national laws. It is now known that most soft drinks contain an extremely toxic brew of chemicals which are now known to be very harmful to human health. Apart from pesticides, the chemicals which are deliberately added include large quantities of phosphoric Acid (added to give them ‘bite’), caffeine (added to make them addictive), large quantities of sugar (to make it extra sweet), ethylene glycol (an extremely toxic and freeze compound added to allow them to be drunk ‘extra chilled’ at sub zero temperatures) and Carbon Dioxide. Food safety is a growing concern with the industrialisaiton and globalisation of food. Food related diseases have spread. As Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University, London reports, “incidence of food borne disease has in fact risen during the era of the productionist Paradigm. In West Germany cases of infections S.Enterites rose from 11 per 100,000 head of population in 1963 to 193 per 100,000 in 1999, in England and Wales formal notifications of the same disease rose from 14,253 cases in 1987 to 86,528 in 2000.” Food hazards have increased with industrialization of food production and processing. As Colin Tudge observes “the modern food supply chain is convoluted and so long that it allows endless opportunities for malpractice of all kinds – including many that beggar the imagination of those who are not criminally inclined. The supply chain is impossible to police because it is so complex, and because policing is so expensive (and nobody wants to pick up the bill – certainly not the governments who win votes by keeping the price of food down). Sometimes though, it is not at all easy to draw a line between outright villainy (like the adding of contaminants) from the standard, legitimate practices of the modern food industry. On a global scale, new diseases are emerging and more virulent forms of old diseases are growing as globalisation spreads factory farming and industrial processing and agriculture. Disease epidemics and food hazards are the outcome of food production methods based on hazardous inputs and processes. In the U.K., more than 2 million cattle were found to be infected with Bovine Spongiform Encephelopathy (BSE) -- the mad cow disease. By August 2002, 133 people had died from variant Creutz feld-Jacob Disease (VCJD) - the human equivalent of BSE . New strains of Ecoli 0157 have led to 75 million cases of food poisoning annually in the US, resulting in 325,000 hospitalisation and 5000 deaths. The Swine fever in Asia led to killing of millions of pigs. A newly emerged Nipah Strain killed 100 pig farm workers, infected 150 with non-fatal encephalitis and led to the slaughter of a million pigs to control the disease . The Avian flu has already led to human deaths and the killing of millions of ducks and chicken. The first sightings of the H5N1 virus behind the Avian influenza came in November. The epidemic has spread to 10 countries. The disease has jumped from

chickens to humans and killed eight people in Vietnam and Thailand. In 1997 the H5N1 Strain killed six people in Hong Kong . Food production technologies have undergone two generations of changes over the last few decades. The first shift in food production technologies was the introduction of chemicals in agriculture under the banner of the Green Revolution. Toxic chemicals used in warfare were deployed in agriculture in times of peace as synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Agriculture and food production became dependent on "Weapons of Mass Destruction". The Bhopal disaster in which a leak from a pesticide plant killed thousands in 1984, and has killed nearly 30,000 since then is the most tragic reminder of how agriculture has become dependent on war technologies designed to kill. Genetic Engineering will introduce new food hazards. New traits of viral promoter, antibiotic resistance markers being introduced in GM foods need public approval and strict monitoring for safety. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho in “Genetic Engineering: Dream or Nightmare? (1999) has identified the following risks to human health from genetically engineered foods. · Toxic or allergenic effects due to transgene products or interactions of transgene with host genes. · Vector-mediated spread of antibiotic resistance marker genes to gut bacteria and to pathogens. · Vector-mediated spread of virulence among pathogens across species by horizontal gene-transfer and recombination. · Potential for vector-mediated horizontal gene transfer and recombination to create new pathogenic bacteria and viruses. · Potential of vector-mediated infected cells after ingestion of transgenic foods, to regenerate disease viruses, or for the vector to insert itself into the cell’s genome causing harmful or lethal effects including cancer. While Toxic and GM foods need stricter laws, local, natural processing in small dhabas, small outlets cannot be subjected to industrial regulation, both because they are not a source of toxic threat and because they are not centralized producers needing centralized regulation. Whose Safety Rules ? Whose Standards? However, while food hazards grow, food safety laws are being shaped which deregulate large corporations and over-regulate the small scale self organized economy. Such industrial food safety standards promote large scale globalised production, and act against local foods. These laws are also the basis of the Sanitary and Phyto Sanitary Agreement of WTO. An example of these inappropriate standards was used to destroy India’s diverse, decentralize edible oil industry. In August 1998, a new packaging order was introduced for edible oils on grounds of food safety which shut down millions of small scale local oil mills and local edible oils like mustard. Combined with WTO trade rules of removing import restrictions, the laws of false food safety flooded India’s markets with oil from genetically engineered soyabeans. India has used the coconut, groundnut, linseed, mustard, sunflower, and sesame for edible oil. Biodiversity has gone hand in hand with cultural diversity. The main consequence of the mustard oil ban and the ban on sale of edible oils in unpackaged forms is the destruction of our oilseed biodiversity and the diversity of our edible oils and food cultures. It is also a destruction of economic democracy and

economic freedom to produce oils locally, according to locally available resources, and locally appropriate food culture. Since indigenous oilseeds are high in oil content, they can be processed at household or community level, with ecofriendly, decentralized and democractic technologies. Soyabean oil is based on concentration of poor, from the seed, to trade, to processing and packaging. Monsanto controls seeds through its patents and its ownership of seed corporations. Cargill, Continental and other trading giants control the trade and milling operations internationally. Because of its low oil content, the extraction of soyabean oil needs heavy processing which is environmentally unfriendly and unsafe for health. Pseudo safety standards destroy safe and healthy oils and have flooded the market with unhealthy hazardous oils. Mustard oil and our indigenous oilseeds symbolize freedom for nature, for our farmers, our diverse food cultures and the rights of poor consumers. Soyabean oil symbolizes concentration of power and the colonization of nature, cultures, farmers and consumers. The manipulation of oil prices and the restrictions put on indigenous oilseed processing and sales are forcing Indians to consume soyabean oil and thus further strengthen a monoculture and monopoly system. Free trade and economic globalisation has been projected as economic freedom for all. However, as the case of the mustard oil crisis and soyabean imports reveals, so called free trade is based on many levels of destruction of economic freedom of small producers, processors and poor consumers. Small farmers are loosing their freedom to grow the diverse oilseeds adapted to their soils, ecosystems and cultures. With new patent laws, they will be forced to pay royalties for seeds and will be further pushed into poverty. Small processors of eco-friendly and safe edible oil are being rendered illegal through new laws like the ‘packaging’ order which is in effect an instrument of market take over of big industry. Further, while the rhetoric of free trade is that the government should step out of business, the decision on free import of soyabean, the packaging order and the proposed Food Safety Act reveal how the government is a major player in the transfer of production from small scale decentralized systems to large scale, centralized systems under monopoly control. The state in fact is the backbone of the free trade order. The only difference is that instead of regulating big business, it leaves big business free, and declares small producers and diverse cultures illegal so that big business has monopoly control on the food system. The asymmetric treatment of the small and the big is also evident in the regulation of food safety. While the government reacted immediately to ban mustard oil, it has done nothing to prevent the dumping of toxic, genetically engineered soyabean. Adulteration in various forms undertaken by the global players gets protection rather than punishment from governments, in India, in the U.S., and across the world. This is why the PFA is being dismantled to legalise adulteration with toxic chemicals and toxic genes. The highest level political and economic conflicts between freedom and slavery, democracy and dictatorship, diversity and monoculture have thus entered into the simple acts of buying edible oils and cooking our food. Will the future of India’s edible oil culture be based on mustard and other edible oil seeds or will it become part of the globalised monoculture of soyabean with its associated but hidden food hazards. In Europe too the food safety laws were threatening small producers of typical foods. For example, Slow Food organised half a million signatures that forced the Italian government to amend a law that would have forced even the smallest food maker to conform to the pseudo hygienic standards that suit corporations like Kraft Foods.

