Food security and agriculture issues are gaining importance in the wake of global food crisis and steep rise in food grain prices. India?s safety net programmes are doing well but the programmes like NREGA should be progressive and help the beneficiaries move up in the employment chain and effect qualitative change in their lifestyle, says Suresh Babu, senior research fellow/programme leader, Learning and Capacity Strengthening Programme, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC, in an exclusive interview with FE?s Joseph Vackayil. Excerpts:

How do you evaluate India?s safety net programmes like subsidised food supply, national rural employment guarantee programme, integrated child development services scheme and others?

India?s safety net programmes, I believe, ensure that anybody willing to work and use the wages judiciously need not starve or beg. The country has food reserves and money to spend for the people. But the question is what is the next step for the people covered under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) programme? Should they be allowed to remain dependent on the programme for a livelihood all their lives without any qualitative change in their lives? I suggest there should be an institutional mechanism to train the people joining the NREGA programme in some skills like masonry, carpentry, plumbing works, tailoring, or any that would give them a better and permanent job in their own region. The unemployed rural masses should be skill-trained to contribute to maintain India?s growth rate and its forward march to an economic super power by creating an intermediary labour force from them. They should not be allowed to remain tillers and mud carriers their entire life. Of the 100 days of assured job, 10 to 15 days should be devoted to paid training programmes. They should be made competent enough not to go back to NREGA programme the next season. Otherwise the programme will remain as a unsustainable stop-gap arrangement and the people will remain poorer. There should be proper monitoring and evaluation of the result of the ICDS schemes and the subsidised food programmes among the target group.

In spite of the ICDS scheme from 1975, more than 30% of children in the country are malnourished. People entrusted with the scheme should be made accountable and forced to hit targets.

There is a possibility of the emergence of a parallel market for subsidised foodgrains, taking them beyond the reach of the really poor. The subsidised food scheme is inevitable to ward off the types of food crisis many countries have been facing since 2006.

Why has there been a global food crisis and steep increase in prices of food grains?

The global food crisis in 2007-08, mainly in South, South East Asia, and Africa is attributed to several reasons. The oft-quoted among them is the diversion of food and feed grains to biofuel production in the US to counter the spiraling fossil fuel prices. This coincided with the crop failures in some of the main grain producing countries like Australia and Ukraine. This led to an initial price hike that triggered the panicky button and speculators predicted continuation of the high prices for at least the next 10 years. Countries like India, China and Vietnam began to react by banning export of rice. Price control measures were used to keep prices low. Private traders who were not part of the incentivised price controls of the government system resorted to hoarding creating shortage and prices rose five-fold from the 2005 levels. There were riots and fall of government in many parts of Africa. The Food and Agriculture Organisation estimated that over 100 million more people were led to poverty. Even now grain prices are double the original price.

How to avoid similar situations in future? What should India do, especially to increase production of pulses?

There should be short-term, medium-term and long-term measures. In any food crisis the immediate step should be to protect the poor either through safety net programmes or free supplies. In the African countries there are no safety net or distribution net work. The only possibility is on-the-spot free food supply.

As a medium-term measure arrangements must be made to import food grains through bilateral or multilateral aid agencies and for their distribution, even in inland areas. In spite of these measures, it is possible that several areas would go uncovered and people have to starve. There should be long-term plans for increased local production. Several African countries are doing this by importing and distributing fertilisers at subsidised prices.

India with its public distribution network and other safety net programmes and through regulating exports is insulated from global food crisis. However, steep price increases in premium quality grains like Ponni rice is a reflection of the developments in the world markets.

As India is a net importer of pulses, the recent steep increase in the prices of pulses, especially toor dal, is the result of the global market conditions. Production loss in countries like Nigeria and Tanzania, has played its part in increasing global prices with resultant impact on Indian markets. The only way for India to save itself from similar crisis in future is by increasing productivity through taskforces and technology missions, with pre-determined targets and making the programme implementing teams accountable. Farmers should be encouraged to take up pulses cultivation as a cash crop with supplementary irrigation facilities. The age-old extension programmes have to be revived. The extension team has to be made accountable and motivated to achieve the set targets with proper monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.

Climate change is impacting agriculture. How countries like India can prepare itself to face this challenge?

Climate change and its impact on agriculture is a reality, though we are still in early stages of understanding its full impact. There is no detailed inventory of the results of climate change. Countries like India should ensure that agriculture would be key subject of negotiations in the forthcoming United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in Copenhagen, Denmark, in November.

Within the country, organisations like ICAR have to reset their research priorities and decide on crops to be cultivated and promote development and cultivation of drought, flood, and salinity-tolerant seeds and plants. Different models of cropping and land use should be experimented. There should be a complete revamp of the agro-ecological understanding and revive the agro-climatic zoning and mapping of the nation as a whole and also of states.

In the mitigation efforts the country could also contribute substantially by bringing agriculture and agro-forestry under the carbon credit and clean development mechanism. Fallow lands could be used to plant trees and develop social forestry and claim carbon credits.