agronomist Monkombu Swaminathan....”For the real poor, this pearl millet is a great hope”….increased iron levels in the blood of
local women
In India it is unfortunate that the poor will not let themselves be eliminated through draconian programs (the elites have tried). Life in a democracy, however flawed, is an insurance against state-sponsored genocide.
As a revenge we have developed a nation-wide strategy (by intention or by negligence) of letting poor people survive…barely above starvation levels. The good news is technology can help and at some point people will have to find a way around the middlemen (aka corruption)….also using technology (Rajiv Gandhi famously told that only 15 paisa in a rupee reached the poor- we think that ratio is optimistic).
Things will work out best if India is used as a laboratory- usually a basket of solutions will work better than one single silver bullet. From organic farming to biotechnology, let us see what works best, without bowing to one ideology or the other.
…………………………..
Over one third of humanity is undernourished. Now a group of
scientists are experimenting with specially-bred crops, and hoping to
launch a new Green Revolution — but controversy is brewing.
It may not make his family wealthy, but Devran Mankar is still
grateful for the pearl millet variety called Dhanshakti (meaning
“prosperity and strength”) he has recently begun growing in his small
field in the state of Maharashtra, in western India.
“Since eating this pearl millet, the children are rarely ill,” raves
Mankar, a slim man with a gray beard, worn clothing and gold-rimmed
glasses.
…
Mankar and his family are participating in a large-scale nutrition
experiment. He is one of about 30,000 small farmers growing the variety,
which has unusually high levels of iron and zinc — Indian researchers
bred the plant to contain large amounts of these elements in a process
they call “bio-fortification.”
The grain is very nutritional,” says the
Indian farmer, as his granddaughter Kavya jumps up and down in his lap.
It’s also delicious, he adds. “Even the cattle like the pearl millet.”
…
Mankar’s field on the outskirts of the village of Vadgaon Kashimbe is
barely 100 meters (328 feet) wide and 40 meters long. The grain will be
ripe in a month, and unless there is a hailstorm — may Ganesha, the
elephant god, prevent that from happening — he will harvest about 350
kilograms of pearl millet, says the farmer. It’s enough for half a year.
…
The goal of the project, initiated by the food aid organization
Harvest Plus, is to prevent farmers like Mankar and their families from
going hungry in the future. In fact, the Dhanshakti pearl millet is part
of a new “Green Revolution” with which biologists and nutrition experts
hope to liberate the world from hunger and malnutrition.
Global Problem
Today some 870 million people worldwide still lack enough food to
eat, and almost a third of humanity suffers from an affliction known as
hidden famine, a deficiency in vitamins and trace elements like zinc,
iron and iodine.
The consequences are especially dramatic for mothers
and children: Women with iron deficiencies are more likely to die in
childbirth, and they have a higher rate of premature births and
menstruation problems. Malnourished children can go blind or suffer from
growth disorders. Throughout their lives, they are more susceptible to
infection and suffer from learning disorders, because their brains have
not developed properly.
…
“These children are deprived of their future from birth,” says Indian
agronomist Monkombu Swaminathan, who has campaigned for the
“fundamental human right” of satiety for more than 60 years.
…
To solve
the problem of hunger once and for all, Swaminathan and other nutrition
experts are calling for a dramatic shift in our approach to agriculture.
They argue that instead of industrial-scale, high-tech agriculture,
farming should become closer to nature — and involve intelligent plant
breeding and a return to old varieties.
…
The world has enough to eat. The only problem is that the poor, whose
diet consists primarily of grain, are eating the wrong food. Corn,
wheat and rice – the grain varieties that dominate factory farming —
are bred primarily for yield and not for their nutritional content. They
cannot adequately feed the poorest of the poor — nutrients and trace
elements are at least as important as calories.
…
Food safety is tied to variety, says Swaminathan, who calls for a
sustainable “evergreen” revolution. He advocates the development of new,
more nutritional grain varieties better adapted to climatic conditions.
“We must re-marry agriculture and nutrition — the two have been too
far away from each other for a long time,” says the scientist.
The First Revolution
Swaminathan, 88, is considered the father of India’s 1960s Green
Revolution. He created rice and wheat varieties that were smaller than
normal but with substantial higher yields than existing varieties. He
also worked with heterozygous plants, so-called hybrids, which are up to
twice as productive as their parent generation.
The walls of his office
in the city of Chennai on the east coast of India are covered with
tributes and certificates — one reads: “India’s Greatest Global Living
Legend” — and in 1987, he received the United Nations World Food Prize.
…
“The Green Revolution was a tremendous success,” says Swaminathan. As
an adolescent, he lived through the “Great Bengal Famine” that killed
millions of Indians in the mid-1940s. “Back then we used to get less
than one ton of wheat per hectare (2.5 acres),” says Swaminathan, adding
that the yield per hectare has more than tripled since then.
….
But at what price? Although new high-performance varieties guaranteed
high yields, they depleted the soil and consumed far too much water.
