Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security: India-China Context

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Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security: India-China Context

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CHINA REPORT 43 : 2 (2007): 219–229

SAGE Publications Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore

DOI: 10.1177/000944550704300211

Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security:

India-China Context

P.S. Ramakrishnan

Traditionally scientists have looked at agriculture merely as a production system. It is only in recent timeswhen issues of sustainability have been regularly cropping up, that there is a paradigm shift. There is nowan attempt to look at agriculture also as an ecological system. India and China are two large rapidlyindustrializing countries that have a large and heterogeneous population load to carry. India and Chinaare also very ancient agricultural countries with a long and rich tradition of natural resource conservationlinked sustainable management of agriculture. There is a need for linking cultural diversity with bio-logical diversity, so rich in the India-China context, as the basis for sustainable management of naturalresources, leading towards human wellbeing, and thus contributing towards human security.

INTRODUCTION

India and China are two large rapidly industrialising countries that have a large andheterogeneous population load to carry. India and China are also very ancient agri-cultural countries with a long and rich tradition of natural resource conservation-linked sustainable management of agriculture. Not only are there serious environmentlinked sustainability problems that both the countries have in the ‘green revolution’agricultural areas, but even the areas that have not yet been touched by modern agri-culture have problems arising from gradual loss of tree cover over a period of timefrom the rural landscape on which these other settled agricultural systems are alsodependant (Chadha and Swaminathan 2006: 900; UNESCO 2005). Further, bothcountries have to deal with a large chunk of minority communities who may be termedas traditional societies (those living close to nature and natural resources). These so-cieties have always remained marginalised, as the national developmental processeshave not yet been able to penetrate them, largely arising from a technological packagethat has been offered in the area of land-use management that is alien to their trad-itional value systems, and therefore they have not found them acceptable. With rapid

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220 P.S. Ramakrishnan

China Report 43, 2 (2007): 219–229

industrialisation and urbanisation, even the vast majority of the rural population isgetting more and more marginalised, given the fact that there is greater emphasis onindustrialisation.

Thus, India and China are confronted with three broadly distinct sets of socio-ecological problem situations:

(i) In areas where industrialised intensive agriculture has been able to penetrate,both countries now face serious problems of agricultural sustainability, whichhas become a matter of increasing concern.

(ii) A substantial section of the rural population remains disadvantaged becauseof a rapid breakdown of their agricultural systems due to land degradationand/or inaccessibility of modern agriculture either because of economic factorsand/or because of unfavourable ecological situations (unfavourable soil con-ditions and/or unavailability of water for irrigation etc).

(iii) Traditional societies have the additional problem of reconciling their ‘trad-itional ecological knowledge’ (TEK) centred value-system with the text-bookbased ‘formal knowledge’ that is imposed from outside as a technology. Theglaring example that we have in the Indian context is the experience over thelast 100 years where there have been attempts to replace traditional shiftingagriculture ( jhum) with an agricultural model generated in experimental gar-dens by scientists.

Traditionally, scientists have looked at agriculture merely as a production system. Itis only in recent times when issues of sustainability have been regularly cropping up,that there is a paradigm shift. There is now an attempt to look at agriculture also asan ecological system.

WHY SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE?

Confronted with three broad typologies of socio-ecological systems under three broadagricultural situations that have been noted above, and with a vast majority of ruralcommunities continuing to remain marginalised, the key issue is: can a single pathway,namely, the modern, high-energy, subsidised agricultural pathway, solve the problemsof all sections of society? Or, do we need to have a short-term pathway for sustainableagriculture, which may have implications for long-term solutions?

Within the three broad typologies of socio-ecological systems that one is confrontedwith in the rural environment, there exists a whole range of broad typologies of agri-culture (Figure 1), and all the problems associated with their sustainable management/development—appropriately balancing ecological sustainability with economic via-bility. What are the opportunities that are available to tackle the problems, and what



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are the limitations that stand in our way? This paper attempts to analyse the issuesconfronted by the two countries at present and examines future possibilities of copingwith the problem of food security linked human security in the two countries.

It is important to note that the basis for all traditional agricultural systems hasbeen the rich bio-diversity that they support—crop level bio-diversity (at the level ofspecies and variety) and the associated weed diversity. Multi-species agricultural systemsorganised both in space and time is a very unique feature of many traditional systems;such diversity may extend into the crop varietal level too. Indeed, many traditionalsocieties believe in weed management rather than in weed control, which may comeas a surprise for many agricultural scientists who believe weeds are to be eliminated.If managed properly, under many ecological situations, weeds may have a positive roleto play within the agricultural systems! Thus our studies on traditional shifting agri-culture in the north-eastern part of India (Ramakrishnan 1992: 424; Ramakrishnanand Swamy 1988: 127–36) and those done elsewhere by a group of US based agri-cultural ecologists working on Mayan agriculture in Mexico (Altieri and Liebman1988: 354) suggest that weeds have a nutrient/moisture conservation role undermany fragile environmental situations; even the partially pulled out weed bio-mass putback into the system could improve physico-chemical characteristics of the surfacesoil layers.

