Transformation, 15 June 2011,
Hotel Taj Deccan, Hyderabad,
Andhra Pradesh, India.
global population of 9 billion by 2050. Though the Green Revolution of the 1960s with its improved crop varieties and intensive farming techniques enhanced food grain production and helped stave off mass starvation in that era, its benefits were not sustained and did not fully trickle down to the small and marginal farmlands of the world.
The past half decade has seen a growing volatility in food prices with severe impacts on the world’s poor. Global food prices rose for the eighth straight month in February, warning that unexpected spikes in oil prices could exacerbate an already precarious situation in food markets. It reminds us of the 2007-08 food crisis that prompted riots and political unrest across many countries!
According to the World Bank, 44 million people have been forced into extreme poverty by food inflation since June 2010. As per the 80-country Nomura Food Vulnerability Index, among those suffering most from costly food are 25 countries, which include India, China, Philippines, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Kenya and Vietnam.
Agricultural productivity, especially in developing countries, continues to drop and the decline in global food stocks in the last five years has led to very tense cereal markets worldwide.
Degraded natural resources and climate change are increasingly affecting food production and prices, with the farming community, majority of whom are small and marginal farmers, getting poor returns for their produce at a time when the cost of cultivation has gone up drastically. To further compound food availability, the supply chain infrastructure in many countries has remained poor resulting in greater loss. This is the ‘perfect storm’ or confluence of various factors that ICRISAT has been talking about, unsettling lives and livelihoods throughout the world.
It is estimated that countries across the globe have probably spent at least $1 trillion on food imports in 2010, with the poorest paying as much as 20% more than in 2009. At the heart of the problem is the rising demand for crops.
However, the goal for the agricultural sector is no longer simply to maximize productivity but to optimize across a far more complex landscape of production, rural development, environmental, social justice and food consumption outcomes.
Among the agricultural priorities that need to be addressed are climate, water resources and aquatic ecosystems; soil nutrition, erosion and use of fertilizer; and biodiversity, ecosystem services and conservation. Energy, climate change and resilience; crop production systems and technologies; crop genetic improvement;
and pest and disease management and livestock are also important. So are issues pertaining to social capital, gender and extension, food supply chains, prices, markets and trade; and consumption patterns and peoples’ health and nutrition.
The next Green Revolution or the Evergreen Revolution (as Dr M S Swaminathan calls it) will have to be played out across these agricultural priorities, and in less
hospitable agro-ecosystems such as the drylands. It will have to bring about food and nutritional security to billions of people worldwide but without further damaging the fragile ecosystem. And its long-term success will depend on a strong convergence strategy that brings together civil society and the public and private sectors through mutually beneficial partnerships that ultimately advances the agricultural sector.
At ICRISAT, our way of contributing to the realization of the second Green Revolution is our Strategic Plan to 2020. We developed this plan to give us direction to achieve six institutional outcomes – food sufficiency, crop intensification, crop diversification, system resilience, nutrition and health, and women empowerment.
Our plan also strongly reiterates our commitment to harnessing complementary and purposeful partnerships, people-focused agricultural research-for-development, and market-oriented agricultural growth.
We implement agricultural research-for-development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa with a wide array of global partners, impacting on the semi-arid or dryland tropics where over 644 million poorest of the poor dwell. Along with our partners, we help empower these poor people to overcome poverty, hunger and a degraded environment through better agriculture.
We have adopted Inclusive Market-Oriented Development (IMOD) as our guiding principle to empower smallholder farmers to grow their way out of poverty. IMOD is a dynamic progression from subsistence towards market-oriented agriculture.
It starts by increasing the production of staple food crops, converting deficits into surpluses that are sold into markets.
Through this inclusive strategy, we will lead smallholder farm families, particularly women and the youth, from pessimism to prosperity. We are confident that IMOD as a strategy will play a vital role in the path to a second Green Revolution.
We continue to broaden our partnerships beyond simply the biophysical sciences sector. We have to bring in whoever is necessary to achieving the objectives of the crop commodity value chain.
We believe that the development of innovative products, processes and concepts by entrepreneurs and private players and their integration into existing agricultural systems is the pathway to true inclusive agricultural growth.
We call on all the developing countries to give the highest priority to agriculture and to increase public investments that will develop smallholder agriculture to achieve greater productivity and profitability.
Together with governments, civil society organizations, the private sector, and partners like ASSOCHAM, we are confident that we can make this second Green Revolution happen.
We owe it to the smallholder farmers and the poor people in the developing world!
Thank you!