[Reader-list] RTF (Right to Food) Articles - 13

[Rakesh Iyer]

Source : The Hindu

Date: Jun 23, 2002

Link: http://www.hinduonnet.com/mag/2002/06/23/stories/2002062300010100.htm

Article:

* Fighting hunger: Know-how to do-how *
 The fact that India has not contributed to realising the World Food Summit
goal of reducing the number of the hungry and malnourished is a matter of
concern, as there are no political, economic or technological excuses for
this, says eminent agricultural scientist Dr. M.S. SWAMINATHAN, who
delivered the keynote address at the WFS held in Italy recently. He now
proposes a five-step approach to ending hunger.

THE World Food Summit (WFS) convened by the Food and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO) in Rome in 1996 resolved to bring down the number of
hungry and malnourished from 816 million in 1990-92 to 408 million by 2015.
This involves reducing the number of undernourished people by 22 million
every year. This year, a meeting of Heads of States and Governments and
Ministers for Agriculture was convened by the FAO in Rome from June 10-13,
to review the progress made since 1996 in achieving the targets set at the
WFS. The survey at the "WFS — Five Years Later" meeting in Rome indicated
that the actual achievement in hunger reduction was only six million per
year. Over 200 million people or 28 per cent of the entire population of
Africa were found to be chronically hungry. And, 24,000 children, women and
men die every day due to hunger related causes.

The world population will be over seven billion by 2015 and hence the
estimates of WFS 1996 will have to be suitably adjusted upward, taking into
account the increase in human numbers. The task before the "WFS — Five Years
Later" meeting was to understand why the very modest target set in 1996 has
not been achieved.

Both in 1996 and now, civil society organisations (CSO) held parallel
conferences and issued separate declarations. In 1996 the CSO declaration
was titled "Profit for Few or Food for All". The 2002 CSO Forum declaration
stressed that food sovereignty, right to food and agro-ecological models for
agriculture are the key elements for any strategy towards ending hunger and
malnutrition. This declaration further pointed out that "genetically
modified organisms (GMO's) represent a threat to family farmers, other food
producers, the integrity of genetic resources and human and environment
health. It will affect particularly the rural poor, who cannot afford this
costly alternative".

The official WFS Plus Five declaration titled "International Alliance
Against Hunger" urged concerted action to fulfil the 1996 commitments and
stated, "we are committed to study, share and facilitate the responsible use
of biotechnology in addressing development needs". The official participants
in the Rome Plus Five meeting were largely Ministers of Food and Agriculture
and senior government officials. The participating Heads of State or
Government were mostly from countries in Africa. OECD countries were mostly
represented at the level of Agriculture Ministers or Senior officials,
excepting Spain as well as Italy whose Prime Minister served as the Chair of
the Conference.

In addition to chronic protein-energy malnutrition caused by poverty, two
billion people in the developing countries, many of them women and children,
suffer from hidden hunger caused by one or more micronutrient deficiencies,
like a lack of iron, iodine or Vitamin A. Currently 34 countries are
experiencing severe food shortage, the most seriously affected being
countries in Southern Africa as well as Afghanistan and North Korea.
Developing countries are likely to spend over £23 billion this year for
import of cereals, largely from rich nations.

Women and children are the worst sufferers. A special session dealing with
this issue, stressed the need for implementing in letter and spirit the
provisions of Article 14 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) adopted in 1979 by the United
Nations General Assembly. This will involve providing equal access to and
control of natural and productive resources and the full participation of
rural women in policy making at all levels and throughout development
activities.

The African Heads of State or Government identified civil strife and ethnic
wars, debt burden, trade barriers resulting in lack of market access,
incidence of HIV/AIDS and drought as the principal causes for the widespread
persistence of hunger. African leaders resolved to strengthen the recently
formed "The New Partnership for Africa's Development" (NEPAD) in order to
promote a Marshall Plan kind of revitalisation of African economies. How far
their hope for substantial additional development assistance from rich
nations will be forthcoming, remains to be seen. Between 1900 and 2000,
concessional assistance from developed countries and loans from the
international financing institutions fell by 50 per cent for agriculture. At
the same time, the OECD countries increased farm subsidies to more than £300
billion, amounting to £12,000 (Rs. 5,88,000) per farmer per year. The
assistance given by OECD countries to farmers in developing countries works
out to £6 (Rs. 294) per farmer. The recently approved U.S. Farm Bill
envisages a substantial increase in the subsidies given to U.S. farmers.
Thus, agriculture in the rich nations is supported by heavy inputs of
subsidy, capital and technology. There is, hence, no level playing field in
global agricultural trade.

