Meetings at Whole Foods, CNFA and IFPRI at Washington DC

Our day started with a meeting at Whole Food's Market that provides a niche market for natural and organic foods. They make constant endeavours in maintaining high standards of quality, satisfying customers, creating wealth, caring for community and environment, facilitating suppliers, promote healthy eating. One wonders whether such an initiative can be taken up by the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) (to being with, it should be in a small scale but it can expand later) in Andhra Pradesh.

The days second meeting was with CNFA (an acronym for which I did not get the full form). This elusiveness was also evident in my understanding of what they are doing. Their interventions are among poorer regions of Africa, Central Asia and South Asia to increase productivity and give a higher income to farmers. But, it gave me an impression that they are using technologies that have been developed elsewhere and have not been locally grounded. One only hopes that their concerns of global hunger and food security has some good initiatives and it is a laudable. Nevertheless, concerns on immediate benefits and long term ramifications remain. The irony is that the immediate benefit will be shared by many but adverse consequences will only be limited to the local communities.

Outside our itinerary, the participants decided to go to a conference by USDA's 'The Economic Research Service: Celebrating 50 Years' and attended their session 3 'Leading the Study of the Food System'. There were four panelists. David Zorn, 'Understanding the Economics of Food Safety', talked about new technologies and the need for new regulatory systems and research so that consumers can make informed choice. More importantly food safety research has to go beyond presence/absence of germs. Discussions on other aspects of nutrition (sodium, fat, calories among others are equally relevant).

Elise Galon's 'Exploring the Determinants of Food Choice' discussed about What, Where, Why and How of Food and indicated about the affordability of food because of the prices. She touched upon the fact that there is a price variability across regions, but the value of food coupons given to the vulnerable is the same. There is also a need to understand food demand from the perspective of behaviourial economics. In a survey where people were told that the wine is from 'North Dakota' then they sipped and said it is not good. The same wine was given to them and they were told that it is from 'California' then the said that it is very good. These have implication that suggest that the choice the consumer has is 'subjective'.

Steve Carlson's 'Measuring Domestic Food Security' acknowledged the developments in measurement of food security but said that the main picture of hunger is missing in the analysis. What is more, the discussion of numbers misses the richness of information that one can gather from peoples experience and the socio-economic milieu.

Neel Convelin's 'Assessing Global Food Security' raised the global concerns of hunger. When it comes to households the question of distribution cannot be ignored. At the national level policies on trade and development become relevant and at the global level the growth of population should be kept in mind.

One of the questions, which was also in my mind, is that some of the discussions and views expressed here are missing in the policy on global hunger and food security. Are concerns of food safety not relevant there?

The last meeting of the day was at IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute). Guillaue Gruere has been working on South Asia with a focus on technology and has recently written a paper on farmer suicides and Bt cotton. This has reference to some of my earlier work. Kamiljon Akramov was working on development strategy and governance with a focus on Central Asia.

Later in the evening we went to Ford's theatre to see 'Liberty Smith'. It was an enthralling performance. 

Sustainable Agriculture, Federalism in the US and the Department of State

On 3 May 2011 the program has been really exciting and I wanted to write more, but time will permit me to only jot down a few quick points. We the participants under the 'Food Security and Sustainable Development' theme of the International Visitor Leadership Program had three meetings.

The day began with a meeting/interaction at the office of the National Sustainable Agricultural Coalition with their Executive Director, Susan Prolman. One view that opend up is that 'sustainable' is not necessarily totally against fertilizers and pesticides, but it does engage with the ills of higly energy intensive and chemical input intensive monocropping systems of agriculture. Similar efforts in India include the Association for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture that recently organized a Kisan Swaraj Yatra (Farmers Freedom Tour).

