Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

S. Jeevananda Reddy

Telangana Academy of Sciences
India

Firstly, the entire document is built on theoretical path but real world practical path is utmost important. For this, it needs to look in to all aspects country-wise. Then only it will have some use. I said “some” is basically because multinational seed and fertilizer companies impose on the individual countries to monopolize business interests whether they fit in to the system or not. This exactly what is happening in India and the same may be true elsewhere.  Also such foods including infant food is dumped into third world countries by Multinational Companies [MNCs] of the West where commercial agriculture is practiced. Officially Uttarkhand is an organic farming state. Government is giving chemical input kits “free” to create addiction and move away from organic farming. Different state governments are falling over each other in their haste to promote hybrid maize in the name of food security. Here governments are colluding with multinational seed companies. The fact is maize is not consumed as food in India.

Secondly, the entire document was built on the two words, namely “Sustainable” & “Resilient”.  Under unsustainable system, resilient has no relevance. The draft V1.0 refers the resilient production system to the ability of a system to prevent disasters and crises as well as to anticipate, absorb, accommodate or recover from them in a timely, efficient and sustainable manner. Theoretically it looks to be sound but in practice it is rarely achieved. The sustainable issue automatically mosque the resilient under sustainable system. The sustainable food system [SFS] is a food system that ensures food security and nutrition for all in such a way that the economic, social and environmental bases to generate food security and nutrition of future generations and not compromised. Under polluted water this is rarely achieved. For example, in Hyderabad city, where I live, crops are grown using highly toxic polluted water of Musi River. This is common all around urban India.

In India, National Advisory Council (NAC) released a National Food Security Bill, 2013.  In this there are two important clauses that needs mention in this context, namely – “Right to Food Security – Right to access of food security – 4. Every person shall have physical, economic and social access, at all times, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate, sufficient and safe food, which ensures an active and healthy life”; and “Rate for priority households – 24. The state government shall provide priority households whether rural or urban a minimum of 7 kg of food grains per person per month, at a price not exceeding Rs. 3 per kg for rice, Rs. 2 per kg for wheat and Rs. 1 per kg of millets at 2010-11 rates, which will not be revised upward for a minimum period of 10years from the date of notification of the Act”.  

Governments after chemical inputs technology crops grown under heavy subsidy under irrigation were included in Public Distribution System [PDS] again under “subsidized scheme” and made people to addict to unhealthy diet based on rice & wheat that lead even poor people suffering from new diseases, hitherto were with the rich. This way the governments with step-motherly policies affected the area under millets that provides healthy diet, which could not compete with subsidized rice & wheat in market. Thus poor stopped eating healthy millet food as it costs more than several times to that of rice & wheat under PDS. In some states like Andhra Pradesh used subsidized rice scheme in PDS to gain political power and wealth. This affected the animal husbandry component of agriculture.

With this introduction, let us see the production issues [below references provide specific issues].

            Sustainable development: There are umpteen numbers of definitions for sustainable development. Some are generalized and some are specific. Under generalized condition/ system: Sustainable development must meet the basic needs of people “today” without ruining the chances of “future” generation to do the same. However, in reality sustainable development is hindered by climate change & human interference in food system.

In general climate change is used as de-facto global warming. This has no meaning. This is clear from the definitions of climate change and global warming by IPCC [Inter-governmental Plan on Climate Change] and UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change]. Climate refers to all meteorological parameters, such as temperature, rainfall/snowfall, relative humidity, wind, solar radiation, etc. 

For agriculture, in Warm Tropics moisture is the limiting factor where most of the developing countries are located; and growing season length is the limiting factor in middle-latitudes – withdrawal time and onset time of winter -- where developed countries are located. For developing appropriate sustainable agriculture systems, the most appropriate is the studies on agro-climate and agro-meteorology. The scientific institutes rarely bothered on such studies as the global warming studies provide unlimited funds to make time-pass research. UN agencies support this. This is seen from Paris 2015 Agreement.

When the global warming studies are in the birth stage, I carried out agro-climatic and agrometeorological studies for India, northern Australia, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Upper Volta [now Burkina Faso] and Senegal countries.  All these I compiled in a book form [earlier they were published in Journals of international repute] (Reddy, 1993). Now the second edition is out from the publisher (2018) with the same title. Scientists from Pune University from India carried out the analysis for Maharashtra State in India in 2009; a student did Ph.D. from Pune University on Bhīma Basin in Maharashtra state earlier to this under my guidance. Such analysis provides the level of sustainability – drought risk. These are linked to local/regional rhythmic pattern in rainfall.