Need for pluralism to protect food livelihoods and diverse food cultures Local natural organically processed food is not the same as chemically processed food which is different from genetically engineered food. Different foods have different safety risks and need different safety laws and different systems of management. That is why in Europe there are different standards for organic, for industrial and genetically engineered foods. Organic standards are set by organic movements while the standards for genetic engineering are set at European level through the Novel Food laws. There is in addition the movement to protect cultural diversity of food, which is destroyed when industrial food processing standards are applied. Cultural diversity is protected through “unique” and “typical” foods. Carving out these spaces of freedom in the face of a globalised industrial food economy has been the contribution of the Slow Food Movement. These standards are cultural, based on indigenous science and community control not industrial “science” and controlled by central government manipulated by Food giants like Cargill, ConAgra, Lever, Nestle, Phillip Morris and Gene Giants like Monsanto. India, like Europe, needs 3 different laws governed at different levels for different food systems based on different production processes which produce different foods. 1. An organic processing law for local, natural small scale food processing governed by gramsabhas, panchayats and local communities. In cities this could be based on licensing by resident welfare associations as Urban Panchayats, and local municipalities. Community control through citizen participation is the real guarantee for safety. 2. An industrial processing law which already exists and is the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act. This could be updated to deal with new food hazards. It should definitely not be dismantled. 3. A GMO food law which controls imports, labeling, segregation, traceability etc. This is the new law that the consumers need. This law should be drafted by the Central Government, but states and local communities should be free to introduce stricter standards. If regions want to be GMO free, this should be allowed under the principles of decentralized democracy. However, the central government cannot try to license the last dhaba in India. It will unleash the worst form of license and inspector raj. It will establish a food facism based on food mafia, serving global corporations. It will destroy our food freedom, livelihoods, our food safety, our food diversity. The proposed integrated food safety law will be used to criminalise every tiny dhabawala and street vendor who are not introducing obesity and diabetes, cancer and heart disease in our society. They are providing safe, affordable dal and roti to millions of working people. Since different food systems need different levels of management for safety, it is totally inappropriate to lump together all kinds of food – organic, industrial, GMOs into one category as is done in Def 3 (k) which treat all food providers as the same. “Food business” means any undertaking, whether for profit or not, and whether public or private, carrying out any of the activities related to any stage of production, processing and distribution of food and includes import, export and sale of food and food service providers. How food is processed determines its quality, nutrition, safety. Home processed bread is not the same as industrial bread. They are not “like products” in the W.T.O. jargon. They are different products in terms of their ecological content and public health impact. A factory chicken is not the same as a free range chicken both in terms of

animal welfare and in terms of food quality and safety. A GMO corn is not the same as organic corn. The former contains antibiotic resistance markers, viruses used as promoters, and gene for producing toxins such as Bt. Regulating Bt. corn for safety needs different systems than organic corn, factory farming needs different regulatory processes than free-range chicken. Pluralism of production processes and products needs pluralism of laws and science appropriate to the safety issues and governance systems that a product or production process demands. Chemical processing need chemistry labs and chemists, GMOs need genetic I.D. Laws, organic processing needs indigenous science and community control. The response of government to the mustard oil contamination in 1998 was to demand that every ghani have a lab, a chemist and must package oil. This response was inappropriate for the scale and method of production. One million ghanis were shut down, 20,000 small and tiny crushers were criminalized by an inappropriate law that opened the flood gates for import of soy oil. We cannot repeat the destruction unleashed by pseudo safety laws in the edible oils sector in other sectors of our indigenous food economy and food culture. We cannot replace safe systems with unsafe systems through manipulated laws and rules which serve agribusiness, leave them free to spread food hazards and disease, destroy our diverse foods and substitute them with unhealthy, anti-nutritive, hazardous industrial foods. We do not need to deregulate global trade and overregulate domestic production. We need to regulate chemicals and GMOs through centralized structures and regulate local, domestic food systems through local, democratic, decentrlaised, participatory processes. The principles of food safety used in the proposed law are inappropriate to the indigenous self-organised food systems of India Act 17 (b) states that the Food Authority will take into account International Standards. However, in the case of GMOs, there are no International Standards. There are European laws on novel foods and the absolute deregulation of GM foods in the U.S. On May 13th 2003, the US together with Canada and Argentina challenged Europe’s moratorium on GM crops and foods. Arguing that their GM products were being unfairly discriminated against, they challenge the precautionary principle in decision making about GM crops that is supposed to be embodied into European decisionmaking. Bringing this case to the WTO is another excuse to attack the use of the precautionary approach in international law. The new EU Regulations take account of the EU’s international trade commitments and of the requirements of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety with respect to obligations of importers. The EU’s regulatory system for GMOs authorization is in line with WTO rules: it is clear, transparent and non-discriminatory. There is therefore no issue that the WTO needs to examine. Many countries are now looking at the EU policy to develop their own policy. The US fears that several countries will adopt a similar approach as the EU to regulate GMOs and GM food and feed products. The new Swiss GM legislation, entered into force on January 1st 2004, is a good example. The Swiss law is stricter than current EU legislation on the liability and co-existence aspects. It is based on the precautionary principle and “the polluter pays” principle (Article 1) and aims to protect health and security of human beings, animals and environment. It also aims to permanently maintain biological diversity and fertility of the soil and to allow freedom of choice for consumers. The EU Moratorium represents the will of its people not to be force-fed. It crystallizes (as the patent on seeds still does) the worldwide mobilization of people against the reinterpretation of national security and sovereignty to increase the global control of US corporations over resources and market. If Europe had not suspended its approvals process in 1998, these would have been some of the consequences:

• • • •

The indirect effects of growing GM herbicide tolerant (HT) crops on farmland wildlife would not have been taken into account. GM HT sugar/fodder beet and spring oilseed rape now known to be damaging to farmland wildlife would have been grown commercially in Europe. No requirement for monitoring of environmental or human health effects would have been introduced, maintaining the ‘no evidence of harm’ claim for safety. Consumers would not have been able to make a choice not to eat products derived from GM crops as the new labeling laws now allow for. There would have been no traceability requirement for GM foods. If an adverse effect had emerged, it would have been impossible to withdraw the product from the market quickly and easily. Following BSE, traceability is a cornerstone of European food safety systems.

Under India’s diverse decentralized plural economy, a centralized integrated law is inappropriate on many counts. Indigenous Gur and Mithai have no international standards, they need indigenous standards. India must craft her laws for her conditions. These laws must be appropriate to the level and content which they address. One law for all food systems is a law that privileges large-scale industrial commercial establishments and discriminates and criminalizes the small, the local, the diverse. Our kitchens and dhabas, our cottage and household industry is being put in the same category as Nestle’s Cargills and ConAgra’s massive super industrial processing. Domestic and local consumption, including “not for profit” food provisioning is being put in the same category as imports of hazardous GMOs. This is not a science based contemporary system. It is an obsolete, corrupt crude and coercive system proposed by a corporate state to destroy 99% of our indigenous food processing so that global agribusiness MNCs which have spread disease and ill health control our entire food economy, destroying millions of livelihoods and millennia of diverse gastronomic traditions. The Right to Information Vs Confidential Information Instead of regulating hazardous food industry like Coke and Pepsi, the Food Safety law is in effect a law for deregulating hazardous industry. Article 14(5) on Functions of Food Authority states: The food Authority shall not disclose or cause to be disclosed to third parties confidential information that it receives for which confidential treatment has been requested and has been acceded. Coke and Pepsi are hiding behind Trade Secrets to not disclose the ingredients of their soft drinks to the Rajasthan High Court. Union Carbide hid behind Trade Secrets to not disclose the nature of the gas leak in Bhopal and allowed thousands to die and millions to be crippled. Food and health are too important to be sacrificed to corporate confidentiality. The Right to Information must be the basis of any Food Safety Law. In the year 2004, we need to learn from the food mistakes of the industrialized food systems. Systems that have created Mad Cow Disease and unleashed an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. These diseases of unhealthy processing are not identified as “food hazards” in food safety laws, though they are a hazard to health. That is why the proposed law is obsolete – it fails to take into account the diseases related to industrial food processing which are creating ill health and should be treated as unsafe. Law for Food Facism : The License Permit Raj for the Food Economy The Food Safety and Standards Bill 2005 threatens to create a culture of “Food Facism”. Industrial foods need chemical labs, genetically engineered foods need genetic I.D. labs, but cooking fresh dal and roti does not need testing for toxic chemicals and transgenes. The risk and safety standards for Lassi in a Dhaba and a synthetic Milkshake at a Fast Food chain must be different. As Eric Schlosser has reported in his

