Food Security and Environmental Quality in the Developing World - Part 6 (end) pps

Both food security and environmental quality are creations of the mind, abstrac-tions that have been produced to enable analysts and policy makers to get a grasp on these immense challen

Part Six

Issues and Priorities

Reconciling Food Security with Environmental

Quality in the 21st Century

Norman Uphoff

Food security and environmental quality go to the heart of the human condition What could be more real than the hunger that gnaws at and heightens the misery of people who lack minimum daily caloric and nutrient intakes? What could be more visibly distressing than landscapes that have been robbed of their potential produc-tivity by deforestation and soil erosion? What could be more wretched than foul water and polluted air that make drinking and breathing deadly?

The principal subjects of this volume are of immense importance to humankind They are urgent matters in India, as contributions to this volume have shown, but they are also matters for the whole world to take seriously as we embark upon a new century Already, millions of people suffer as a result of uncertain food supplies and degraded environmental quality, and there is no guarantee that the situation will get better during the coming decades

Both food security and environmental quality are creations of the mind, abstrac-tions that have been produced to enable analysts and policy makers to get a grasp

on these immense challenges We must take care not to conflate the real terms of these subjects with their analytical constructions — the latter are important, but they are only tools They are a means to the end of assuring that all people will have access to healthy and sufficient food and will live in an environment that is healthy and robust

After two decades of debate and refinement, food security is an idea whose time has come It is on the lips and in the writings of agricultural scientists, social scientists and nutritionists as well as administrators, policy makers and policy critics The concept was initially formulated by economists as a challenge to the proponents of

“food self-sufficiency,” who argued that countries needed to be able to produce enough food to feed their respective populations and that even communities and households should strive for self sufficiency

The principles of comparative advantage argue strongly against such a view, as

a less efficient way to satisfy people’s food needs The self-sufficiency approach accepts, to varying degrees, an autarkic world in which there is no trade, whether

31

among households, communities, regions or nations Because it is distrustful of the mechanisms and terms of trade, it is willing to forgo the production gains posited from a free-trade solution, considering that these are unlikely to benefit those most

in need of food anyway

The debate over free trade and the amount and distribution of its benefits is heating up, with many controversies now raging over the World Trade Organization and the open-markets regime it supports Most professional and policy opinion, certainly among economists, favors a free-trade solution based on efficiency con-siderations Others are less persuaded, and some are flatly opposed because of equity concerns and possible environmental effects But what is remarkable is that all agree

on the desirability and need to assure that food security, regardless of the policy and trade regime endorsed

Food security, which started as an analytical concept and policy initiative, has become widely accepted as a human right, although many would argue that it is often honored in the breach, as are so many other human rights Around the world, thousands of person-years are devoted to finding ways to combine supply and demand factors, augmented by logistical and storage facilities, income supplements, nutrition education, food fortification and so forth Their goal is to assure that as many people as possible consume sufficient calories and nutrients each day to attain

at least the basic level of nutrition needed for living, and hopefully, for good health and successful livelihoods

This ex ante perspective on food security has informed most of the contributions

to this volume How can we understand food demand and supply dynamics suffi-ciently to make appropriate interventions that utilize the natural-resource base, the human resources for work and management and the stock of capital, knowledge and technology to best advantage? This is not just a matter of supply It can also be a matter of assuring that needs are met, whether they can be expressed as effective demand with monetary backing or not

The test of success is ex post accomplishment of food security, the extent to

which all persons obtain the food needed for a healthy and productive life This is not simply a result of production It also requires appropriate distribution and utili-zation of food, including considerations of equitable access and bioavailability To ensure full and sustainable food security, it is necessary to understand the operation

of the entire food system.*This includes everything from the genetics of plant and animal food sources to the biochemistry of nutrient absorption in the body, soil fertility, cropping systems, harvesting and storage, marketing, food preparation and cultural influences on diet The purpose of agricultural processes is to produce healthy people, not just food

In this volume, contributors have reviewed the overall likely levels and interac-tions of food supply and demand, and considered how population growth will affect the latter How population growth affects supply will be, at least in part, mediated

by environmental factors, such as how population pressures affect soil degradation, water availability and the conversion of forested area into arable land Clearly, food