Figure 1

Source: Swift and Anderson (1993).




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The moot question then is what is the role of bio-diversity in agricultural systemsfor sustainability concerns? There is an increasing realisation today that the plot leveland the surrounding landscape level bio-diversity has an important role to play incoping with environmental uncertainties that have always been part of nature andnatural processes. This will only become further magnified in the context of rapidlydeveloping ‘global change’ that is inclusive of climate change along with land use andland cover change, land degradation, biological invasion by exotics, all leading toglobal bio-diversity depletion. In other words, combating climate change is possibleonly by addressing a whole range of other linked issues and bio-diversity stands out asone of the key factors for coping with the increasing levels of environmental uncertain-ties (Bondeau et al. 1997: 32; Sala et al. 1999: 304–28) In short, bio-diversity contributestowards ecosystem stability and resilience, both for natural and human-managedecosystems. Therefore, apart from addressing food security issues of a whole spectrumof social systems that we are confronted with in the India-China context, sustainabilityissues are also equally important (Ramakrishan 2001: 198). There is an increasingrealisation amongst the ecologically-oriented agricultural economic community, that‘globalisation’ of economies will have differential adverse impacts at the global level.The developing countries will be more susceptible than the developed world, andeven within the developing countries, the marginalised sections would be at a disad-vantage compared to the more affluent sections (Dragun and Tisdell 1999: 308).

To cite an example, climate change will harm China’s ecology and economy in thecoming decades, resulting in large decreases in agricultural output and increasing in-stability in year-to-year agricultural production, according to a recent Chinese reportissued by six government departments including the State Meteorological Bureau,the China Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Technology (Associated Press2007). The report says that if no measures are taken, in the latter half of the centuryproduction of wheat, corn and rice in China will drop by as much as 37 per cent;2006 had been a disastrous year for loss of life (2,704 people killed) and propertydamage (economic losses worth US$ 27.2 billion) through typhoons, floods anddroughts. It may be noted here that China, in any case, remains prone to natural dis-asters because of its geography, with natural disasters affecting in one way or theother 400 million people and an average 50 million ha of farmland every year. Thisreport has come in the wake of a hotter than average year, 2006, and predicts 2 or 3degrees Celsius average temperature rise in China in the next 50 to 80 years.

The report adds that evaporation rates for some inland rivers would increase by15 per cent in a situation where China already faces a severe water shortage, especiallyin the northern territories. Uncontrolled industrialisation and water resources mani-pulation have resulted in the Yellow River, the cradle of Chinese civilisation, goingintermittently dry. In 1972, it ran completely dry for the first time in China’s 3,000-year history failing to reach the sea for some fifteen days. Five years later, it failed to




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reach the sea for seven months out of the year (Brown et al. 1999). With hundreds ofmajor projects planned in upstream provinces slated to withdraw water for industrialand urban use, for power projects, and for irrigation, the Yellow River could one daybecome an inland river, never reaching the sea.

Similar water shortages, a key resource for agriculture, arising from mismanagementare also emerging rapidly and/or likely to emerge in the Indian subcontinental regiontoo. If appropriate water management measures are not undertaken, effectively com-bining ‘small-scale’ water management efforts (Agarwal and Narain 1997) tied upwith carefully ecologically evaluated and designed mega-projects (that often unwiselyare termed as ‘taming the rivers for flood water use that otherwise gets wasted intothe sea’), agriculture will be the first casualty. Water is a key resource for agriculture,and in a monsoon-type climate where the availability is seasonal, it has to be sustainablymanaged and prudently used.

Since food security of the vast majority in the region is at stake, addressing such awide range of issues demands community value-system based participatory approachesto ensure involvement of all the stakeholders. It is pertinent to emphasise here thatthis demands innovative approaches from the scientific community to create appro-priate models of intensified agricultural systems to meet with increasing demands fromthe growing population in the region, innovative community participatory models ofnot only agriculture but also institutions that will enable this to happen (Ramakrishnan1993: 209–32). This is the context in which ‘knowledge systems’—‘traditional’ know-ledge that is available with local communities gained through an experiential processand text-book based ‘formal knowledge’ generated through a hypothetico-deductiveprocess—both have a role to play. The objective should be to appropriately link thetwo streams of knowledge together, to arrive at ‘hybrid technologies’ that are socio-ecological system-specific and relevant for sustainable management of natural resources—natural and human-managed bio-diversity, sustainability of water and nutrientresources in the soil, all linked with sustainable production systems. In other words,in the context of sustainability, the key aspect is integrated sustainable managementof the natural landscape itself, by linking knowledge systems that connects the socialwith the ecological at the process level (Ramakrishnan et al. 2005: 286).