The President of the European Commission, Mr. Romano Prodi, announced that
by the end of 2006, European Union (E.U.) official development aid will be
raised to an overall rate of 0.39 per cent of GDP. This is in contrast to
the target of 0.7 per cent set by the U.N. nearly two decades ago. He also
announced that the E.U. will try to improve market access to the farm
products of developing countries.

THE FAO has prepared a comprehensive Anti-Hunger Programme involving an
additional investment of £24 billion annually. This amount is equivalent to
2.5 per cent of the subsidies paid to farmers in OECD countries. The FAO
programme aims to address both hunger today as well as sustained progress in
agricultural and rural development. The FAO also presented an analysis of
the progress made by different developing countries in achieving the WFS
goals. China led the countries which had achieved the largest reduction in
the population of under-nourished between 1990-92 and 1997-99. Others in the
category of achievers included Ghana, Kuwait, Mozambique, Peru, Thailand and
Vietnam. The worst performing nations include Congo, Cuba, Guatemala, Iraq,
North Korea, Somalia, Tanzania and Venezuela. Out of the 116 million
children, women and men saved from the hunger trap between 1990-92 and
1997-99, 76 million are from China. Unfortunately, the number of
undernourished increased by 11 million during the same period in India,
inspite of substantial grain reserves with the Government of India. This
should be a cause for alarm and serious introspection, since more attention
is being given now to enhancing agricultural exports than to ending endemic
hunger.

The policies adopted by China in achieving speedily the goal of food for all
and for ever involved priority to rural and agricultural development and to
on-farm and non-farm employment. China's policy of a rural and agricultural
development based economic growth strategy has obviously paid rich dividends
in terms of human nutrition and well being. The fact that India has not
contributed to realising the WFS goal of reducing the number of persons
going to bed hungry is a matter for national shame. There is no political,
economic or technological excuse for this situation.

Our Prime Minister had announced last year that India should be hunger-free
by August 15, 2007 which marks the 60th anniversary of our independence. In
my view, this goal is achievable, if we take the following steps.

*I. A whole-life cycle approach to ending hunger: *

We should provide immediately a horizontal dimension to the numerous
vertically structured nutrition intervention programmes currently in
operation by adopting a whole life cycle approach to nutrition security. The
different steps in such a life cycle approach are the following.

a. Pregnant mothers:

Overcoming maternal and foetal under- and mal-nutrition is an urgent task,
since nearly 30 per cent of the children born in India are characterised by
low birth weight (LBW), with the consequent risk of impaired brain
development. LBW is a proxy indicator of the low status of women in society,
particularly of their health and nutrition status during their entire
lifecycle.

b. Nursing mothers:

Appropriate schemes will be necessary to enable mothers to breast feed their
babies for at least six months, as recommended by the World Health
Organisation (WHO). Policies at work places, including the provision of
appropriate support services should be conducive to achieving this goal.

c. Infants (0-2 years)

Special efforts will have to be made to reach this age group through their
mothers, since they are the most unreached at present.

Eighty per cent of brain development is completed before the age of two. The
first four months in a child's life is particularly critical, since the
child is totally dependent on its mother for food and survival.

d. Preschool children (2-6 years)

The on-going integrated child development service, if implemented properly,
will help to cater to the nutritional and health care needs of this age
group.

e. Youth (6 to 20 years)

A nutrition based Noon Meal programme in all schools (public and private and
rural and urban) will help to improve the nutritional status of this group.
However, a significant percentage of children belonging to this age group
are not able to go to school due to economic reasons. Such school
"push-outs" or child labourers need, special attention.

f. Adults (20 to 60 years)

Apart from the sale of subsidised grain, the major approach has been Food
for Work programme. In designing a Nutrition Compact for this age group,
persons working in the organised and unorganised sectors will have to be
dealt with separately. Also, the intervention programmes will have to be
different for men and women taking into account the multiple burden on a
woman's daily life.

g. Old and infirm persons:

This group will have to be provided with appropriate nutritional support, as
part of the ethical obligations of society towards the handicapped.

