At The K. R. Cama Oriental Institute’s seminar on January 12, 2020 on the subject "The Past and Future of Food on the Indian Subcontinent: Identity and Cultural Heritage ("Thoughts for Food — II,” Parsiana, March 21-April 6, 2020), 11 speakers from different backgrounds discussed only one particular aspect — that small farmers’ holdings were good but large farms that planted highly bred seeds promoted by multinational seed companies were bad. Undoubtedly, the "boutique” varieties of crops grown by small farmers are very good, but will they be sufficient to meet the demand to feed the rising global population?
The green revolutions in rice and wheat of the 1970s and ’80s made India self-sufficient in the basic cereals and even produced surpluses so great that there was no place to store the extra food grain produced! Railway platforms that did not see much rail traffic were used for storing wheat. Initially, wheat production increased from 50 million tons in 1950 to 79 million tons in 1964 and later to 95.1 million tons in 1968. Since then, importing food grains declined considerably and India was pulled out of a near famine situation.
The rising price of meat products and seafood is causing the less privileged to exclude these items from their diet leading to an increase in vegetarianism and even veganism (not ingesting foods sourced from animals or birds). I have met vegans who become upset at the mere mention of meat or fish! So, do not mention bhida ma gos, or chora ma khariya, guar ma kolmi, akuri or taréla chhamna in their presence!
Millets (like bajra) are a group of highly variable small-seeded grasses widely grown around the world as cereal crops or for fodder and human food. They are important in the semiarid tropics of Asia and Africa, with 97% of millet production consumed in developing countries. Read that as "poor countries.” Domestic help in Parsi and other houses used to pack bhakri (a coarse kind of chapatti made from millet flour or sorghum), with some pickle or just chopped onions, for their lunch.
The recently developed "genetically modified organisms” (GMOs) that have been put on the market by multinational corporations have been criticized by activists like Vandana Shiva, Amrita Gupta and others. But the quantum leap in the yields of major cereals brought about by the green revolution has reached a plateau. How much more yield can one expect from rice and wheat plants? There is a physical limit to the number and size of grains that crop plant breeders can hope to achieve. The global population keeps increasing, from six billion in year 1996 to nearly eight billion in 2020. What are the projections for 2050? The UN publication, World Population Prospects (2017), states that it will reach 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100. A 2014 study published in Science journal asserts that growth will continue into the next century while arable land will decrease due to desertification, drought, salinity, over-grazing, urbanization, etc. Should we expect the ever decreasing area under cultivation to produce more for the unstoppable increasing human population? Something has to give!
As a crop scientist for the last 45 years, I feel that the only way to increase food production today is through biotechnology, by gene manipulation, genetic engineering, etc. These techniques are being applied by multinational corporations to create new hybrid seeds that produce higher yields by eliminating diseases and climatic restraints that limit yields or seasons of growth.
Researching biotechnology techniques requires highly sophisticated machines costing millions of dollars each. Multinational corporations that experiment with biotechnology are answerable to their investors. If consumers wish to continue to eat the same crop plants they have been consuming for the last few centuries, the quantity will have to increase to keep ahead of the population curve. The consequences of falling behind are too grave to contemplate.
Dr ARDESHIR B. DAMANIA
University of California, Davis
USA
abdamania@yahoo.com