In an interview with Rahul Kumar of OneWorld South Asia, Prabhu Pingali stresses on the need to encourage modern agricultural methods so that food production can be increased even as the environment is preserved.
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Prabhu Pingali
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As an expert with the FAO, what is your role?
The Agricultural and Development Economics Division of the FAO works on policy, food security and analysis. Our division is a policy research and policy analysis think tank within the FAO.
As part of our work, we have been monitoring progress towards the World Food Summit goal, which is slightly different from the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on hunger reduction. The World Food Summit goal towards hunger reduction says reduce by half the number of people who are hungry by 2015, where as the MDG goal says reduce by half the proportion of hunger people.
So, here is a slight difference in the goals of both the organisations. The World Food Summit goal is much more about absolute numbers and that is what we have been monitoring. Some of that monitoring is for the state of the food and security report that comes out every year, which monitors the global number of the hunger people. This has estimates by countries. But increasingly the report is encouraging countries to monitor and report their progress.
Does your work also involve providing inputs on the MDG on hunger?
We are definitely involved in the MDG process as I am a member of the overall UN expert group. The UN Millennium Project has several task forces and there is an expert group on poverty that provides an overall advice.
Within our division, there is one person who is assigned to the hunger task force and he attends all its meetings. He is also the person who interacts with MS Swaminathan, who is one of the coordinators on the task force on hunger. We provide the hunger task force with numbers and the global hunger map.
You are also involved with the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Can you tell us more about it?
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment looks at global ecosystems and the changes that have taken place in global ecology. We study food issues as one major ecosystem, apart from water systems, energy systems, bio-diversity, tropical forests, oceans and fisheries and a whole bunch of global ecosystems. The most challenging part of what we do is that ecosystems are not there for their economic services alone, but also for their intrinsic value to the society. It is biodiversity for the sake of biodiversity.
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is not under the UN aegis or the MDGs, though the word millennium is common to both. It is a small and an independent assessment of long-term prospects of global ecosystems.
If we achieve the MDG on poverty and hunger, how will it impact the MDG on environmental sustainability?
This is an interesting question. It is a huge trade-off issue that needs to be addressed. The question comes down to a whole series of sub-questions.
The first sub-question that comes up is how do countries look at food? Is food a strategic objective that a country needs to be self-sufficient in or is food a commodity that can be traded. If the country exports goods and imports its marginal requirements of food, then it achieves an overall growth in the economy. On the other hand, if food is looked at as a strategic objective, then the country needs to have 100 per cent self-sufficiency in it.
The second set of issues are the ways in which the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries manage agriculture and the extent to which they continue to provide protection to agricultural production systems.
The third and final set of issues related to the trade-off are, what incentives are provided at the farm level to enhance efficient use of inputs. India is a classic case here because if you are giving high water subsidies, it is difficult to promote efficient water management. Similarly, if you are giving high power subsidies, then you cannot complain that the groundwater table is depleting.
These are the three big issues that relate to the trade-off and this is what the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is looking at.
India seems to be on way to halving the number of poor, but is lagging behind in tackling hunger. At the same time, Pakistan seems to be on way to halving the number of hungry people, but food is falling short. How do you explain this dichotomy?
This is a very crucial question for India. The country needs to have a strategy for poverty reduction but at the same time needs to have a strategy for food security and enhancement also. We have this argument that by reducing poverty, we reduce hunger insecurity also. It turns out that this is true in a lot of cases but not true in many others. And it is not true in market-friendly situations.
When you have a whole segment of society, which is not even in the market, any poverty-reduction strategy will not work. When we pursue a growth-based strategy for reducing poverty, it presumes that you are a part of the market economy. This means that you will be either selling your labour or certain other products into the market. But if you have a group of people who are so poor that they cannot be in the market, then the first thing you do is to reduce their immediate hunger need, so that they can benefit from the opportunities you are providing.
If they are so hungry that they cannot benefit from these opportunities, then you see the dichotomy between improvement in the overall income group, but not enough improvement in food security issues.