best seller “Fast Food Nation”, “A typical artificial strawberry flavor, like the kind found in a Buger King strawberry milk shake, contains the following ingredients: amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl valeratge, cognac ssential oil diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl acetate, ethyl amyl ketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl lactate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin, hydroxyphenyl-2 butanone (10 per cent solution in alcohol), a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil, nerolin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum ether, yundecalactone, vanillin, an solvent. We are better off sticking to Lassi and treating these toxics as Food Adulterants under PFA rather than allowing them into our food systems, and using the toxic food culture of U.S. as the standard for pseudo safety. Risk Assessment in the hands of centralized corruptible agencies is no protection for consumers as the disease and health epidemic in the U.S. linked to over processed, industrial foods shows. Even while the U.S. is at the epicenter of the food related public health crises, the U.S. government is trying to export its Food laws which deregulate the industry and over regulate ordinary citizens and small enterprise. This deregulation of the big and toxic and over regulation of the small and ecological is at the core of Food Facism, which the proposed Integrated Food law tries to introduce on the basis of the U.S. Model. Firstly, it sets up a coercive apparatus of centralized control, which lends itself to corruption. It creates a license permit Raj in food when the rhetoric is about ending it. A license and inspector raj controlled from Delhi is a recipe for corruption. In the area of food, corruption could kill. Secondly, it is inappropriate to “integrate” what are in effect different activities and different products. Small scale, local natural food processing for largely local consumption use fresh foods is based on transparent cooking, natural and organic processing without toxic chemicals in front of the consumer. This cannot be measured with the same safety standards as needed for large-scale processing with chemicals, or for foods containing GMOs. Traceability is a particular challenge created by GMO’s. IN a law for GM foods it would have a place. However to demand that in India’s’ self organized, informal, orally organized local food economy, every food operator will have systems and procedures for traceability in which all for this information to be made available to the competent authorities is to kill small food providers with the burden of a corrupt and unwieldy bureaucratic control (Article 27 on Traceability). The core of the Act is bureaucratic control through a licence permit raj. Article 31(1) states that no person shall manufacture, sell, stock, distribute or exhibit for sale any article of food, including ready-to-serve food, irradiated food except under a licence issued by the state Commissioner of Food Safety or its authorized officer. Roasted peanuts or chanas, and irradiated foods have been lumped in the same category of hazards. A “bharbuja” (maker of roasted grains) and the Mumbai dabbawalas will be burdened with the same licensing arrangements as a High Fructose Corn Syrup factory of Cargill. This mix up between a small scale self organized sector and a large scale industrialized food sector is the most lethal aspect o the proposed law. Undemocratic, bureaucratically designed, corporate driven food safety laws like the proposed law destroy safe alternatives and promote unsafe industrial food production. According to Colin Tudge “overall, the food-safety laws of Britain are extensive and intricate and more and more detailed, so that its becoming very difficult even to keep a few chickens or pigs for local use, or to run a village shop, or to sell cakes at the church bazaar. Men and women in suits ow with nylon hats and clipboards descend like flies to point out ways in which small farmers and traders could in theory poison their

customers. AT the same time, the government that makes these laws presides over policies that seem designed expressly to maximize the spread of disease. In England where local economies have been destroyed, pseudo safety laws prevent little old ladies from selling their homemade cakes in churches for charity. In India such laws would criminalise “annadana”, the langars of gurudwaras, the zakat at the Mosques and Dargahs, and the bhandaras which feed millions of poor people daily in temples, the livelihoods of our chaiwalas and dhabawalas, the entire household and cottage industry in food processing would be made illegal overnight, leading to the criminalisation of our safe foods and legalisation of food crimes. There is only one system for food safety – locally produced, freshly processed food – of which we have abundance in India’s non-industrial local food systems. Pseudo hygiene and food safety laws that are designed for the disease producing industrial, long distance convoluted system of getting food from farms to tables will not produce safety. They will produce poverty and unemployment by destroying millions of smallscale livelihoods in food production and processing. A modern food law would recognize that our decentralized food economy enhances nutrition, safety, culture and livelihoods. We need laws to protect our diverse local food cultures from the disease causing homogenous, centralized industrial food culture of the west. Our biodiversity and cultural diversity of food have built robust localized food economies. Our skilled and knowledgeable food processes are the future of food. We cannot allow a law manipulated by global food giants, promoted by power hungry bureaucrats to take away our food freedom and food sovereignty. We need a stronger PFA. We do not need a food police from Delhi to destroy our rich food culture through pseudo safety standards which serve global business. We need society led, participatory, democratic systems to enrich our food systems, promote health and nutrition and guarantee food safety. Delhi needs to control the Monsantos, Coca Colas and Cargills, not our dhabas and our kitchens. Let the government regulate agribusiness through the PFA. We will regulate ourselves as community and civil society. We will not be ruled through the law for food facism. We will shape laws for our food freedom. This is our food sovereignty. This is our Anna Swaraj.

Globalisation of agriculture and rising food insecurity Despite claims to the contrary, trade liberalisation and globalisation are resulting in declining food production and posing a threat to food security, particularly in the countries of the South. The same processes are also wiping out small efficient family farms and replacing them with inefficient and unhealthy industrialised food systems under corporate control. THE Draft Plan of Action for the UN Food Summit to be held in Rome in November categorically states that 'trade is vital to food security'. Trade liberalisation and globalisation of agriculture are supposed to increase production of food, increase efficiency of food production, improve the economic situation of farmers and improve patterns of food consumption. However, the evidence provided by the participants of an international conference on 'Globalisation, Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture' held in Delhi on 30 and 31 July pointed to the opposite direction. In country after country, trade liberalisation is leading to declining food production, declining productivity, declining conditions for farmers in the North and in the South, and declining food security for consumers of the North and the South. In her welcoming address which was on the theme 'Globalisation and Food', Dr Vandana Shiva said, 'The US and other industrialised countries of the North are trying to change the meaning of food security from being a fundamental human right to participation in global markets, which excludes the large number of poor without adequate purchasing power.' 'They are also trying to redefine food security to exclude food safety issues. Food security has always meant adequate, safe, nutritious and culturally safe food. While this meaning was inscribed in the earlier draft plans of action, it has been removed in the current draft of the World Food Summit,' she said. Dr Shiva said the structure of governance that was being shaped 'is governments without rights, but with exclusive responsibilities for food security, and international organisations like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organisation (WTO) with absolute rights and no responsibilities. Since these organisations are controlled by the G7 group of countries, this structure has built into the North-South asymmetry of Southern governments with the largest number of poor and hungry people carrying responsibilities without rights for food security, and Northern governments pushing rights of their corporations without responsibilities for food security.'

Referring to the situation in India, she said, 'Land reforms (which put a ceiling on land holdings) are being undone in state after state to allow corporate superfarms for..... luxury production for international markets. Massive displacement of farmers is taking place, which can rapidly turn into a socially and politically explosive situation.' Globalisation and Food Insecurity in the South A paper on 'Globalisation and Agriculture in India' by Dr Vandana Shiva, Ms Radha Holla and Ms Kusum Menon showed through field studies how food production was being undermined by trade liberalisation policies. Food-growing land is being diverted to non-food crops such as flowers or luxury commodities such as shrimp. Farmers are being displaced on a massive scale and natural resources are being over exploited. Corporatisation of agriculture which is being pushed under trade liberalisation as a successor of the Green Revolution is leading to new poverty for small farmers as unequal and unfair contracts lock them into a new forms of bondage. Farmers of Punjab who were contracted by Pepsico to grow tomatoes received only Rs.0.75 per kg while the market price was Rs.2.00. First the farmers rejected Pepsico and now Pepsico has abandoned Punjab and sold its tomato processing plant to a subsidiary of Levers. Trade liberalisation is supposed to bring benefits to national agricultural economies. However, the beneficiaries are neither farmers nor governments of the Third World. A recent editorial of a business daily in India had the heading 'Freeing Wheat'. It is significant to ask what wheat is being freed from and whom it is being freed for. This freedom to trade has mainly benefited the giant grain traders Cargill and Continental. They are buying wheat at $60 to $100 per tonne from India and selling it at $230-240 per tonne on the international market, making a neat $130170 profit per tonne, while India is losing $100 million in exports because of the concentration of power in the hands of five merchants of grain. The US grain giants are turning to the Indian market because the large- scale wheat farming in the US, has been wiped out in nearly 50% of the farm land by a combination of drought and the Karnal Bunt - a fungal disease. As a result of the US crop failure, India's wheat exports have increased dramatically. However, in the globalised world, it is ultimately not countries such as the US and India, which are exporting and importing grain, but corporations like Continental and Cargill. Treating countries as economic units in a free-trade world is misplaced since they have been replaced by corporations as the basic economic units. The gains and losses from globalised trade in food are more appropriately worked out at the level of people and corporations rather than at the level of countries. Globalised

