The flip side to GM

If the previous feature had a dark story to tell on GM foods, here is another version...
The recent Mittal-Wal-Mart deal is symbolic of an India which is changing quietly. Indians now consume less cereals and more milk, vegetables and fruit. In the past 20 years, per capita consumption of vegetables has trebled in villages and doubled in towns; milk and milk products have doubled in urban and rural areas. The share of high value foods has risen in India’s agricultural output from 32 per cent to 44 per cent from 1983 to 2003. Cereal consumption has declined even among those below the poverty line.
While we have been agonising over cotton farmers’ suicides, India has become silently, the world’s second largest, cotton producer, crossing the US. NCDEX has become the world’s third largest agro-commodity exchange. The cotton revolution was made possible by the much reviled BT cotton seed, which protects against bollworm, the dreaded pest which used to destroy half the crop. Misguided activists delayed its entry into India by five years.
The farm, meanwhile, has been shrinking. It is now 1.4 hectares — so small that it’s difficult to make a living. The only viable farming on small holdings is vegetables, poultry, and high-value crops. But growing these is riskier. Hence, contract farming is a good idea. It transfers the risk from farmers to companies. Farmers lease their land; get employment; and a guaranteed return. The contracting company invests in better seeds, scientific practices, and raises productivity. Studies show that contracted farmers earn 30 to 100 per cent higher. Punjab Agro, the government’s mediating company, has 160,000 acres under contract with 25,000 farmers. Some worry that marginal farmers will be left out, but curiously, small holdings can be highly competitive because the family provides free labour.
In the long run, however, people will have to leave the farm. Too many Indians (57 per cent) are trying to eke out a living from agriculture. Peasants have faced this dilemma in all societies: is it better to starve on an unviable plot or become the urban proletariat in Marx’s words? Everywhere they have chosen the second alternative. This is why I favour SEZs. With all their flaws, SEZs could create millions of jobs for unemployed farm youth in construction and other non-farm areas. I disagree with Sonia Gandhi— farmers should sell their unviable plots to SEZs in exchange for urban jobs. SEZs don’t need tax breaks; they need less red tape. They could be the tipping point for our industrial revolution (unless bureaucrats again kill SEZs at birth).
President Hu’s recent visit reminded us that China’s reforms began by privatising agriculture in 1978, and delivered even better results than our Green Revolution.
Not only did agriculture boom, but their household responsibility system generated spectacular growth of labour intensive manufacturing in rural areas. Our Green Revolution achieved food self-sufficiency but didn’t make manufacturing linkages because of the Licence Raj. Unlike our first Green Revolution, the private sector will drive changes in the rural economy this time. This is the significance of the Mittal-Wal-Mart deal. Politicians, farmers, activists don’t realise it, but Dalal Street does.
Hence, three mutual funds, primarily with rural portfolios, began in 2006. They comprehend that India could soon be feeding the Middle East.
Gurcharan Das
gurcharandas@vsnl.com

Eat 9 Kilos of Rice A Day !
Whatever our solution for food insecurity, GM food clearly isn’t it. The following might prove instructive: in 2003, the US attempted to railroad Golden Rice [a certain variety of GM rice engineered to contain higher levels of beta-carotene] into the world market under the pretext that every year over half a million people risked blindness if their diets weren’t augmented with higher levels of beta–carotene. As it turns out, to convert beta carotene into vitamin A the body requires sufficient body protein and fat. The under nourished lack the body protein necessary for the conversion. So the problem, clearly, isn’t that starving people don’t have enough beta carotene. The problem is that they don’t have food.
Then there’s the other minor inconvenience that to satisfy the required intake of beta-carotene from this miracle Golden Rice, you’d have to eat nine kilos of it every day [or 18 kilos, if you’re pregnant]. Now imagine you’re one of the world’s hungry. Where are you going to find that nine kilos of rice every day? More importantly, what are you going to do with it?