the costs of rice

andhra pradesh needed around 32 lakh tonnes (rough estimate) of rice in 1961. it produced around 40 lakh* tonnes, according to an estimate of the international rice research institute. forty years later, in 2001, it required around 68 to 70 lakh tonnes. it produced around 93 lakh tonnes. from around 25%, the surplus had increased to 32%-- did that ensure less malnourishment in andhra pradesh than in kerala which produces only one-fifth as much rice as its population needs? no.

the average resident of kerala is richer than the average resident of andhra pradesh: per capita gdp in kerala is around 23% higher than in andhra pradesh. as for malnourishment, it's much higher in andhra pradesh, of course. but according to a recent report prepared by the u.n. world food program (unwfp) surpluses producing andhra pradesh is also much more food insecure than kerala:

New Delhi: India's mineral-rich state Jharkhand is the most hungry and thirsty state in the country and also among the states that has the poorest of sanitation facilities.

According to a report on the State of Food Insecurity in Rural India prepared jointly by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), Jharkhand has replaced Orissa from top of the list of hungry states in the country.

The report, which is a corollary to the Food Insecurity Atlas of Rural India that was released in 2001, also ranks the country 94th on the Global Hunger Index of 119 countries.

"On the composite index of food insecurity of rural India, states like Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are found in the 'very high' level of food insecurity, followed by Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat", the report said.

The better performers include Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, all of which report an Index value below 0.53, it added.

Surprisingly, economically developed states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka find themselves in the category of high food insecurity in the report. [emphasis mine].

so, what did andhra pradesh gain from producing so much rice? nearly twice as many people were employed or underemployed, one can safely assume, in 2001, in the production of a little more than twice as much rice as in 1961. it'd seem like all that talk of technology-intensive farming that the green revolution had supposedly ushered in was just that: mere talk. because the green-revolutionary technology only seems to have increased the surpluses marginally because most of the increase in output could as well be attributed to increase in labour employed. by pursuing a model of development that placed less emphasis on people, andhra pradesh seems to have achieved efficiency in neither production nor distribution. this has produced a society more riven by more social and economic inequalities, more deprivation and discontent than it originally started with.

if we consider the pure economic costs now, ignoring the human, ecological, and even political and social costs, they seem to be much higher than the gains: the government pays rs.1,000 as m.s.p for every quintal of paddy now, which is as just as much as the farmer spends to produce it. and for more than two decades his gains have been as bad. isn't it time somebody started calculating the total real costs, not just the economic ones? especially those who are promising the people of telangana that a new state would mean more water and rice?

* the paddy to rice ratio is 3:2.

the recipe for the green revolution

a slightly old article in himal explains how the green revolution changed agriculture in punjab:

The state of Punjab which has been literally feeding India, with its annual contribution of 53 percent of wheat and 40 percent of paddy to the food stocks of the country was, at the time of India’s independence in 1947, a food grain deficit area with only 52 percent of its area under irrigation. The 1960s Green Revolution changed all of that. Introduction of dwarf wheat germ-plasm and dwarf varieties for paddy crop resulted in quantum leaps in production. The high tide of the Green Revolution led to intensive production which then led to the emergence of crop monocultures, in general, as farmers, enticed by the productivity of the high yielding varieties of seeds promoted by the agricultural establishment of the country, switched to rice and wheat rotation. Pulses and coarse grains were sidelined – paddy and wheat was where the money was and to which over 71 percent of the gross cultivated area was put. Farm machinery, pesticides and fertilisers and irrigation dramatically increased the productivity of land. Today 95% of the net sown area gets irrigated by a web of canals and tubewells.