food trade is of course an opportunity in the trade perspective, but will have serious impacts on the entitlements of already vulnerable groups. Dr Amitava Mukherjee, Executive Director, ActionAid India in his paper on 'International Trade and Food Security' confirmed that the area under food crop production in India is on the decline, as is evident from the fact that the index for the area under food grains (1981-82 =100) has declined from 100.7 to 97.3 in 1990-91 in 1994-95, while the index for the area under non-food crops increased from 120.0 to 125.7 during the period. Production of coarse cereals and pulses, the main food for the poor, has shown a declining trend. Declining Dr Abhijit Sen of Jawaharlal Nehru University showed how under liberalisation domestic production and consumption of food were declining. Removal of food subsidies had led to decrease in the amount of food purchase from the public distribution system. The off take of rice had declined from 10.1 metric tonnes in 1991-92 to 6.9 metric tonnes in 1995-96. The offtake for wheat has gone down from 8.8 metric tonnes to 3.8 metric tonnes. While agricultural exports as a percentage of total exports had gone down, cereals in exports had gone up from 1.4% to 3.4%, indicating that exports were increasingly based on the creation of domestic food insecurity. Dr John Kurien of the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum elaborated how industrial aquaculture and fisheries were promoted with bilateral and multilateral aid for 'short-term "parking" of international capital in a specific location for a short duration of time during its race for profits'. This 'rape and run' industry is also based on the enclosure of the common resources of coastal communities. While the production feeds into the international luxury demand for humans and pets of affluent countries, they pose a threat to existing patterns of food production and a direct threat to national and local food security Mr Victor Suares Carrera, Executive Director of the National Association of Peasant Maize Producers, Mexico said after 14 years of liberalisation under structural adjustment and two years of NAFTA in Mexico, 9,000 years of food security were being wiped out. Mexico, which like India was the centre of the origin of agriculture, from where corn expanded to the USA and the rest of the world, was now in danger in the wake of globalisation. Today, he said, his country was ruled by the law of comparative advantage. However, with NAFTA, the illusion of comparative advantage had evaporated. There was neither food security nor comparative advantage for Mexico under freetrade. Three years ago, Mexico imported half a million tonnes of rice. It now imports 7 million tonnes of rice. While Mexico's corn economy is being destroyed, it was importing yellow corn from the US, which is used to feed animals in that country. Mexicans eat white

corn which is culturally more appropriate to their food system. The government, he said, had abandoned its responsibility and there was no policy of food security and no employment policy. Everything had been left to market forces. The government had amended the Mexican land law and discarded the principles of the 1910 revolution. This had been done on the demand of the agri-business. Referring to the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas in Mexico on 1 January 1994, the first day of NAFTA, he said, 'When we entered the club of the rich people, while the political elite were celebrating the event, thousands of indigenous peasants went up in arms.' They cried against the policy of impoverishment of the farmers and the denial of their rights. People have demanded a change in the National Agricultural Policy and support for the domestic producers. They have argued that it is much easier to support domestic production than to buy from the US, when the country did not have foreign currency. In 1992, Mexico imported 20% of its food. In 1996 it was importing 43%. Eating 'more cheaply on imports is not eating at all for the poor in Mexico'. One out of every two peasants is not getting enough to eat. In the 18 months since NAFTA, the intake of food has been destroyed by 29%. 2.2 million Mexicans have lost jobs and 40 million are in extreme poverty. Dr Regassa Feyissa, Director of the Biodiversity Institute of Ethiopia, said Africa was being treated merely as a cheap source of labour. Kenya was importing 80% of its food, while 80% of its exports were accounted for by agriculture. In Kenya, grain imports have risen, subsidised by the European Union, undermining local production and creating poverty by oversupply. In 1992, Europen Union (EU) wheat was sold in Kenya at a price which was 39% cheaper than that at which it was purchased by the EU from European farmers. In 1993, it was 50% cheaper. In 1995, Kenyan wheat prices collapsed through oversupply. All this in a country which had been self-sufficient in the 1980s. Dr Kamal Malhotra, co-Director of FOCUS on the Global South, referring to South Korea, reported how the country had shifted from food self-sufficiency 40 years ago to dependence on the US today. During the five-year period from 1986 to 1991 agricultural imports in South Korea went up from US$1.8 billion to US$5 billion. In the Philippines acreage under rice was declining, while the area under 'cut flowers' was increasing. Three hundred and fifty thousand rural livelihoods will be destroyed by shifting from corn, rice and sugarcane to cut flowers and vegetables for export. The import of 59,000 metric tonnes under the minimum access requirement of GATT would displace 15,000 families annually. Globalisation and Food Insecurity in the North Referring to the massive growth of food insecurity in Britain, Dr Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at Thames Valley University, said there were mountains of food in his country and miles of supermarket shelves but many Britishers could

not afford an adequate diet due to rising unemployment and declining social welfare. One-fifth of the population was classified as not being able to afford a nutritious diet. Poverty, he said, was a reality, even in rich countries. Five companies controlled 70% of the food market in the UK. There was growing food insecurity even in rich countries as the food system became more centralised. The distance for shopping for food had increased from 2 miles to 5 miles, increasing 'food miles' embodied in food and creating a motorway food system. Long-distance transport and intensification of agriculture were linked. Tim Lang said that Britain had shifted from a policy for small farmers to a policy against farmers. The British model of farming, where farmers were systematically thrown out of agriculture, was being spread to other parts of the world. The Mad Cow Disease, he said, was the result of the intensification of agriculture. The disease had affected dairy cows and beef cows, had totally undermined the UK beef trade and had led to the extermination of 165,000 cows because of the risk of the transfer of the infection to humans. The farmers, he said, were now questioning intensification of agriculture, adding that the big lesson for the public was that you cannot squeeze nature to the maximum. The Mad Cow Disease was challenging freetrade, as 'passports' for sources of beef were becoming necessary to regain consumer confidence. 'We must stop intensification. We must re-inject food security in the system,' Tim Lang said. Philip Lymbery from the Compassion in World Farming, UK said the repercussions of the Mad Cow Disease were going to be immense. It proved the pitfalls of factory farming. Since World War II, half a million farmers had disappeared following the corporatisation of agriculture in the UK. Displaying slides he showed how cattle were reared in inhuman conditions. In the UK alone, he said, 600 million broiler chickens were raised annually. They were kept in cages, too small for their well-being, with the result that 75% of the chickens were dying of heart failure. In intensive dairying, male calves were useless and were kept in inhuman conditions in cages till they were six months old and ready for slaughter. They are then exported. One of the biggest popular movements in the UK had emerged as a result of this violence to veal calves. Mika Iba, Coordinator, Network for Safe and Secure Food and Environment, Japan said the story of the success of Japan on the economic front was also the story of failure on the food front, undermining the country's food security. The experience of the past 50 years was the undoing and selling out of the Japanese farmer for the country's economic growth. Today 90% of the farmers were parttime farmers, who lived on other incomes.

Ms Iba said 30% of land could be cultivated and there was competition for this land between housing and agriculture. Only 22% of the food was produced in the country. The remaining 78% came from abroad. Only in rice was Japan selfsufficient, while other grains were imported. Accepting more food imports, she said, also meant accepting more additives in the form of chemicals and pesticides. In 1950, Japanese food imports had 78 food additives. In 1995, this had risen to 345. In 1996, there were 1,051 food additives in food imported by Japan. In Russia, as reported by Vera Matusevich, an Agricultural Economist, World Bank, production and consumption of food had dramatically declined as a result of trade liberalisation and a transition to a market economy. One-third of Russians were now below the poverty line. Fifty per cent of food was being imported. Production had declined by 33% between 1990 and 1995. The livestock sector had declined by 40%. Meat production had fallen from 8.3 million tonnes in 1992 to 5.9 million tonnes in 1995. At the same time imports of meat had increased from 1.4 metric tonnes to 2.1 metric tonnes i.e. in 1995 imported meat had accounted for about 25% of all meat consumption. These imports are concentrated in big cities which account for 70% of retail turnover. Mafias linked to trade are dumping contaminated food on Russian consumers. Kristin Dawkins, Director of Research Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy of the United States, said the US government had led the world in promoting globalised monopolies through international trade agreements, assisted by such bullying tactics as the use of Section 301. She said under encouragement from the US government food corporations controlled US agriculture and were now attempting to control world agriculture. Dawkins said in 1994-95, 10 cents out of every food dollar spent in the United States went to Philip Morris and another 6 cents went to CongAgra. Four companies - IBP, ConAgra, Cargill and Beef America - sold 87% of all slaughtered beef. Two companies - Kelloggs and General Mills - sold two-thirds of all ready-to-eat breakfast cereals. Campbells sold 73% of all canned soups. Frito-Lay sold 85% of all corn chips and 40% of all potato chips. Kraft is owned by General Foods, (the latter is owned by Philip Morris) sold more than half of all sliced processed cheese. The dispensability of small farmers Small farmers are paying the price for this corporatisation. They have been seen as dispensable in the US and the dispensability of the small farmer is now being globalised through trade liberalisation. As Kristin Dawkins reported, in 1962, the Committee on Economic Development which advised the White House recommended 'moving off the farm about two million of the present farm labour force, plus a number equal to a large part of the new entrants who would