Droughts and floods are part of natural variability in precipitation and are modified by local conditions and method used to define them. Rao et al. (2013) presented elaborate study and presented an Atlas on Vulnerability of Indian Agriculture to Climate Change. The study has not really studied the climate change but used it as an adjective. This report presented a map of drought proneness. It shows except coastal Gujarat, all parts of India present less than 25%. In my work cited above [Reddy, 1993] they reach as high as 60% in the Western side of Western Ghats. 

In agriculture sense, climate change relates to water availability from rainfall and snowfall; and destruction of production through floods and cyclonic activity – they are region specific. However, they are the major sources for water availability at local and regional level. Normal rains rarely work for sustainability of dams/reservoirs, tanks, etc.  In the case of human interference, the major issues are the sharing of water and pollution – domestic, industrial and agricultural.

Sustainable development in the case of food: This relates to the security in food production and security in nutrition in addition to socio-economic security of farmers.  Over different parts of the globe, food production systems are highly variable. The two main systems are irrigated and rain-fed agriculture systems. The irrigation system is divided into further in flow irrigation [surface] and lift [wells & bore-wells] (groundwater). Rain-fed agriculture system relates to in-situ rainfall and thus directly relate to drought proneness.

Current agriculture systems are corporate, cooperative and traditional.  In developing countries around 2 to 5% of the populations are in agriculture sector. They follow the corporate/mechanized/commercial agriculture system.  In developing countries around 60% of the populations are in agriculture sector. Here the farming system includes the animal husbandry and follow crops/cropping pattern. However, this is affected by high yielding seeds under chemical inputs. Inputs cost has gone up. Also, farm holdings have drastically come down with the growth of population, and thus agriculture became uneconomical. To overcome this problem cooperative agriculture was proposed.

Box 1 “Red Ecovide, Brazil” – this system was in use before 1960s where, I remember as child, that neighbouring village farmers bring sweet potato in bullock carts [they grow under well irrigation, where bulls are used to lift water from the well] and exchange them for grain. Now there is no such thing.

Cooperative agriculture system overcomes the problem of smaller farm holdings: Cooperatives though not new to India, in agriculture there are few isolated cases only.  Anada Dairy Milk [White Revolution] cooperative was successful in Gujarat.  Sugarcane/Sugar cooperative in Maharashtra also showed the success path.  Israel government is implementing the cooperative agriculture with government’s assistance.

In 2001, the then Chief Minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh State, N. Chandrababu Naiudu released a White Paper on Agriculture and Vision 2020 on corporate agriculture. Also corporate agriculture was implemented in Kuppam with government money and planned to extend the same in different districts of undivided Andhra Pradesh [with around 10,000 acres each]. Kuppam experiment failed. This was an export oriented commercial crop—baby corn. Dr. YSR, as opposition leader, asked me to present a black paper on these.  This was released in the Press Gallery of Assembly Hall on 15th February 2001.  Majority of the print media reported this on 16th editions.  One of the English daily reported with a heading “Cong advocates cooperative farming”.  It states that the aim of the ruling party is to pave the way for corporate agriculture at the expense of lakhs of farmers and farm workers in the state. Apprehended that the proposed corporate agriculture, if allowed to take over the farm sector, would further widen the rich-poor gap and that the farmers would become coolies on their own lands. In this backdrop, the solution lay not in corporate agriculture, but in cooperative Agriculture/farming 

When Dr. YSR became the Chief Minister in 2004, they announced that the government’s intension of introducing cooperative agriculture/farming. Unfortunately the advisor to the government, who was earlier associated with World Bank and Western MNCs, proposed corporate agriculture/farming under the disguise of cooperative agriculture/farming.  The farmers rejected this. I exposed this by writing to the chief minister as well presenting in the press.  The chief minister expressed willingness to review the proposal but unfortunately, he died in an accidental accident. 

