MANY DEVELOPED countries, especially the United States (US), have turned swathes of agricultural land to grow crops that could be processed with ethanol, a less polluting fuel than petrol or diesel while in the developing countries land is being diverted for industrial and urbanisation usages. However, this has resulted in land previously used to grow grains for human consumption now being devoted to crops for vehicles. The effect over the last two-three years has led to a crisis situation in food, which might get accentuated in future, leading to escalating food prices because of shortages.

Though the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has predicted an increase in global rice production of 12 million tonnes (two per cent this year), demand would outstrip supply as Australia, a major wheat producer-exporter is facing drought. Observed outgoing Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, “something must be done to ensure that both the US and Europe stop producing fuel in competition with food. People can no longer be allowed to starve to death in Africa simply because some people in the US or EU consider that the votes of farmers or landowners are worth more than the survival of millions of men and women.”

Prodi was echoing what the Union of scientists expressed in 1993: “Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and the animal kingdom, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know.”

Besides, nearly 30 per cent of the world’s population suffers malnutrition, some 850 million are undernourished, and 2.8 million children and 300,000 women die annually in developing countries on this account. The United Nations (UN) mid-year update of the World Economic Situation and Prospects estimates that almost three billion or about half of the world’s population is food insecure. Meanwhile, the wheat price has risen nearly 130 per cent over last year and the rice price in Asia has almost doubled in the first quarter of 2008. According to the Asian Development Bank Director General, a billion Asians have been hit by these surging prices, including 600 million who live under a-dollar-a-day resulting in more malnutrition, suicides and starvation deaths.

Unless the food crisis is tackled effectively, we would face riots, terrorism, political instability and more failed states. Already, food riots have broken out in over 12 countries in Africa and Asia. Namely, Egypt, Haiti, Cameroon, Bangladesh and Indonesia due to food shortage, record oil costs, severe droughts, diversion of corn for ethanol use and rapidly growing demand. The World Bank President has warned that around 30 nations are at risk of social unrest. Worse, by 2012, the population will be seven billion. India will add 500 million totalling 1.6 billion and Africa’s 960 million will grow by one billion. According to the Earth Policy Institute just to feed the additional people would require 640sq miles of good farmland, roughly Los Angeles’s size or 18 million football fields every year. More. With forests chopped for timber and farmland in the Amazon, Indonesia, Congo etc, the land available for agriculture has shrunk due to desertification and soil pollution. Also, with the Third World, including India, converting farmland to develop townships or industrial projects, where returns are higher, has led to displacement and migration of the rural population to cities resulting in the farm yield declining to 1.2 per cent during the last decade..

In India the average crop yield has roughly doubled in 2006 to 3.12 tonnes per hectare from what the farmers were getting in the 1960’s. But this pales in comparison with China where the yield was 6.26 tonnes per hectare in 2006 and the Asian average of 4.17 tonnes per hectare, almost 25 per cent better than that ours.

Sadly, in India there is little synergy between researchers and farmers notwithstanding talks of lab-to-land approach. There is a huge gap between what is produced in research stations and demonstration fields and the average actual production. This gap is nearly 200 per cent in many cases. Further, the benefits of research have not percolated uniformly to guide the farmers. According to Dr MS Swaminathan, the conversion of farmland to SEZs should be stopped and these be set up on barren lands if the country has to ensure food security and prevent increasing poverty. Clearly, high Gross Domestic Product (GDP) sans a decrease in poverty and upgradation of the lives of the rural poor does not mean real development. Further, to maintain social peace we need work on the rural sector and ensure that the basic necessities of the people are met. It is necessary to maintain demographic equilibrium as economic growth alone cannot tackle the problem. The demand on resources and the consequent effects on nature would become a critical problem if population growth is not restrained.

An expert aptly pointed: “The size of the human population is inexricably woven with global warming, yet seldom will ’population’ be found on the agendas of global economic and sustainability forums". Observed James Lovelock: "We have grown in number to the point where our presence is perceptibly disabling the planet like a disease.”