otherwise join the farm labour force.' Kenneth Boulding, an agricultural economist from the University of Michigan, described their plan bluntly: 'The only way I know to get toothpaste out of a tube is to squeeze, and the only way to get people out of agriculture is likewise to squeeze agriculture. If the toothpaste is thin, you don't have to squeeze very hard, on the other hand if the toothpaste is thick, you have to put real pressure on it.' A V Krebs, Director, Corporate Agribusiness Research Project and author of Corporate Reapers, reports that in 1990 nearly 22% of US farm operator households had incomes below the official poverty threshold, twice the rate of all US families. In 1993, over 88% of the average farm operator household income was derived from off-farm income. From 1982 to 1993 the index of prices received by farmers rose only 7.5% while the index of prices paid by farmers for inputs multiplied over threefold to 23%. As Krebs queried: Is it any wonder that our farmers during the period from 1990 to 1994 saw an almost minuscule 1.98% return on their investment? Is it any wonder that from 1987 to 1992 in the US farm entries dropped to less than 67,000 per year while 'exits' averaged 99,000 per year, resulting in the net loss of 32,000 farms a year. The myth of the unproductive small farmers and fisherfolk The main argument used for the industrialisation of food and corporatisation of agriculture is the low productivity of the small farmer. However, even the World Development Report has accepted that small farms are more productive than large ones. In Brazil, the productivity of a 0-10ha farm was $85/ha while the productivity of a 500 ha farm was $2/ha. In India, a 0-5 acre farm had a productivity of Rs.735/acre while a 35 acre farm had a productivity of Rs.346/acre. The state of Bengal was showed the highest rate of growth of 6.5% for agriculture as a result of land reform, while the rate of growth for India was a mere 3%. Even biologically, small diverse farms have higher productivity than large monoculture farms. Productivity of monocultures is low in the context of diverse outputs and needs. It is high only in the restricted context of output of 'part of a part' of the forest and farm biomass. For example, 'high yield' plantations pick one tree species among thousands, for yields of one part of the tree (e.g.pulp wood).

'High yield' Green Revolution cropping patterns pick one crop among hundreds e.g. wheat for yields of one part of the wheat plant (only grain). These high partial yields do not translate into high total (including diverse) yields. Productivity is therefore different depending on whether it is measured in a framework of diversity or uniformity. A recent article in Scientific American has developed this approach further and has shown how the economic calculations of agricultural productivity of the dominant paradigm distort the real measure of productivity by leaving out the benefits of internal inputs derived from biodiversity as well as the additional financial and ecological costs generated by purchase of external inputs to substitute for internal inputs in monoculture systems. In a polyculture system, five units of input are used to produce 300 units of food thus having a productivity of 1.5. In an industrial monoculture, 300 units of input are used to produce 100 units of food, thus having a productivity of .33. The polyculture system which has been called 'low yielding' and hence incapable of meeting food needs is therefore five times more productive than the so-called 'high yielding' monoculture. Quoting Mr Obaidullah Khan, Head of FAO's Regional Office for Asia and Pacific, Martin Khor of Third World Network said the intensive model of Green Revolution agriculture was not sustainable due to rising costs and falling yields. As in the case of crop production, industrial fisheries and aquaculture also consume more resources than they produce. As Dr John Kurien pointed out, in 1988, global shrimp aquaculture consumed 180,000 tonnes of fish meal derived from an equivalent of 9 lakh tonnes of wet-weight fish. It is further estimated that by the year 2000 about 570,000 tonnes of cultured fish will be produced in Asia. The feed requirement for this will be in the order of 1.1 million tonnes. This is equivalent to 5.5 million tonnes of wet-weight fish, nearly double the total marine fish harvested in India today. Fish meal provides the crucial link between industrial aquaculture and industrial fisheries since the fish used for fish meal is harvested from the sea through trawlers and purseines which totally deplete marine stocks. This falsifies the often-used argument by agencies like the World Bank that promotion of aquaculture is like moving from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture in fisheries and will reduce the pressure on marine resources. Genetic engineering Other experts from India who presented papers at panels were Dr B D Sharma, Dr D Bandopadhyay, Dr Sultan Ismail, Dr Vijayalakshmi, Mr Pandhari Pandey,

Prof Ramakrishnan, Dr Santosh Satya, Dr Indira Hirway and Dr Darshini Mahadevia. They gave details of the impact of structural adjustment on agriculture and food security and also developed the sustainable alternatives available to ensure safe and adequate food for all. In spite of all evidence pointing to the high diversity, productivity and sustainability of small family farms, globalisation is wiping out these efficient systems and replacing them with inefficient and unhealthy industrialised food systems under corporate control. The myth of low productivity of diversity-based small farms is also being used to promote genetic engineering. In her paper on 'Biodiversity and Biotechnology', Beth Burrows called genetic engineering a form of Structural Adjustment but directed by Ciba-Geigy and Monsanto rather than by the World Bank and IMF. Vandana Shiva pointed out how the same corporations which want regulation for Intellectual Property Rights, want deregulation for biosafety. They want organisms to be treated as 'novel' when it comes to claiming property rights and as 'natural' when it comes to taking responsibility. These corporations pushed for trade liberalisation of agriculture under the Uruguay Round of GATT. They are now demanding total freedom of investment as a right. As Martin Khor of the Third World Network stated, the industrialised countries are now threatening to launch a new Uruguay Round at the WTO Ministerial Meeting to be held in Singapore at the end of the year. The biggest issue was the Multilateral Investment Agreement, under which no country would have the right to screen foreign investment. Corporations wanted the right to enter and establish themselves with 100% equity, and total freedom to repatriate profits. They could buy farmers' land , set up plantations and fisheries and also undertake livestock rearing. Everywhere across the world, less food is being produced and less diverse food is being grown, and less is reaching the poor and hungry. Fewer farmers are finding a place in agriculture and even privileged consumers have no food security in the sense of access to safe and nutritious food. BSE-infected meat and hazardous chemicals are creating new health threats to the consumers even in affluent countries. The corporations are the only beneficiaries of freetrade and they are not in the business of ensuring food for all. As Senator McGovern of the US Senate had stated, 'Food security in private hands is no food security at all' because corporations are in the business of making money, not feeding people. When trade liberalisation policies were introduced in 1991 in India the Agriculture Secretary stated that 'food security is not food in the godowns but dollars in the pockets'. Dr Shiva pointed out that the dollars go to the pockets of the Cargills,

Continentals and Pepsicos, not the pockets of Indian farmers or fisherfolk. The centralised government-controlled food distribution system run by the Food Corporation of India depending on long-distance transport had its flaws, but these flaws can hardly be corrected by replacing it with an even more centralised corporate-controlled food system which promotes the export of Indian food grains and then imports food at high social, economic and political costs to people and the country. - TWN