Fragmentation of holdings is one of the main causes of low agricultural productivity as a lot of time and labour is wasted in moving seeds, fertilizers, implements and cattle, etc. In 19770-71 the average size was 2.28 ha; this was 1.41 in 1990-91; and 1.08 in 2015-16. Cooperative farming system of agriculture is the only solution under the present volatile political and climate conditions to achieve near sustainable production at farmers’ level and thereby strengthen their economic conditions and as well nation’s economy. Here farmers come together and cultivate the land without disturbing the boundaries by better utilizing the natural resources available in an effective way. Also, plan and store and sell the products through cooperatives joining together. At present middlemen are profiting.

            By including organic farming that includes components of traditional agriculture, namely animal husbandry, cropping system, crop rotation, etc. under cooperative agriculture system provide economic-food-nutrient security and as well provide employment, adulteration free milk. Organic agriculture is nothing but a traditional agriculture system wherein in the later fertilizer is farmyard manure/green manure and for the former fertilizer is compost – several types.  With chemical input technology in 1950-60s with mono crop based farming killed the animal husbandry based farming and thus nutrition based food security.  To overcome the non-availability of farmyard manure, techniques were devised to create compost – on farm and off-farm. Here progressive farmers’ innovation techniques can be incorporated. These issues are discussed in my book [Reddy, 2011] and the revised version is under printing.

Global Warming: So far none has established one to one relationship between anthropogenic greenhouse gases increase in the atmosphere and rise in global average temperature. Wide ranging predictions are seen in the literature using models that contributed huge quantity of CO2 through power consumption in running the computers.

Moving average technique is one such simple procedure that helps to separate trend from natural rhythmic variations. British Royal Society and US National Academy of Sciences brought out an overview “Climate Change: Evidence & causes” [24th February 2014]. The report includes a figure of annual march of global temperature anomaly along with 10-, 30- and 60-year moving average patterns using 1950 to 2010 data series. Here the moving average pattern showed the trend after eliminating 60 year rhythmic variation.

The fact is that the observed [adjusted-mutilated data series] global average temperature anomaly of 1880 to 2010 [using the procedure presented in WMO (1966)] presented a trend of 1.30 oC for 1880 to 2100. IPCC report fixed 1951 as the starting year of global warming and thus for 1951 to 2100 -- 150 years -- the raise in temperature is, [1.30/220] x 150 = 0.90 oC – if the data series are from 1850 to 2010, then it is [1.34/250] x 150 = 0.81 only. This trend is superposed by a natural cycle of 60-years wherein the Sine Curve varied between -0.3 oC and o +0.3 oC .

IPCC report state that more than half of the trend is due to greenhouse effect [global phenomenon] and less than half is due to non-greenhouse effect [local/regional phenomenon]. Greenhouse effect includes global warming caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases and volcanic aerosols, etc. Even if we assume global warming component alone is contributing by 50%, then the global warming is 0.90 x .50 = 0.45 oC.   USA temperature pattern [Raw and adjusted] showed a difference more than this. When we study jointly these, it shows global warming is practically negligible. However, annual and seasonal variations in temperature are far higher than 5.0 oC.  Non-greenhouse effects are presented by changes in ecology, namely land use and land cover changes and are represented by urban-heat-island and rural-cold-island effects. They are not associated with anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

Indian scientific groups are showing the rise in annual temperature is around 0.5 oC. The minimum temperature pattern showed higher rise over maximum temperature. Also, this temperature rise was not corrected to non-greenhouse effect – clearly seen in minimum temperature. The rise may be hardly around 0.2 oC only. This has no significance over the high year to year variabilities. Same is the case with USA temperature [U.S. Climate Special Report 2017].

State of Water Infrastructure in India: Presented at a Panel discussion session of AICE’18: Total Water Solutions, of American Water Works Association Conference on 16-17th November 2018 in Hyderabad.

India has around 18% of the world’s population, but has only 4.6% of the world’s water resources with 2.3% of the world’s land area. Though in terms of geographical area Chine is around three times to India, population and area under irrigation are more or less the same. The natural input to any surface water system is precipitation and snow melt which are highly variable with climate change. Also Human interference in terms of pollution and water availability estimates and management play critical role in the quantity and quality of water available in both space and time. In general: India uses around 25% of the world’s groundwater. Out of the total 5723 groundwater blocks in India, more than 30% are already in the danger zone due to overexploitation. This may go up to 60% by 2025.