* Refer to the food systems analysis literature.

security and environmental quality are interdependent, which is why this volume was framed in this manner

Environmental quality appears to most to be more concrete, perhaps, than food security, although it refers to tangible things — soil, water, air, chemicals and vegetation — the concept and measurement of “quality” is as contingent on defini-tions and criteria as is the concept of “security.” There are no absolute standards or time frames to be employed Indeed, the units of analysis for “environment” are generically open systems One can think of them as nested, in the way that river basins, watersheds and microwatersheds represent a hierarchy of subsumed units of biophysical interaction, but there are no natural boundaries for a landscape or an ecosystem This means that environmental quality is as much a construct as is food security It depends on many definitions and arbitrary measurements that are applied within systems of incredible complexity, which we understand very incompletely

In this volume, we look at how efforts to raise agricultural production through intensified cropping systems affect environmental dynamics and potentials With intensification, not only is there more pressure on land and water resources, affecting their quality, but pest and disease problems become more likely, requiring counter-measures that themselves have reduced environmental quality in the past As con-sumers become more knowledgeable and concerned about health — their own and that of the environment — there is more need to devise methods of crop protection that serve both food security and environmental quality objectives

One area of research that is not well represented in this volume, because it is

an area where the agricultural and biological sciences have not made great invest-ments in the past, concerns environmental quality and biodiversity with the soil Relatively little is known about soil biota and their role in food production and environmental services With new analytical techniques, including DNA analysis, researchers are starting to probe the hitherto murky processes of microbial ecology and the plant root–soil interface In a country like India, where soils have been used for hundreds and often thousands of years, this biological dimension of food pro-duction and environmental productivity is one that we think warrants greatly accel-erated investment in research and experimentation

At the same time as we seek to advance knowledge at various microlevels, we need to pay more attention to whole systems, not just to their components The latter are difficult enough to understand without having to consider whole sets and com-plexes of species and processes Yet, we are learning that often we cannot really understand these species of processes very well when they are taken out of their ecosystem context The concern with the structure and dynamics of larger systems that include both biophysical and socioeconomic factors can be justified simply on scientific grounds — to gain a more adequate understanding of how parts and wholes really function

However, there is an even more important reason for looking at systems We

are concerned with the sustainability of development efforts If these fail, or if they

even falter, we have many more people dependent on them who will suffer, than a century ago Our science and technology have permitted us to build larger and more complicated systems of production and distribution They support populations more than three times larger than 100 years ago We must take steps to ensure that this

is not a scientific and institutional “house of cards” that we have constructed Consequently, “building ecosystem vitality and productivity,” as Richard Harwood subtitled his chapter in this volume, is crucial, seeking to ensure not only that these ecosystems sustain their levels of performance, but are immune to degradation and collapse Contributors to the fourth section of this book have addressed these concerns, noting new opportunities that biotechnology, for example, may give us, while also recognizing the hazards that water scarcity could impose despite our ever-greater technological sophistication Some of the solutions for sustainability may be, indeed, fairly simple

While the first four sections of the book focus on mostly biophysical matters,

we know that the purpose of agriculture and natural resource management is to achieve better and more secure lives for the human population, living in consonance with their environments rather than exploiting them In the latter two sections, contributors address problems of poverty alleviation and equity They look at criteria for evaluating progress in these areas, and particularly at the contributions that greater access to capital by the poor can make to poverty alleviation, and at the impacts of new agricultural technology on women’s opportunities and burdens Such distribu-tional issues are not to be considered as separable consequences of development but

as intrinsic causes of the ways in which development proceeds as well as of how its benefits are shared — or not

These distributional dynamics are shaped, or at least greatly influenced, by the policy and institutional choices made at national and international levels, with the effects playing out at community, household and individual levels The analyses in the last section of the book all agree that the performance of the agricultural sector

— its rate and kinds of growth — will have dominant impacts on food security and environmental quality, but also on national and international economic success Thus, the discussions in this volume are not just “sectoral,” but speak to the welfare of whole national societies