my last post was about how difficult it is for any state in india to even think of competing with punjab, and a couple of other states, for a larger share of the market for the two staple crops, wheat and rice, in the country. why is it so very difficult? there are several factors that combine to give punjab an unbeatable edge over most other states in the country:
* irrigation- punjab, as the paragraph i quoted says, started out with a well-built canal irrigation system, thanks to the british, and this potential has been further enhanced by projects such as the bhakra nangal and now the syl.canal irrigation system is the cheapest and most reliable source of water, as compared with manual and machine-operated irrigation systems. over 65% and more of farms in punjab could depend on this source until a few years ago. the national average is around 30-35%. extensive use of tubewells powered by cheap power and diesel ensure that, as the article says, 95% of all farms have assured supply of water.
* intensive farming- the green revolution was all about intensive farming. that translates into intensive application of technology (high yielding seeds, fertilizer and pesticides, farm equipment), intensive use of natural resources (water and double cropping, or two crops a year) and institutional support (research & advice from universities, credit from banks, support prices from the government). as the national portal i had quoted in my previous post says 'the cropping intensity' in punjab is more than 186% (which means two crops are cultivated in most of the available area)- the national average in irrigated areas is around 120%.
* social profile- the punjab land alienation act (1900), a bizarre piece of colonial legislation, ensured that most of the land in punjab went into the hands of the jats. the other upper castes, obcs and dalits own very little. so when the green revolution programme was first demonstrated and later launched on a large scale in punjab this homogeneity must have played a great role in the faster dissemination of the new ideas. and not just in punjab, but across haryana and western uttar pradesh, (the other one and a half of the two and a half states in north india where the green revolution is considered a great success) the story of the green revolution in north india has been the story of the resurgence of the jats. from charan singh to mahendra singh tikait- think of all the ways in which this unified, and large, jat voice worked to make the green revolution work for them more than others.

will some other state, i repeat the question, be able to match the punjab performance? if the fators listed above constitute the elements of a successful formula, how many states in india wouild be able to muster all those elements, and put them together? let's check against that list and see what needs to be done:
1. irrigation: this is a huge problem. if all the states in india were to achieve around 65% coverage of farms through canal irrigation (from around 30-35% now) the public funds required would run to around several hundred thousand crores. the current government in andhra pradesh was voted in on the promise that it'd do just that (increase area irrigated by canals by 73 lakh acres with an estimated, now revised, expenditure of 46,000 crores), but hasn't accomplished even a tenth part of the job until now even after spending more than 20,000 crores on the program. and andhra pradesh has access to perennial rivers such as the godavari and the krishna while many other states aren't so adequately endowed. this fao document should give you some idea of the size of the problem.is it doable?
2. high-yielding seeds, pesticides, fertilizers etc: most of india is using them- to increase to the punjab level more government support by way of subsidies, which means more public funds, and also private funds (which would mean increased credit for farmers) would be required. and much more funds would be required for farm equipment such as tractors (every village in punjab, on an average, has around 35 tractors- how many villages have you ever visited that have around 35 tractors each?). doable?
3. extension support from universities: doable.
4. credit: punjabi farmers access nearly 60% of their credit requirements from the banks. farmers elsewhere, despite policies that stipulate that nearly 18% of credit should go to farmers, have never received more than 10-!5% of their requirements from banks on an average. doable?
5. government support through procurement: the primary reason why punjabi farmers can access more credit, invest more in inputs and technology, is that the government of india buys more than half their harvest. doable?

it'd seem like most of those tasks, especially 1-3, can be accomplished by any state government if there were more money: more money in the hands of the farmer to invest more, more money in the hands of the government to invest more in irrigation infrastructure, subsidies, extension support etc., but the more vital player in this whole programme would've to be the central government. let's look at this way: if say, the central government buys as much wheat (half the crop harvested) from the madhya pradesh farmers (to use the same example as in my last post) as it does in punjab, and at the same remunerative prices (procurement prices have been better than market prices in most of the years since the green revolution started), then everything else would fall in place. because the madhya pradesh farmers now have an assured buyer for a major portion of their produce, and the most dependable one in the land, banks would be more than willing to lend them as much funds as they require to invest more in inputs, machinery and equipment and other improvements. because the farmer is able to invest more, his yields would increase progressively, every year. and because he's bringing more income to the rural economy every year, the state government would start listening to him more and increase its own investments in infrastructure and support through universities and subsidies etc., and in a few years, the madhya pradesh farmer would equal the punjabi farmer in productivity and surpluses. so, if the last task (no.5) is accomplished- that of securing the same kind of support from the central government as the punjabi farmers get (through procurement), all the other tasks, as i said earlier, fall in place. and all the other tasks, even if accomplished, aren't enough to turn a food deficit state into a surplus state if the last task is not completed. and most probably, it'd be almost impossible to accomplish all the other tasks (especially task 4, which in turn affects the completion of task 2) if the last task isn't completed.

so, why doesn't the central government buy from all the states? and stoke green revolutions and surpluses across the country? can't the central government extend that kind of support to all farmers in all states who, as sainath says, place 'food on our table' ? the answer is that there is already enough 'food on our table'.