People who have been left behind are the very marginalised people and in some cases, they are geographically concentrated in some places. Even in a state that is doing well, you will find pockets of very marginalised people those who have little infrastructure, little education, little healthcare, etc.
You have stressed on reducing immediate hunger, but what next?
It is not just reducing immediate hunger. Immediate hunger is one crucial element. In addition to that, vital infrastructural investments in health, sanitation, literacy need to be in place. Also, institutional reforms that allow such communities to have access to resources have to be introduced.
How do you rate South Asias progress in achieving the MDG on hunger and poverty?
I am coming back from Bhutan and was quite impressed. Their public services - health and education systems seem to be working. I have seen much lower amount of food insecurity as compared to India. But it is a quick impression. Sri Lanka is doing very well on most of the MDGs despite conflict. Pakistan seems to lag behind as all kinds of struggles are going on.Bangladesh has moved from being a massive food-deficit country to one that has become self-sufficient in food. But it faces the same distribution problems that India faces.Nepal has problems in the hills. Security and food are a big problem.
What is pulling Nepal back? Is it the conflict?
Nepal was fairly stable for a long time. Large part of the conflict is very recent. But the fundamental problem that Nepal has is that a large part of the population lives in remote and inaccessible areas.
There is inadequate investment in transport, roads and communication systems and institutions. This has prevented technologies and basic services from being taken to communities.
We did some work in Nepal and to get to a particular village, you need to trek for two days. In such a case, you are excluding the community from modern development.
Most development is concentrated in the Terai, which is very accessible and the Kathmandu valley.
You have repeatedly stressed on infrastructure and communications for development. Do you think ICTs can play a role in development?
For ICTs to work, you still need primary infrastructure. Cell phones have made a huge difference in rural India and cell phones jump barriers that landlines have. ICTs can do a lot, but we still have a long way to go. We still need basic literacy investments that are not there. We still need enormous public health investments, education, roads, water and sanitation. Only when we provide these, do we cover the basics of infrastructure.
I do not think there is a simple answer.
What is it that really worries you about food security?
What I worry the least is about having enough food. The experience of India and Bangladesh has shown that within the country we will have enough food to feed everyone. What I worry about is whether we will be able to provide the food to people who need it the most. The distributional side and the equity side of it providing food is what we need to look at. And economists are not particularly good at resolving such problem.
We might have achieved self-sufficiency in food production, but where does it lead to because of over-exploitation of environment?
Well, we need to worry about it right now. You can see the effects of intensification of Indian agriculture today. India made enormous gains in improving food production, but in Punjab, the impact on long-term soil fertility and bio-diversity has been negative.
My argument is that this need not have been this way. We could have had intensive cereal production with sustainable environmental management, provided farmers are given incentives.
Today, we have technology for producing rice with one-third water, there is technology for producing rice and wheat with very little pesticides if not none. Technology also exists for efficient fertiliser use. All of these technologies are there but there are no incentives for farmers to use these, because power is free, fertilisers are subsidised, water is free.
India and Bangladesh have distribution problems. Is there any example in the world that we can replicate?
Examples are hard to replicate because situations are different and government systems are different. In a democratic system like India, the challenge of providing an equitable distribution system is very different from that of a society that is centrally managed.
The green revolution has battered the environment a lot. Now genetics is being thought to be the solution for battling hunger. What potential do you see for genetically modified foods?
FAO came out with a report Biotechnology Meeting the Needs of the Poor. In this report we go through a detailed assessment of which technologies exist, what are the economic benefits and environmental and health costs of these technologies. The report can be accessed at www.fao.org/es/esa
In terms of human health impacts, the report says that from everything we know today, there is no evidence of human health impact from the current GM foods in the market. But we also say we do not know what can happen tomorrow.
On the environmental side, the big issue is co-existence. We need to have co-existence in a way that genes do not jump species of the same crop. This co-existence issue needs to be resolved and of course there are other environmental issues.
How do you look at the future?
I am optimistic about the future. When I was in graduate school in the seventies ,India was so desperate for food. But now, it is not even an issue.
About Prabhu Pingali: He is the Director of the Agricultural and Development Economics Division of the Food and Agricultural Organisation.
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