In India, in 1960-61, around 30% of the net irrigated area was under wells & bore-wells. This has gone up to around 51% in 1999-00. In undivided AP level, they were 11% and 43%. In addition, wells & bore-wells are the main sources of drinking water in rural India. However, with indiscriminate pumping of groundwater, per pump irrigated area has drastically come down.  The River Sarayu that passes through Bihar & UP reduced the width from 1.5 km to 30-40 meters and polluted and thus groundwater depleted and thousands of hand pumps dried.

Immediately after the Independence, the First Prime Minister, Late Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru gave importance to irrigation sector wherein he considered “Dams are the modern Temples”. Yet around 60% of the cultivated area is still at the mercy of “Rain God”.  Irrigation Projects have been moving at snails speed as in the 7th & 8th 5-Year plan periods Watershed Development Programme was given top priority as this helped the party cadre to mint money.  Narmada Project is a classical example, which took several decades to complete the project. However, watershed technology failed in undivided Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, etc.

Polavaram multi-purpose-cost effective project was turned into cost-ineffective. This was cleared by the Justice Bachawat Tribunal on all aspects in 1981. Until 2004 nothing has happened. In 2005 Environmental Clearance was obtained. The file on getting the national project status, Just before going to cabinet meet in 2009  Central Water Commission put a break by asking the state to modify the project plan for 50 lakh Cusecs a fictitious figure of maximum flood instead of 38.2 lakh Cusecs.

This raised the cost from Rs. 10,000 crores to Rs. 16,000 crores. While this is going on, the state government completed 1st phase of Rehabilitation and Resettlement, excavation of right and left canals. Just at that time the then Chief Minister was killed. After the new government was formed in 2014, the cost has gone up to Rs. 60,000 crores – few days back central water resources minister raised this to Rs. 80,000 crores.  In 2015 with three failures, by lifting water through pumps and putting into right canal and claimed it as inter-linking of rivers instead of completing the Polavaram project, that would have provided water through gravity.

In Telangana state, by completing the pending irrigation projects on war-footing the cost of rural-drinking water scheme would have comedown drastically. Also successive governments have been just watching the destruction and polluting the local water resources in and around Hyderabad including the two drinking water reservoirs wherein water is available through gravity. Groundwater is contaminated with nitrates, sulphates and poisonous chemicals.

One-thirds of the Telangana state’s population lives in Hyderabad with huge infrastructure, establishments and industries. At huge cost infrastructure was created to bring water to Hyderabad from River Manjeera, River Krishna and River Godavari but failed to stop huge  losses of around 55% of which 60% through pilferages and 40% through leakages.  Large population drink purified water.

Around 75% of the water turns into sewage and around 20% is passed through STPs and finally flows in to Musi and again turns into sewage. In the last two decades successive governments planned to convert Musi into Sabarmati, Narmada water flushes the pollution in to the Sea but for Musi proper planning is required.

Industries use “Zero Discharge” to overcome pollution control board’s action. CETPs have no proper technology to treat industrial effluents and thus effluents are diluted with sewage at 50:50 ratios and with some treatment dump into Musi River through Amberpet STP. Rainwater also turns into wastewater with sewage and effluents freely flowing.

The core ailments for these are: they go by theoretical path instead of practical path; under poor ethics and poor governance. Niti Aayog brought out a composite water management index relating to augmentation-restoration & management of water. In the case of urban water management Chinese brought out a “Sponge City” concept [infiltrate, detention, store, clean, utilize, and discharge].  They are theoretically sound but they fail practically in India under climate change and pollution conditions.

Whatever may be the system of agriculture, poor quality of surface and ground water is affecting the quality of food produced. People of Hyderabad eat food produced using polluted water. This is affecting health of people and the money spent on health care is increasing --   Stan Cox’s “Sick Planet: Food and health” was presented the global condition of health care and pollution [I contributed for the pollution part].  See below some of my publications on these specific issues.

Concluding Remarks

It is more appropriate to carry out studies based on the reality at country level and thus assess the food and nutrition security aspects at regional level.  Global warming is not an important aspect as it is created to share billions of dollars by UN/World Bank/NGO agencies. You can see the wealth of Al Gore!

Publications:

Akumanchi Annand, et al., 2009.  Agro-climatic Zonation of Maharashtra State Using GIS. Trans. Inst. Indian Geographers, 31(1).

Blackman, R.B. & Tukey, J.W., 1958. The measurement of power spectra. New York, Dower Publ. Inc.