Revolution in the Indian Countryside by Anuradha Mittal George W. Bush's three-day visit to India in the first week of March 2006 was not just about the U.S.-India nuclear deal. It was also about an agreement on farm research and education, foundation for which was laid in November 2005, following Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to the U.S. Known as the India-U.S. Knowledge Initiative on Agricultural Education, Research, Services and Commercial Linkages, the agreement is about the U.S. and India conducting joint research in transgenic crops, animals, and fisheries over a period of three years. Andy Mukherjee, a columnist for Bloomerberg.Com enthusiastically announced, "If the nuclear deal promises relief for India's power- starved industrial sector, the agricultural agreement has the potential to transform the nation's poverty-ridden countryside. The economics are simply unbeatable." Citing the success of Bt cotton in India, he states, "cotton production has been transformed since Monsanto was allowed to sell its GM cotton seeds to farmers in 2002." Indeed, Bt cotton has transformed both the cotton production and lives of farmers in India. The Unbeatable Economics of Genetic Engineering: A Harvest of Suicides While the Indian government was busy opening its vast network of public sector agricultural research institutes to U.S. private companies, the first nine days of March 2006 were marked with 25 farmers taking their own life in Maharashtra's cotton growing district of Vidarbha. By April 14, 2006, an estimated 443 farmers in the region had committed suicide to escape indebtedness since the start of the agriculture season on June 2, 2005. What is driving this harvest of suicides? Last December, Jaideep Hardikar a journalist with India Together reported on the suicide of Ramesh Rathod in the village of Bondgavhan, Vidarbha. He had purchased Bollgard brand MECH 162 variety from companies with commercial license from Mahyco/Monsanto for Rs. 1800 ($36) per 450 grams, compared with the 450 rupees ($9) that farmers pay for non-Bt seeds. The official price for Bt cotton is Rs. 1600 ($30), but the local inputs dealer charged an additional Rs. 200 since Ramesh bought it on credit. Ramesh's hopes were dashed when his Bt cotton crops had a severe pest attack and the leaves of his cotton plants turned red before drying up. After having spent a lot of money on inputs and the yield destroyed irreparably, he was in no position to pay back the loans he had taken. With no option left, he opted for death by consuming pesticide. Left behind to pay back the debt and shoulder the responsibility of a family including a young son and a daughter, Ramesh's grieving widow, Dharmibai used Endosulphane and Tracer - two costly pesticides - against the bollworm pest, but the three acres of land did not even yield three quintals of cotton. More recently AFP reported the suicide of 34 - year old Indian cotton farmer Chandrakant Gurenule from Yavatmal. He too had bought the genetically-modified cotton seeds for his 15-acre (six-hectare) farm, only to watch his crops fail for two successive years. When there was no hope left, despite him selling off the pair of bullocks he used to plough the fields, and pawning his wife's wedding jewelry, he doused himself in kerosene and lit a match on April 1, 2006. It is estimated that more than 4,100 farmers committed suicide in the western state of Maharashtra in 2004. Increasing cost of production along with sliding global prices and dumping

of cheap subsidized cotton from outside the country has been compounded by failure of Bt seeds. Devastated by bollworm pest, Bt crops have been attacked by "Lalya" or "reddening" as well, a disease unseen before which affected Bt more than the non-Bt cotton crop, resulting in 60 percent of farmers in Maharashtra failing to recover costs from their first GM harvest. Some studies show that farmers are spending Rs. 6,813 ($136.26) per acre compared to Rs. 580 ($11.6) on non-Bt cotton since GE cotton requires more supplemental insecticide sprays. It is this failure of the Bt cotton that resulted in Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of India banning Mech 12, Mech 184, and Mech 162 varieties in Andhra Pradesh while Mech 12 was banned all over Southern India. India-U.S. Knowledge Initiative: In Who's Interest? At the first board meeting of the Knowledge Initiative in Washington D.C. in December 2005, representatives from both the Wal-Mart food chain and Monsanto Seed Corporation were present as key stakeholders in the agreement, a clear indication as to what lies ahead: Indian Agricultural Universities and Krishi Vigyan Kendras (Agricultural Research Centers), instead of catering to the needs of poor farmers, will now be promoting the interests of GE giant Monsanto and Wal- Mart. Then there is the fear of biopiracy with U.S. multinationals having free access to India's genetic resources. The agreement might set the American model in place where following the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, even publicly funded research in U.S. universities and institutes is patented and licensed out for commercial development to companies such as Monsanto. Not surprisingly then, the weekly newsletter of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) wrote in protest, "Today's gene revolution depends almost entirely on private domain science. If we harness Indian scientific research to the U.S., then it is allowing the complete dominance of companies such as Monsanto on Indian agriculture. By Patenting and Branding Seeds, they will openly exploit Indian agriculture. India will be coerced into production of raw materials for the American MNCs and in turn these multinationals will sell their branded end products through misleading advertisements and catchy slogans, labeling their products efficacious, hygienic and safe from health point of view." Krishna Bir Chaudhary, leader of Bharat Krishak Samaj, a farmers' organization in India in an opinion editorial wrote, "The Indo-U.S. agreement on agriculture will cast a demonizing spell over the country and is bound to cause large-scale plunder of the agro-society and definitely tend to capitalize on our living, life pattern, culture and social norms. Already much maligned, misconceived and utterly irrelevant second green revolution is a clever ploy to promote the interest of America and other Multi National Corporation's (MNCs)." Revolutionizing Profits of Agribusiness Celebrating the accord, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, " Our first Green Revolution benefited in substantial measure from assistance provided by the U.S. We are hopeful that the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture will become the harbinger of a second green revolution in our country." It was the U.S. initiative that brought the Green Revolution and its "miracle" wheat seeds to India four decades ago. Fueled by large doses of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, manufactured by the U.S. corporations, the Green Revolution put the Indian farmer on the treadmill of imported seeds and chemical inputs. Now with the revolution at a dead end, with pests resistant to pesticides and fields choked with chemicals, the U.S. is offering India the revolution of Genetic Engineering.

To add to the destitution in the countryside, the Indian government has decided to liberalize agricultural sector. For instance, despite the increase in wheat production this year to beat 73.1 million tons, which is more than sufficient to meet domestic needs, the Indian government decided to import 500,000 tons of wheat from AWB Ltd., an Australian public sector company, that has been investigated for alleged payment of $290 million kickback to the Saddam regime in Iraq for supply of wheat. Citing "rising domestic prices due to shortage" as a pretext for imports, India is buying wheat at a higher price of $178.75 a ton from AWB, when the Australian exporters have sold wheat in the global market at $131 per ton. Price of wheat did increase, particularly in the South, in January and February 2006, but it was a result of artificial shortage. As Ashok Sharma, a journalist with India's Financial Express explains in his Farm Column, "Last year wheat output was 72 million tons but the government agencies procured about 18 million tons while the private trade procured and stocked a substantial amount. With liberalization of the economy, the government removed all restrictions on the stocking limit. The result is that the private trade is now in a position to stock any amount and manipulate market prices. It is a shame that the government, instead of re-imposing stocking limits, is citing the need for imports on the pretext of shortageŠ Wheat can be transported through railways in bulk in silos at a cheaper cost. The food ministry could pay the amount out of the earmarked subsidy to another government department - railways - for transportation. It is just an adjustment of the accounts within the government without involving any extra cost." Instead, at the recommendation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Indian government has decided to import an additional three million tons. Abdicating its responsibility to the farmers, the Indian government is not willing to pay them more than Rs. 7,000 ($120) per ton while it is prepared to import wheat, the cost of which including handling and transportation would amount to Rs. 10,000 ($200) a ton. The Way Out With India home to 50 percent of the world's hungry and two thirds of its population depending on agriculture for its livelihood, the Indian countryside does need a revolution. This revolution, however, will look very different from the one envisaged by the India-U.S. Knowledge Initiative or opening up of markets. Based on the principle of food sovereignty, this revolution will recognize "the right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture and to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade in order to achieve sustainable development objectives." This revolution would entail: - Prioritizing local, regional and national needs and protecting local and national markets of basic food stuffs to give priority to the products of local farmers; - Promoting and enforcing farmer's rights including access and ownership of commons including land, water and seeds; - Promoting sustainable peasant agriculture; - Promoting the formulation of trade policies and practices that serve the rights of peoples to safe, healthy and ecologically sustainable production; - And, recognizing food sovereignty as a human right.

India is the already the third largest producer of food in the world - world's largest producer of milk, second largest producer of rice, wheat, sugar, fruits and vegetables, and the third largest producer of cotton, to mention a few. Looking at the economics of it all, genetic engineering and Bt cotton will not revolutionize India's countryside, help increase production, or help feed over 350 million of its people who live on less than $1 a day, but a new farm economy as the centerpiece of the country's economic development model will. Anuradha Mittal is the executive director of the Oakland Institute, a policy think whose mission is to increase public participation and promote fair debate on critical social, economic and environmental issues in both national and international forums.