The next meeting was with Mr Akram Elias who introduced us to the American system of federalism and the separation of power. Some of the highlights that would indeed help us understand and carry forward the interactions as we go are the following. (a) The individual is the basic unit of social order (of cousre, family and community are important but because the indivuduals want it as such) and from that perspective it the individual's spirituality (not any specific religion) and the pragmatic political aspects. (b) There are certain rights that the individual has (for instance, speech, religion, ...) and the state does not interfere in these affairs - they are in the domain of the individual. (c) Following from the above, the government has a limited role in the economic sphere. It is association of individuals that initiate policies so as to exchange information, develop standard or code of conduct, help upgrade skils/knowledge and take to advocacy/lobbying to espouse their cause. The government's role is to regulate or deregulate as demanded by the people. (d) The USA is a federal government with the states having delinqished three important powers - defense, monetary policy and foreign policy. In all other domestic matters it is the state government. The questions that keep bothering is how to keep the vested interest out. This is by reiterating that the capitalism is a form of democractic capitalism. It is not against private property. It is not against people making profits (and it that sense against value added tax). But they need to be regulated. And as I would like to add; it should definitely be a matter of concern if one person's methods of making profits is scuttling the freedom and capability of many others.

We had lunch at one of the outlets of Sizzling Express, a Korean joint, and let me tell each one of us could fill our plates according to our wish. Eunmi and Rambabu are you listening.

The last meeting was at the Department of State. It began with a tour of the section where they have kept the gifts that the Secretary of State or others receive during their vists abroad. We then went up to the Library to have a meeting with a very illuminating interaction with some of their staff (Melissa, Bill, Kevan, Rebacca and Anthony). There were a range of interesting discussions coving subsidies (both in the US and in developing countries), poor implementation of schemes in the developing countries, infrastructure and marketing, global concerns of food security and hunger including rising prices, community-based sustainable practices in the US as also in India and a host of other concerns.

In the evening went to Gerorgetown Park (met a Pakistani man who traced his roots to Lucknow and a student from Seri Lingampally in Hyderabad who was working on a part-time basis) and then walked down the Potomac. It wa a lovely day!

Cash Transfers is Not the Answer to Food Security

It is being taunted that cash transfers will sort out all problems and bring about efficient and effective targeting of many welfare schemes. One would not dismiss the merits outright, but would like to state that this argument is based on the assumption (rather a presumption by policy makers) that nothing is wrong in the real sector.

This does not make sense when there is food shortage. Providing cash transfers to poor consumers (who could also be producers) will not enable them to buy the requisite food as and when they went.  Thus the solution misses the fundamental aspect that a financial/monetary solution cannot be applied to a problem that requires intervention in the real sector.

In day-to-day discourse one hears the example of cash for bicycles being given to girl students in Bihar as an incentive to make them attend schools. Yes, this is a direct transfer, but one that is tied with a real thing, a  bicycle.Similarly, if welfare schemes are to be successful in addressing food security, it has to be tied with the availability of food. Chattishgarh, not an example of governance in many other spheres, has done good in addressing this through the public distribution system.

An effective public distribution system, no doubt, reduces leakages from the system, and would help improve access to food. Nevertheless, the question of food security or food shortage is broader - not enough is being produced. The irony is that the producers of food (either as cultivators in small farms or labourers). who do not get enough returns also happen to be the consumers of food.

The net returns from input-intensive cultivation is decreasing because of increasing costs.  Nevertheless, this has been propagated by a thinking that there is no alternative (TINA). There are alternatives but it is not like one-size fits all. Usage of low-external input sustainable agriculture by taking into consideration local specificity make many alternatives exist (MAE; which literally is a variant of mother is some Indian languages). Like mother, it can adapt to different situations and open up different possibilities. They will differ from region-to-region, and from crop-to-crop, among others. Whatever it is, it ought to be locally grounded to make the alternative cost-effective and increase returns.

Choice of multiple crops at the farm/household level will address a variety of food requirements necessary for better nourishment. This reminds me of wadi (orchard) projects in tribal pockets of Thane adjoining Mumbai. Such interventions along with water harvesting structures facilitated production of cereals with fruits and some seasonal vegetables. This stopped out-migration and improved nutrition intake of the households. Similar  initiatives are replete across the country. Some of them are even integrated with livestock management, fishery, and poultry  among others. The oft-quoted example given in recent years is the  community managed sustainable agriculture in Andhra Pradesh. If scaled up effectively this can address the food security concerns.