The above whole-life cycle approach to Nutrition Security will help to
ensure that the nutritional needs of everyone in the community and at every
stage in an individual's life, are satisfied. Such an integrated approach is
being introduced on a pilot basis in a few districts of Tamil Nadu, under
the Malnutrition-free Tamil Nadu programme.

*II. Community Food Banks: *

* *Community Food Banks (CFB) can be started at the village level, with
initial food supplies coming as a grant from Government and the World Food
Programme. Later, such CFBs can be sustained through local purchases and
from continued Government and international support for Food for
Eco-development and Food for Nutrition programmes. The CFB can be the entry
point to not only bridging the nutritional divide, but also for fostering
social and gender equity, ecology and employment. They can also be equipped
to cater to emergencies like cyclones, floods, drought and earthquakes.
CFB's can be operated by self-help groups under the oversight of the *Gram
Sabha *and can become powerful instruments of local level food security,
involving low transaction and transport costs.

*III. National Food Guarantee Scheme: *

*A Food Guarantee Scheme (FGS) *needs to be introduced on a national scale
on the model of the Employment Guarantee scheme of Maharashtra. It is
unlikely that this will involve at present the allocation of more than 10
million tonnes of food grains per year. The Government of India is planning
a *Food for Greening India *programme bearing the name of Jayaprakash
Narain. This scheme can be developed on the model of a Food Guarantee
Scheme, which can ensure the speedy end of chronic hunger.

*IV. Sustaining and strengthening agricultural progress: *

* *In a predominantly agricultural country like ours, agricultural progress
serves as the most effective safety net against hunger and deprivation.

There is need for intensifying our efforts to improve agricultural
productivity, quality and income. An urgent need in this area is the
strengthening of institutional structures which can help to confer on small
and marginal farmers the ecological and economic benefits of scale at both
the production and post-harvest phases of farming. The following are some of
the institutional structures whose reach has to be extended. (*See table*)

Without socially relevant and beneficial institutional structures, the
extrapolation domain of successful experiences and development efforts will
remain limited.

*V. Management of Change: *

* * Finally, we should set up without further delay so that the central and
state levels *Multi-Stakeholders' Consortia for the Management of Change in
Agriculture*. Such consortia should include representatives of CSOs, women's
and consumer groups, farmers' associations, academia, business and industry
and the mass media, in addition to the government departments concerned. The
following changes need priority.

*Technology* with particular reference to the application of biotechnology
and genetic modification
*Ecology*, with attention to land, water, biodiversity, forests and climate.


*Trade* with special reference to the World Trade Agreement in Agriculture,
sanitary and phyto sanitary measures and food safety standards.

Time is not in our favour. We cannot afford the luxury of never-ending
debates, but should create institutional structures which can help to
promote consensus in areas of vital concern to our agricultural future.

Since the establishment of the FAO in 1945, billions of pages of analysis on
hunger have been written. Every conference organised at a cost of millions
of dollars ends with a plea for converting words into action. If we heed the
advice given 2000 years ago by the Roman farmer Varro and the Roman
philosopher Seneca, then we will not be discussing hunger but will be living
in a hunger-free world.

"Agriculture is a science which teaches us what crops should be planted in
each kind of soil, and what operations are to be carried out, in order that
the *land may produce the highest yields in perpetuity.*" — Varro

"A hungry person listens neither to reason nor cares for justice, nor is
bent by any prayers."

Seneca

*The writer is the chairman of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation. He
has worked for the past 45 years with scientists and policy makers on a wide
range of problems in basic and applied plant genetics as well as in
agricultural research and development.*