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India : Goodbye Food Self-Sufficiency, Welcome Imports
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Self-sufficiency became the mantra after the British rule ended in 1947. When the use of American hybrid seeds in the 1960s spawned a “green revolution” of more fecund farms, food security became the hallmark of sovereign India, says a report in The International Herald Tribune.
“Now all that appears to be over.
“This year, the country imported wheat for the first time since 2000. And then this week, traders worldwide bid up wheat prices after a startling forecast by U.S. wheat producers that India is set to become the world’s largest importer this year, pulling ahead of Egypt with eight million tons of imports from Australia, the United States and other exporters.
“The figure was about 50 percent higher than analysts had projected.
” ‘I’m quite confident, as are most of the traders, that when the year is over, India will probably import eight million tons,’ Mark Samson, vice president for South Asia at U.S. Wheat Associates, a trade group representing U.S. wheat producers and state governments, said Friday in a telephone interview from Singapore.
“On Thursday, the group’s forecast helped drive the price of wheat to a two-year high on the Paris commodity exchange.
“The increased imports are welcome news for multinational companies like Cargill of the United States and AWB of Australia, which have been shipping wheat to India on a sporadic basis and would benefit from more regular Indian demand.
“But those who produce the bulk of India’s wheat – the two-thirds of Indians who live in rural areas – have benefited far less from the economic boom. Their farm yields are failing to keep up with the demand for wheat.
“The result is that, even as demand for wheat soars, supply is stagnant at about 70 million tons annually, driving prices ever higher.
“At another level, India’s turn to food imports also reflects the complex politics of global trade.
“The United States and other wealthy countries are keen to find markets for their farm output.
“Critics of Indian policy say that India’s government, which is seeking to deepen ties with Washington, is letting the United States dump subsidized wheat in India at the expense of local farmers.
“Specifically, they say India has allowed private companies, foreign and domestic, to buy wheat from local farmers and stock it indefinitely, forcing the government’s food distribution system to buy wheat overseas at higher prices than Indian farmers receive.
” ‘The green revolution is being dismantled,’ said Devinder Sharma, a farm policy analyst and frequent critic of the government. ‘This is the beginning of the end of food self-sufficiency.’
“Supporters of globalization insist that it is in India’s interest to move away from an emphasis on basic food security. Far better, they say, to abandon commodities like wheat in favor of higher-value crops that can be exported.”
The Newsweek International says “the Furnace Australia sailed into Chennai last month carrying a load of wheat and, some warned, ill tidings. India’s first wheat imports in six years marked a reversal in the march toward ‘food independence’ that the country began in the 1970s.
“To M. S. Swaminathan, one of the agronomists credited with sparking the so-called Green Revolution, the return of grain imports should be seen as ‘a wake-up call’ for a country that has in recent years taken its ability to feed its people for granted.
“Though India’s government officially dismissed the return of grain imports as a passing event, Swaminathan and other experts saw it as the latest sign of a long-term decline.
“Now production gains are slowing as the water supply dwindles, overzealous use of fertilizer and pesticides taints the soil and excessive irrigation waterlogs the land along canals in the showpiece states of India’s Green Revolution, like the Punjab and Haryana.”
3 Responses to “India : Goodbye Food Self-Sufficiency, Welcome Imports”
I’m thinking that the import/export aspect is a pernicious red herring.
There is no way speculators should be able to corner the market on something as fungible as wheat in a well functioning production and distribution system.
Seems to me the real issue is land use and ownership, investment, transportation etc, all of which are purely domestic concerns. What has happened in the U.S. is largely that individual subsistence farms have yields to extensive industrial operations in some cases, and in other cases to intensive, efficient, niche operations trading in high value-add crops. This has meant relentless displacement and consolidation of unspecialized single family farms.
Seems to me the focus should be on better transportation and infrastructure in country, continued economic liberalization and elimination of the residuals of the licence and permit Raj, and other good macro stuff that will allow the economy as a whole to prosper and operate efficiently – not self-sufficiency for one particular segment of the the economy.
While agriculture can certainly be overly industrialized, one thing that influences this kind of thing is simply that the smaller peasant farms just aren’t as efficient as even a large family owned farm in the U.S.
It is a tricky situation. NAFTA made it impossible for milions of Mexican farmers to maske a profit from corn. They immigrated to Mexican cities and the United States.
In the nineties Russia did pursue a policy of liberalization as proposed by US experts. It was a catastrophe and one of the reasons we are distrusted (breaking our promise and expanding Nato is another) enough to trigger the possibility of Chinesese/Russian military axis aligned against us. China mantained it’s control and liberalization has gone relatively well.