Lessons from the Green Revolution March/April 2000

Do We Need New Technology to End Hunger? Faced with an estimated 786 million hungry people in the world, cheerleaders for our social order have an easy solution: we will grow more food through the magic of chemicals and genetic engineering. For those who remember the original "Green Revolution" promise to end hunger through miracle seeds, this call for "Green Revolution II" should ring hollow. Yet Monsanto, Novartis, AgrEvo, DuPont, and other chemical companies who are reinventing themselves as biotechnology companies, together with the World Bank and other international agencies, would have the world's anti-hunger energies aimed down the path of more agrochemicals and genetically modified crops. This second Green Revolution, they tell us, will save the world from hunger and starvation if we just allow these various companies, spurred by the free market, to do their magic. The Green Revolution myth goes like this: the miracle seeds of the Green Revolution increase grain yields and therefore are a key to ending world hunger. Higher yields mean more income for poor farmers, helping them to climb out of poverty, and more food means less hunger. Dealing with the root causes of poverty that contribute to hunger takes a very long time and people are starving now. So we must do what we can-increase production. The Green Revolution buys the time Third World countries desperately need to deal with the underlying social causes of poverty and to cut birth rates. In any case, outsiders-like the scientists and policy advisers behind the Green Revolution-can't tell a poor country to reform its economic and political system, but they can contribute invaluable expertise in food production. While the first Green Revolution may have missed poorer areas with more marginal lands, we can learn valuable lessons from that experience to help launch a second Green Revolution to defeat hunger once and for all. Improving seeds through experimentation is what people have been up to since the beginning of agriculture, but the term "Green Revolution" was coined in the 1960s to highlight a particularly striking breakthrough. In test plots in northwest Mexico, improved varieties of wheat dramatically increased yields. Much of the reason why these "modern varieties" produced more than traditional varieties was that they were more responsive to controlled irrigation and to petrochemical fertilizers, allowing for much more efficient conversion of industrial inputs into food. With a big boost from the International

Agricultural Research Centers created by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the "miracle" seeds quickly spread to Asia, and soon new strains of rice and corn were developed as well. By the 1970s, the term "revolution" was well deserved, for the new seeds-accompanied by chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and, for the most part, irrigation-had replaced the traditional farming practices of millions of Third World farmers. By the 1990s, almost 75 percent of Asian rice areas were sown with these new varieties. The same was true for almost half of the wheat planted in Africa and more than half of that in Latin America and Asia, and about 70 percent of the world's corn as well. Overall, it was estimated that 40 percent of all farmers in the Third World were using Green Revolution seeds, with the greatest use found in Asia, followed by Latin America. Clearly, the production advances of the Green Revolution are no myth. Thanks to the new seeds, tens of millions of extra tons of grain a year are being harvested. But has the Green Revolution actually proven itself a successful strategy for ending hunger? Not really. Narrowly focusing on increasing production-as the Green Revolution does-cannot alleviate hunger because it fails to alter the tightly concentrated distribution of economic power, especially access to land and purchasing power. Even the World Bank concluded in a major 1986 study of world hunger that a rapid increase in food production does not necessarily result in food security-that is, less hunger. Current hunger can only be alleviated by "redistributing purchasing power and resources toward those who are undernourished," the study said. In a nutshell-if the poor don't have the money to buy food, increased production is not going to help them. Introducing any new agricultural technology into a social system stacked in favor of the rich and against the poor-without addressing the social questions of access to the technology's benefits-will over time lead to an even greater concentration of the rewards from agriculture, as is happening in the United States. Because the Green Revolution approach does nothing to address the insecurity that lies at the root of high birth rates-and can even heighten that insecurity-it cannot buy time until population growth slows. Finally, a narrow focus on production ultimately defeats itself as it destroys the very resource base on which agriculture depends. We've come to see that without a strategy for change that addresses the powerlessness of the poor, the tragic result will be more food and yet more hunger.

More Food and Yet More Hunger? Despite three decades of rapidly expanding global food supplies, there are still an estimated 786 million hungry people in the world in the

1990s. Where are these 786 million hungry people? Since the early 1980s, media representations of famines in Africa have awakened Westerners to hunger there, but Africa represents less than onequarter of the hunger in the world today. We are made blind to the dayin-day-out hunger suffered by hundreds of millions more. For example, by the mid-1980s, newspaper headlines were applauding the Asian success stories-India and Indonesia, we were told, had become "selfsufficient in food" or even "food exporters." But it is in Asia, precisely where Green Revolution seeds have contributed to the greatest production success, that roughly two-thirds of the undernourished in the entire world live. According to Business Week magazine, "even though Indian granaries are overflowing now," thanks to the success of the Green Revolution in raising wheat and rice yields, "5,000 children die each day of malnutrition. One-third of India's 900 million people are povertystricken." Since the poor can't afford to buy what is produced, "the government is left trying to store millions of tons of foods. Some is rotting, and there is concern that rotten grain will find its way to public markets." The article concludes that the Green Revolution may have reduced India's grain imports substantially, but did not have a similar impact on hunger. Such analysis raises serious questions about the number of hungry people in the world in 1970 versus 1990, spanning the two decades of major Green Revolution advances. At first glance, it looks as though great progress was made, with food production up and hunger down. The total food available per person in the world rose by 11 percent over those two decades, while the estimated number of hungry people fell from 942 million to 786 million, a 16 percent drop. This was apparent progress, for which those behind the Green Revolution were understandably happy to take the credit. But these figures merit a closer look. If you eliminate China from the analysis, the number of hungry people in the rest of the world actually increased by more than 11 percent, from 536 to 597 million. In South America, for example, while per capita food supplies rose almost 8 percent, the number of hungry people also went up, by 19 percent. In south Asia, there was 9 percent more food per person by 1990, but there were also 9 percent more hungry people. Nor was it increased population that made for more hungry people. The total food available per person actually increased. What made possible greater hunger was the failure to address unequal access to food and food-producing resources. The remarkable difference in China, where the number of hungry dropped from 406 million to 189 million, almost begs the question: which has been more effective at reducing hunger-the Green Revolution or the Chinese Revolution, where broad-based changes in access to land paved the way for rising living standards?

Whether the Green Revolution or any other strategy to boost food production will alleviate hunger depends on the economic, political, and cultural rules that people make. These rules determine who benefits as a supplier of the increased production-whose land and crops prosper and for whose profit-and who benefits as a consumer of the increased production-who gets the food and at what price. The poor pay more and get less. Poor farmers can't afford to buy fertilizer and other inputs in volume; big growers can get discounts for large purchases. Poor farmers can't hold out for the best price for their crops, as can larger farmers whose circumstances are far less desperate. In much of the world, water is the limiting factor in farming success, and irrigation is often out of the reach of the poor. Canal irrigation favors those near the top of the flow. Tubewells, often promoted by development agencies, favor the bigger operators, who can better afford the initial investment and have lower costs per unit. Credit is also critical. It is common for small farmers to depend on local moneylenders and pay interest rates several times as high as wealthier farmers. Government-subsidized credit overwhelmingly benefits the big farmers. Most of all, the poor lack clout. They can't command the subsidies and other government favors accruing to the rich. With the Green Revolution, farming becomes petro-dependent. Some of the more recently developed seeds may produce higher yields even without manufactured inputs, but the best results require the right amounts of chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and water. So as the new seeds spread, petrochemicals become part of farming. In India, adoption of the new seeds has been accompanied by a sixfold rise in fertilizer use per acre. Yet the quantity of agricultural production per ton of fertilizer used in India dropped by two-thirds during the Green Revolution years. In fact, over the past thirty years the annual growth of fertilizer use on Asian rice has been from three to forty times faster than the growth of rice yields. Because farming methods that depend heavily on chemical fertilizers do not maintain the soil's natural fertility and because pesticides generate resistant pests, farmers need ever more fertilizers and pesticides just to achieve the same results. At the same time, those who profit from the increased use of fertilizers and pesticides fear labor organizing and use their new wealth to buy tractors and other machines, even though they are not required by the new seeds. This incremental shift leads to the industrialization of farming. Once on the path of industrial agriculture, farming costs more. It can be more profitable, of course, but only if the prices farmers get for their crops stay ahead of the costs of petrochemicals and machinery. Green Revolution proponents claim increases in net incomes from farms of all sizes once farmers adopt the more responsive seeds. But recent studies also show another trend: outlays for fertilizers and pesticides may be going up faster than yields, suggesting that Green