In the past 20 years, there has been a disposition in policy circles to choose a shrinking of the public sector in favor of an expanded private sector While there have been some global benefits from this, it should be clear that the success and productivity of private-sector actors depend not just on their wisdom and hard work, but also on the framework of policies and investments that public-sector decision makers have created, by deliberation or by default In particular, it is important that

what economists call public goods be provided to the economy and, indeed, the

whole society, to function effectively

Public goods are things like public health and safety, clean air and water, the legal system and recreational facilities, which are accessible to everyone and whose use does not materially affect others’ use These are either costly or impossible for individuals to provide for themselves, so they are better provided on a broad basis

In the domains addressed by this volume, agricultural research is a prime example

of public goods It also, sadly, exemplifies the conclusion of social theorists that public goods tend to be underinvested in, for a variety of reasons This leads to suboptimal satisfaction of human needs When governments are faced with fiscal shortfalls, there is even more tendency to contract expenditures for public goods, but this has the effect of reducing well-being in the short and longer run

Govern-ments are not the only source of public goods; non-governmental organizations of various sorts can provide them, as can businesses But the latter have little incentive

to do this, given their orientation to maximize private profits

Policy makers should be aware of this unfortunate trend to underprovide public goods, especially when budgets are tight, because this only makes bad situations worse This is not always easily seen, but it is a fact and it weighs particularly heavily on the agricultural sector, where producers are widely dispersed and unor-ganized and, for the most part politically marginal

The messages from this book are intended for a broad and diverse audience in terms of disciplines, roles and nationalities They speak particularly to persons in policy-making or policy-influencing positions, because it is so urgent that those in responsible, authoritative posts act with clarity and a comprehensive understanding, not just some partial partisan or professional interests This is especially true in a country like India, which is so large and complex Overlooking any major factor in the agriculture and natural-resource arenas can have very dire consequences Can

we neglect water shortages? Can we neglect women? Can we neglect crop protec-tion? Can we neglect access to credit?

In a world that was less complex and interdependent, with an India that had

500 million instead of its 1 billion people, there was more margin for error, more tolerance for disconnects and insularities The world’s agricultural pro-ducers, particularly in India, supported by large cadres of agricultural scientists and extensionists, have been very successful in improving the global food situ-ation, thanks in large part to the new technologies of the Green Revolution But this success has been uneven, and it has slowed dramatically in the last 5 to 10 years, as rates of increase have dropped and, in many countries, cereal yields have stagnated

Part of the problem rests with policies — unattractive prices for producers, uncertainty of profitability and return — but we also see erosion of the natural-resource base, particularly as soil and water decline in quality and also per capita availability Some of the natural-resource base is also undercut, as rural-to-urban migration depletes the stock of human talent in rural areas and endemic poverty persists Against this, we see the continuing spread of health and education access, plus growing expectations of democratic governance supported by the electronic communication revolution Thus, there is a growing tension between expectations and performance that has not been addressed specifically in this volume, but which contributors know lurks in the background of all their discussions

As we embark on this 21st century, there are strong currents and pressures for democratization of public affairs and private life Nowhere is this stronger than in India, the world’s largest, though still quite imperfect, democracy The most visible, formal hallmark of democracy, multiparty electoral competition, has had difficulty delivering on its claimed advantage over other systems — recruitment of the most talented leadership to top offices and generation of innovative and appropriate policy alternatives This is true around the world, not just in South Asia, where such shortcomings have very high costs for society

As yet, there are not good mechanisms for assuring that governments will proceed with as much knowledge and accountability as people expect This volume

has not gone into the realm of governance, but we recognize that this is fundamental both to formulating better policies and to implementing them successfully What we have been able to do is examine the domains of and interactions among agricultural development, natural-resource management, sustainability, social relationships and policy choices The analyses and conclusions from a broadly interdisciplinary set

of professionals should give policy makers a better basis for thinking through their alternatives We hope that this will be read also by a diverse cross-section of the public who can formulate clearer thinking about developmental ends and means, and thereby contribute to a climate of opinion that supports better informed and more forward-thinking actions, both privately and publicly