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE IN THE INDIA-CHINA CONTEXT

Sustainable agriculture not only demands efficient use of water and nutrients largelybased on locally available resources, but also regulated cropping done in a mannerthat would contribute towards sustaining soil fertility. Application of wrong technologyand/or over-exploitation of natural resources may give short-term gains but couldoften lead to ecological degradation no longer sustainable, as noted above.




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BUFFERING MODERN AGRICULTURE

If we consider high-input modern agriculture as only one of the possible pathways,there is an urgent need to buffer the environmental ill-effects, through appropriatebuffering mechanisms created within the agricultural system. With extensive landdegradation arising from excessive use of water and fertilisers, agricultural yield hasstarted decreasing, in spite of increased levels of these two key resources. Increasingthe organic residue levels in the soil in order to improve its physical qualities includ-ing its moisture-retention ability, and at the same time as a supplementary source ofnutrients for crops are to be seen as the two major objectives for sustainability. Thefollowing is illustrative of this approach towards sustainable management of modernagriculture.

In recent times in the Indian context, a large number of non-governmental organ-isations (NGOs) have been concerned with organic residue management throughvermin-composting, as an alternative mechanism to improve the physical and chemicalcharacteristics of the soil. Though this can be seen as one of the possibilities, this hasa few drawbacks: (i) the use of exotic earthworms as a source for vermin-compostingwith implications for drastic alterations of native soil organisms; (ii) the chances ofthe nutrients being rapidly lost since they are in a highly labile form in the vermi-composted material; and (iii) little or no standardisation of the technology leading toeffectiveness of the technology itself. This is the context in which in situ soil fertilitymanagement using locally available native earthworms were used to arrive at a location-specific standardised technology by a group of Indian and French scientists workingtogether, along with tea garden managers in the Western Ghats of southern India,under the auspices of an international Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility (TSBF) sus-tainable soil fertility management (Senapati et al. 2002: 139–60).

This technology enabled reduction in inorganic fertilisation, to the extent of30 per cent to 50 per cent. What is to be taken note of here is that the effort was notto replace inorganic fertiliser with organic farming, but to ensure organic residue usefor removing the ill-effects from excessive use of inorganic fertilisers into the systemwhich had led not only to a reduction in the yield of tea leaves but also had adverseimpact on the life-span of the tea bush itself. According to my colleagues who weredirectly involved in this work, in recent times this patented technology has gone toChinese shores.

SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEM-SPECIFIC AGRO-FORESTRY MODELS

This pathway aims at following the socio-ecological contours and seeks to acknowledgeand work with the ecological forces that provide the base on which the system mustbe built. Working with nature, rather than dominating it, and at the same time meeting




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with the social, economic and cultural requirements of the farming communities,this approach aims to reintroduce already lost tree species in the rural landscape. In-stead of introducing any species suggested from outside, this system is planned bykeeping the background ecosystem fully in mind. Many of the marginalised agricul-tural system-types, now operating at ‘low’ and ‘middle’ intensity management levelsthat India and China have in abundance, will come under scrutiny through thispathway. Community participation in this effort is necessary for identifying appro-priate agro-forestry tree species. In an interesting Indian research analysis in the north-eastern Indian context, (Ramakrishnan 1992: 424) closely followed by a global researchinitiative, (Ramakrishnan et al. 1998: 480) this author along with his collaboratorshas shown that what is socially/culturally valued species (tree species in this context),often has an ecological keystone value within the given ecosystem.

It must be recognised that in the context of marginalised agricultural systems, oneis dealing with a whole range of socio-ecologically diverse systems, in both India andChina. For example, one is dealing with a specific range of socio-ecological systemsof the Indian plains, and on the other extreme, one has to deal with a range of an-other more traditional set of mountain socio-ecological systems too. Trying to imposea standardised agro-forestry model based on ‘formal’ knowledge-based agro-economicconsiderations may create more problems than it solves. The story of the introductionof the Eucalyptus as an agro-forestry species in the northern plains of India andelsewhere in the country is a case in point. It was based on the belief that the wood ofthis species will be bought by the pulping industry, and the rural farmers had to faceeventual disenchantment when they could not get remunerative prices for the wood.

To conclude this discussion on following the socio-ecological contours for develop-ing agro-forestry models with community participation, and thereby arrive at decisionsthat are relevant to the larger societal needs, TEK has a major role to play. In otherwords, a TEK-triggered decision-making process will contribute towards selection oftrees that may have multi-purpose value which will ensure that the farmer has betterchances of emerging as the winner and not the loser.