Parhasarathy, B., Munot, A.A. & Kothawale, D.R., 1995. “Monthly and Seasonal Rainfall Series for all-India Homogeneous regions and Meteorological Sub-divisions: 1871-1994. Institute of Tropical Meteorology [IITM], Pune, India, 113p.

Rao, C.A.R., Raju, B.M.K., Rao, A.V.M.S., Rao, K.V, Rao, V.UVV.M., Kausalya Ramachandran, Venkateswarlu, B. & Sikka, A.K., 2013. Atlas on Vulnerability of Indian Agriculture to Climate Change, National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA), Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA/ICAR), Hyderabad, India.

Reddy, S.J., 1984. Climatic fluctuations and homogenization of northeast Brazil using precipitation data. Pesq. Agropec. Bras. (Brazilia), 19:529-543.

 Reddy, S.J., 1977. Forecasting the onset of southwest monsoon over Kerala. Indian J. Meteorol. Hydrolo. Geophys., 28:113-114.

Reddy, S.J., 1993.  Agroclimatic/Agrometeorological techniques: As applicable to dry-land

agriculture in developing countries”, www.scribd.com/Google Books, 205p, Book Review

appeared in an International Journal “Agriculture and Forest Meteorology”, 67: 325-327

[1994] – 2nd Edition with the same title, Brillion Publishing, Karol Bagh, New Delhi, 2019.

Reddy, S.J., 2000. Andhra Pradesh Agriculture: Scenario of the last four decades. July

2000, 104p.

Reddy, S.J., 2007.  Agriculture & Environment. January 2007, 112p.

Reddy, S.J., 2008. Climate Change: Myths & Realities., www.scribd.com/Google Books.,

176p.

Reddy, S.J., 2011. “Green” Green Revolution: Agriculture in the perspective of Climate

Change. www.scribd.com/Google Books, 160pp [Revised version is under publication]

Reddy, S.J., 2016. Irrigation and Irrigation Projects in India: Tribunals, Disputes and Water Wars Perspective. BS Publications, Hyderabad, India, 132p.

Reddy, S.J., 2017a. Climate Change and its Impacts: Ground Realities. BS Publications, Hyderabad, India, 276p.

Reddy, S.J., 2017b.  Prospective Survey: “Role of Pollution and Climate Change in Food and Nutrition Security”. Acta Scientific Agriculture, 1.4: 24-30.

Reddy, S.J., 2018a. Role of Climate Change on Recent Weather Disasters. Acta Scientific

Agriculture 2.4: 22-29.

Reddy, S.J., 2018b.  Urban Water Management for Sustainable Development: The Role of “Climate Change and Human Interference”. Acta Scientific Agriculture, 1.10: 43-53.

Reddy, S.J., 2018c. Impact of “Climate Change & Human Interference” on Water Resources Availability in India. Presented at AICE’18 Total Water Solutions held at Hyderabad on 16-17th November 2018 by American Water Association [AWWA].

Reddy, S.J., 2019. For a Workable “Green” Green Revolution: A Framework. Under

Communication.

Reddy, S.J., Juneja, O.A. & (Miss) Lahore, S.N., 1977. Power Spectral Analysis of Total & Net Radiation Intensities. Indian Journal of Radio & Space Physics, 6: 60-66.

Reddy, S.J. & Rao, G.S.P., 1978. A method of forecasting the weather associated with western disturbances. Indian J. Meteorol. Hydrolo. Geophys., 29:515-520.

Reddy, S.J. & Singh, S., 1981. Climate and soils of the semi-arid tropical regions of the world. In proc. Summer Institute on Production Physiology of dry-land Crops, APAU/ICAR, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, A.P., India.

WMO [World Meteorological Organization), 1966. Climate Change. Geneva, Switzerland, WMO Tech Note 79, WMO, 195 TP 100, pp. 81, (Prepared by J.M. Mitchel, B. Dzerdzeevskii, H. Flohn, W.L. Hofmeyer, HH. Lamb, K.N. Rao & C.C. Wallen).

Reddy, S.J., 2013. Sustainable development in agriculture and food security in the perspective of Environment. World Environment Day-2013, Institute of Engineers India [AP Chapter]

Reddy, S.J., 2014. Water-logging and water productivity in Agriculture.