older posts in this series: [1] & [2]

test tube village

the new indian village, created after independence, had no place for anyone except the farmer. nothing for the artisans, for the workers, for the outcastes, for the wandering tradesmen, performers...for anyone except the farmer. what palagummi sainath and others like him mourn now is the death of this re-created village, this refashioned universe...this new ayodhya.

in this new indian village, the farmer became the focus of all policy : he was anointed the carpenter's patron, the blacksmith's, the farm worker's and the touring theatrical troupe's. even in a village that was earlier more known for the skills of its weavers, or silver filigree workers, or brass workers or bone-setters or pickle-makers. he was appointed as the 'backbone' of the village..and of the country itself. i will cut short my view about this process of re-creating the indian village here, now that i've introduced the idea (to continue at a later stage, in follow-up posts)...i'll let it fester for a while, untended.

so, then along came reforms in 1991 (some might argue they started much earlier, but it's the policies since 1991 that are much disputed). and the furor over suicides..and the concerted campaign by some to paint liberalisation as the cause. i will attempt to explore, in instalments, whether reforms were really the only cause of distress..or were there other villains. in this post, i'd like to refer to a study conducted on the impact of liberalisation on the lives of small and marginal (with specific reference to the 'resource-poor' among them, as defined by the researcher) farmers in telangana, especially those who migrated from jowar, maize and other cereals to the cultivation of cotton in the nineties.

let me quote a few sections from this abstract from the study that i found interesting -

'from the time india became an independent nation in 1947 its policy regime has been characterized by extensive controls on production, pricing, trade and a managed overvalued exchange rate. In the specific case of agriculture the main thrust of policy since the mid-1960s had been on achieving food self-sufficiency. domestic policy instruments used to attain this goal included input subsidies on fertilizers, power and irrigation, minimum support prices for major crops (such as wheat and rice), and quantitative restrictions on agricultural exports and imports.while the industrial sector was heavily protected under the import substitution regime, agricultural production was in the aggregate actually dis-protected (taxed) by as much as 20 per cent from the 1970s to the mid-1990s.. this is because although expenditures on price supports and input subsidies were large, these were more than offset by the relatively low domestic farm-gate prices that were sustained behind the border measures.'

in other words, the indian farmer didn't actually need the subsidies and the support prices..if only the quantitative restrictions had been lifted... if there hadn't been any 'border' restrictions (as the researcher calls them), and the subsidies and price support had been withdrawn.. it's even possible that the indian farmers would not just have been not harmed at all, in the aggregate (to borrow a phrase from the researcher)..but actually have improved his position (as compared with his position after twenty years of subsidies and price support)..and if competition had been allowed in pesticides/fertilizers and other input supplying industries there is every possibility that farmers would have incurred less costs, gradually. maybe. these are my own conclusions.

so why didn't the indian farmer benefit from the gradual lifting of trade restrictions through the nineties and later? let us return to the researcher-

'in 1991, faced with a balance of payments crisis, india embarked on an economic reform programme in line with structural adjustment and stabilization policies initiated by the imf and the world bank. the reforms focussed largely on trade liberalization, encouraging foreign direct investment, reforming capital markets, and deregulating domestic business. [...] it is important to bear in mind that domestic and border policies directly affecting agriculture were not included in these early reform efforts. [...] in 1994, import restrictions on oilseeds, sugar and cotton were liberalized but most agricultural products remained subject to import controls. as the reforms progressed and the foreign exchange situation became more comfortable, quantitative import restrictions on a whole range of agricultural commodities were phased out starting in 2001.'

it's pertinent here to remind myself and those suckered into reading this.. that india's journey towards globalisation (or unrestricted trade), though it was formally flagged off in 1994, did not actually start until 2001. but trade in cotton was de-controlled to an extent in 1994, and this research study was primarily conducted on cotton famers in telangana...to get back to the original question: why didn't indian farmers, like the cotton growers of telangana, benefit from the lifting of trade restrictions?

'it is interesting to note that while the government pushed heavily for border policies, input subsidies on fertilizer, power and irrigation remained largely unaffected by the reforms. minimum support policy for major crops (such as wheat and rice) also remained virtually untouched because of the fear of political retaliation.'

the input subsidies remained untouched, the minimum support policy wasn't abandoned and trade controls were not relaxed until 2001 - so what drove the farmers to suicide? and what was liberalized?