AGRICULTURAL REDEVELOPMENT THROUGH INCREMENTAL CHANGE

Many traditional agricultural systems need to be redeveloped through incremental,rather than quantum change, gradually building upon what they now have usingTEK, bringing in ‘formal knowledge’ based technologies only to the minimal extentthat is necessitated under the given situation. Community participatory approachesbecome even more relevant whilst dealing with the most traditional societies who havetime and again rejected alternative designs by agricultural scientists. A detailed andintensive analysis of ‘shifting agriculture’ was done in the north-eastern hill areas ofIndia, where it is commonly referred to as jhum. Also variously termed ‘slash and burn’




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agriculture, swidden etc., with a whole variety of local names, which (Ramakrishnan1992: 424; P.S. Ramakrishnan et al. 2006: 495) the study offers detailed insights intoredevelopment of shifting agriculture based on an incremental pathway. Incrementallybuilding upon available TEK, and converting the research, results into a redevelopmentaction plan. This is the first time anywhere in the world that the incremental pathwayhas been used for redeveloping rather than finding an alternative to shifting agriculture(Ramakrishnan 2001: 198). This is in contrast to the situation in the entire developingtropics including the Himalayan extension into southern China, where this is a pre-valent land use practice. Scientists are struggling to find a solution to this problemwhich remains elusive, since the effort is to find an alternative based on formal text-book knowledge approaches (Palm et al. 2005: 463).

What is to be noted here is that a TEK-based approach for sustainable agriculturecan be successful only if the institutional dimension, linked to traditional wisdom,also gets integrated and directed towards community participation. In the Nagalandsituation where jhum redevelopment is a now an on-going activity, over thrity-fiveethnic societies that exist in the region, were given an opportunity to have their Vil-lage Development Boards (VDBs), based on their traditional ways of organising them-selves, which was the key for immediate community participation.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

Clearly, we are dealing with a whole range of agricultural system typologies, whichare not amenable to development based on a high-energy, subsidised model of modernagriculture. Unlike the cold temperate soils, which tend to accumulate and have arich reserve of organic matter, the tropical soils are more fragile. Therefore, they areless amenable to high inputs of fertilisers unless buffered with constant supply oforganic matter accumulated over a long time period, even in a system organised onan industrial scale. This acquires significance in the India-China context. Fortunately,in the Indian context, there are many checks and balances through a tradition ofbeing able to combine a ‘top-down’ approach to development with a ‘bottom-up’ ap-proach, right from the community level, involving all the stakeholders who can articu-late community perceptions effectively. The role of a vigorous NGO movement inthis effort cannot be overlooked, and this particularly, augurs well for the situationthat is prevailing now in the Indian context.

Sustainable management of natural resources with concerns for food security, basedon a value system that a given society is immediately able to relate with, is critical forpreventing conflicting situations and linked human insecurity. In this effort ‘knowledgesystems’ have a key role to play. It is important to ensure that the modern text-book




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based, formal knowledge system be made an important component for sustainabledevelopment of rural communities. Nonetheless TEK knowledge available with com-munities, imparting meaning into the process, so that generalisations could be madethat are applicable across socio-ecological systems, is increasingly seen as ensuring theirsustainability and linked environmental security. Discussing human security basedupon human dignity linked development and humane governance in the South Asianregion, Abdus Sabur (2003) and Chari and Gupta (2003) go a step further and arguethat human security is under an even greater threat in the context of globalisation ofeconomies and global change, contributing to accelerated degradation of water, forests,farmlands and fisheries. Brauch (2005) emphasises the need to go deeper into allissues connected with economic and social vulnerabilities of humans and the linkedenvironmental human security concerns. In this debate, he emphasises the need tomaintain a dynamic equilibrium of humans linked to nature. This is the context inwhich the divide that exists between the emerging elite minority and the large mar-ginalised sections in many developing countries has to be seen.

What is required is a collective decision-making process that democracy enablesand which is further reinforced by non-governmental socio-ecological activism. Inthis effort, conserving and rediscovering value systems that are cherished by differentsections of human society, as part of a natural cultural landscape (Ramakrishnan 2003a;2003b) become critical. In this context, the efforts of many urban societies to getclose to nature through reconstructed ‘urban cultural landscapes’ (Shutkin 2000) be-come significant. In all these efforts there is a role for an appropriate mix of ‘knowledgesystems’ for ensuring the integrity of socio-ecological systems and the linked humansecurity. In other words, the argument is for linking cultural diversity with biologicaldiversity, so rich in the India-China context, as the basis for sustainable managementof natural resources, leading towards human well-being, and thus contributing towardshuman security (Ramakrishnan 2007). Such value-system based, conservation-linkedsustainable development alone can enable us in the region to cope with emergingsocio-ecological uncertainties arising from ‘global change’ and ‘globalisation’.

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Author’s Address: School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110 067.E-mail: [email protected]



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Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security: India-China Context