Revolution farmers are now facing what U.S. farmers have experienced for decades-a cost-price squeeze. In Central Luzon, Philippines, rice yield increased 13 percent during the 1980s, but came at the cost of a 21 percent increase in fertilizer use. In the Central Plains, yields went up only 6.5 percent, while fertilizer use rose 24 percent and pesticides jumped by 53 percent. In West Java, a 23 percent yield increase was virtually canceled by 65 and 69 percent increases in fertilizers and pesticides respectively. To anyone following farm news here at home, these reports have a painfully familiar ring-and why wouldn't they? After all, the United States-not Mexico-is the true birthplace of the Green Revolution. Improved seeds combined with chemical fertilizers and pesticides have pushed corn yields up nearly three-fold since 1950, with smaller but still significant gains for wheat, rice, and soybeans. Since World War II, as larger harvests have pushed down the prices farmers get for their crops while the costs of farming have shot up, farmers' profit margins have been drastically narrowed. By the early 1990s, production costs had risen from about half to over 80 percent of gross farm income. So who survives today? Two very different groups: those few farmers who chose not to buy into industrialized agriculture and those able to keep expanding their acreage to make up for their lower per acre profit. Among this second select group are the top 1.2 percent of farms by income, those with $500,000 or more in yearly sales, dubbed "superfarms" by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1969, the superfarms earned 16 percent of net farm income; by the late 1980s, they garnered nearly 40 percent. Superfarms triumph not because they are more efficient food producers or because the Green Revolution technology itself favored them, but because of advantages that accrue to wealth and size. They have the capital to invest and the volume necessary to stay afloat even if profits per unit shrink. They have the political clout to shape tax policies in their favor. Over time, why should we expect the result of the cost-price squeeze to be any different in the Third World? In the United States, we've seen the number of farms drop by two-thirds and average farm size more than double since World War II. The gutting of rural communities, the creation of inner-city slums, and the exacerbation of unemployment all followed in the wake of this vast migration from the land. Think what the equivalent rural exodus means in the Third World, where the number of jobless people is already double or triple our own.

Not Ecologically Sustainable There is also growing evidence that Green Revolution-style farming is not ecologically sustainable, even for large farmers. In the 1990s,

Green Revolution researchers themselves sounded the alarm about a disturbing trend that had only just come to light. After achieving dramatic increases in the early stages of the technological transformation, yields began falling in a number of Green Revolution areas. In Central Luzon, Philippines, rice yields grew steadily during the 1970s, peaked in the early 1980s, and have been dropping gradually ever since. Long-term experiments conducted by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in both Central Luzon and Laguna Province confirm these results. Similar patterns have now been observed for rice-wheat systems in India and Nepal. The causes of this phenomenon have to do with forms of long-term soil degradation that are still poorly understood by scientists. An Indian farmer told Business Week his story: Dyal Singh knows that the soil on his 3.3-hectare [8 acre] farm in Punjab is becoming less fertile. So far, it hasn't hurt his harvest of wheat and corn. "There will be a great problem after 5 or 10 years," says the 63-year-old Sikh farmer. Years of using high-yield seeds that require heavy irrigation and chemical fertilizers have taken their toll on much of India's farmland.Š So far, 6 percent of agricultural land has been rendered useless. Where yields are not actually declining, the rate of growth is slowing rapidly or leveling off, as has now been documented in China, North Korea, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

The Green Revolution: Some Lessons Having seen food production advance while hunger widens, we are now prepared to ask: under what conditions are greater harvests doomed to failure in eliminating hunger? First, where farmland is bought and sold like any other commodity and society allows the unlimited accumulation of farmland by a few, superfarms replace family farms and all of society suffers. Second, where the main producers of food-small farmers and farm workers-lack bargaining power relative to suppliers of farm inputs and food marketers, producers get a shrinking share of the rewards from farming. Third, where dominant technology destroys the very basis for future production, by degrading the soil and generating pest and weed problems, it becomes increasingly difficult and costly to sustain yields. Under these three conditions, mountains of additional food could not eliminate hunger, as hunger in America should never let us forget. The

alternative is to create a viable and productive small farm agriculture using the principles of agroecology. That is the only model with the potential to end rural poverty, feed everyone, and protect the environment and the productivity of the land for future generations.

Successful Examples That sounds good, but has it ever worked? From the United States to India, alternative agriculture is proving itself viable. In the United States, a landmark study by the prestigious National Research Council found that "alternative farmers often produce high per acre yields with significant reductions in costs per unit of crop harvested," despite the fact that "many federal policies discourage adoption of alternative practices." The Council concluded that "Federal commodity programs must be restructured to help farmers realize the full benefits of the productivity gains possible through alternative practices." In South India, a 1993 study was carried out to compare "ecological farms" with matched "conventional" or chemical-intensive farms. The study's author found that the ecological farms were just as productive and profitable as the chemical ones. He concluded that if extrapolated nationally, ecological farming would have "no negative impact on food security," and would reduce soil erosion and the depletion of soil fertility while greatly lessening dependence on external inputs. But Cuba is where alternative agriculture has been put to its greatest test. Changes underway in that island nation since the collapse of trade with the former socialist bloc provide evidence that the alternative approach can work on a large scale. Before 1989, Cuba was a model Green Revolution-style farm economy, based on enormous production units, using vast quantities of imported chemicals and machinery to produce export crops, while over half of the island's food was imported. Although the government's commitment to equity, as well as favorable terms of trade offered by Eastern Europe, meant that Cubans were not undernourished, the underlying vulnerability of this style of farming was exposed when the collapse of the socialist bloc joined the already existing and soon to be tightened U.S. trade embargo. Cuba was plunged into the worst food crisis in its history, with consumption of calories and protein dropping by perhaps as much as 30 percent. Nevertheless, by 1997, Cubans were eating almost as well as they did before 1989, yet comparatively little food and agrochemicals were being imported. What happened? Faced with the impossibility of importing either food or agrochemical inputs, Cuba turned inward to create a more self-reliant agriculture based on higher crop prices to farmers, agroecological technology, smaller production units, and urban agriculture. The combination of a

trade embargo, food shortages, and the opening of farmers' markets meant that farmers began to receive much better prices for their products. Given this incentive to produce, they did so, even in the absence of Green Revolution-style inputs. They were given a huge boost by the reorientation of government education, research, and extension toward alternative methods, as well as the rediscovery of traditional farming techniques. As small farmers and cooperatives responded by increasing production while large-scale state farms stagnated and faced plunging yields, the government initiated the newest phase of revolutionary land reform, parceling out the state farms to their former employees as smallerscale production units. Finally, the government mobilized support for a growing urban agriculture movement-small-scale organic farming on vacant lots-which, together with the other changes, transformed Cuban cities and urban diets in just a few years. The Cuban experience tells us that we can feed a nation's people with a small-farm model based on agroecological technology, and in so doing we can become more self-reliant in food production. A key lesson is that when farmers receive fairer prices, they produce, with or without Green Revolution seed and chemical inputs. If these expensive and noxious inputs are unnecessary, then we can dispense with them.

The Bottom Line In the final analysis, if the history of the Green Revolution has taught us one thing, it is that increased food production can-and often does-go hand in hand with greater hunger. If the very basis of staying competitive in farming is buying expensive inputs, then wealthier farmers will inexorably win out over the poor, who are unlikely to find adequate employment to compensate for the loss of farming livelihoods. Hunger is not caused by a shortage of food, and cannot be eliminated by producing more. This is why we must be skeptical when Monsanto, DuPont, Novartis, and other chemical-cum-biotechnology companies tell us that genetic engineering will boost crop yields and feed the hungry. The technologies they push have dubious benefits and well-documented risks, and the second Green Revolution they promise is no more likely to end hunger than the first. Far too many people do not have access to the food that is already available because of deep and growing inequality. If agriculture can play any role in alleviating hunger, it will only be to the extent that the bias toward wealthier and larger farmers is reversed through pro-poor alternatives like land reform and sustainable agriculture, which reduce inequality and make small farmers the center of an economically vibrant rural economy.

* Peter Rosset has a Ph.D. in agricultural ecology and is the executive director of Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy (http://www.foodfirst.org), which was founded by Joseph Collins and Frances Moore Lappé in 1975. This article is based on research presented in World Hunger: 12 Myths, second edition by Frances Moore Lappé, Joseph Collins, and Peter Rosset, with Luis Esparza (Grove Press/Earthscan, 1998).