More and more fertilizer and pesticides were needed. Many small farmers
lost everything when they invested in seed grain and were unable to sell
their harvest at a profit. Meanwhile, they neglected to grow
traditional bread cereals.
…
“Formerly, the farmers were depending on 200 to 300 crops for food
and health security,” says Swaminathan, whereas today there are only few, but gradually we have come to the stage of four or five important
crops, wheat, corn, rice and soy bean.” “The Green Revolution,” says the
scientist, ” did not eliminate hunger and malnutrition.”
Springtime in Maharashtra
In India, where about 250 million people, or a fifth of the
population, are undernourished, the problem is urgent. Some 50 to 70
percent of children under the age of five and half of all women suffer
from an iron deficiency. Almost half of all children are physically
underdeveloped or even crippled because they are chronically
undernourished or malnourished.
…
The situation is especially precarious in Maharashtra. In the early
morning, we travel out to the countryside with Bushana Karandikar, an
economist from the city of Pune (formerly Poona). Karandikar manages the
Dhanshakti Project for Harvest Plus. …
..
“Malnutrition is the sad part of
the Indian growth story,” she says during the trip. “It is very
surprising, but India is almost in the same league as sub-Saharan
African countries, which have much, much lower per capita income.”
…
It is spring, and Maharashtra is green — the land looks fertile,
with its lush fields and fruit plantations lining the road. But as
scientist Swaminathan puts it, this is part of “India’s enigma”: “green
mountains and hungry millions.”
…
In the town of Ghodegaon, the problems quickly become apparent. Men,
children and, most of all, young women in colorful saris are waiting on
an unpaved street outside the town’s 15-bed clinic. They remove their
shoes at the door to the building, where the walls are decorated with
portraits of the gods adorned with garlands of flowers.
…
Dr. Rajneesh Potnis greets us on the second floor, where we are
served sweets and aromatic coffee. Potnis has been working in this
clinic for 25 years. His fellow medical students told him he was crazy
when he went to Ghodegaon, but Potnis was determined to help people.
Today he provides advice to nursing mothers, helps women give birth, and
treats conditions like rickets, night blindness and anemia.
…
“The women are the worst off,” says the doctor. “They work the
hardest, and yet they eat what’s left over.” As a result, he explains,
they frequently suffer from premature deliveries and stillbirths,
infections and sudden attacks of faintness. The tribal people, ethnic
minorities which live on the margins of society, are in the worst
position. “They only come when they have no other choice.”
…
Potnis hands out mineral and vitamin pills subsidized by the Indian
government. He also advises families to eat a varied diet, but his
efforts are often futile, he explains. “It’s so easy to say to people:
Eat more pulses, more vegetables and eggs — but most of them can’t
afford any of that.”
The Millet Solution
This is where biofortified pearl millet comes into play. Farmers in
the region have always grown pearl millet. So why not simply replace the
traditional variety with Dhanshakti? “Then people will get their
minerals from the bread they eat every day, anyway,” says Potnis.
…
Ramu Dahine’s five-person family, in the nearby village of Vadgaon
Kashimbe, is a case in point. Daughter-in-law Meena is baking bhakri, a
traditional round, unleavened flatbread made from pearl-millet flour.
Dressed in a red sari, she crouches on the floor in front of a small
stone building with a corrugated metal roof. She combines pearl-millet
flour and water, kneads the dough, places the flatbread into a pan and
blows through a long tube onto the coals of a small wood fire until
flames begin to flicker.
…
The Dahines eat the bread, and hardly anything else, twice a day. The
seed dealer recommended the pearl millet, says the farmer. He doesn’t
even know that the grain has a high iron content, but he did notice that
his family was healthier than usual by the end of the last rainy
season. The variety also has another benefit: Because it isn’t a hybrid,
Dahine can use a portion of his harvest as seed for the next season.
…
“For the real poor, this pearl millet is a great hope,” says
Karandikar. Swiss scientists have shown that the consumption of
Dhanshakti millet significantly increased iron levels in the blood of
local women. And Indian researchers showed that a daily serving of only
100 grams of the pearl millet could completely satisfy the iron
requirements of children.
…
Can a New Revolution Take Root?
But for the global champions of the new, gentle Green Revolution and its
campaign against hunger, this is but one of many successful attempts to
develop more nutritious grain and vegetable varieties.
In Brazil, for
example, the research organization Embrapa developed biofortified beans,
pumpkins and manioc. In Uganda and Mozambique, farmers are growing a
new variety of sweet potato rich in provitamin A. In Rwanda, more than
500,000 families are eating beans enriched with iron. And in India,
farmers will soon begin growing rice and wheat with especially high
levels of zinc.
The Harvest Plus program has already reached about seven million men,
women and children, says program head Howarth Bouis, adding that
biofortified grain is expected to improve the nutrition of a billion
people by 2030.
…
Bouis’ early decision to apply only conventional methods
in breeding the new varieties was important to its success. “At Harvest
Plus we took the decision not to invest in transgenics, because we
wanted to avoid the controversy,” he says, remembering all too well the
dispute over a variety known as Golden Rice.
The Genetic Engineering Conundrum
The transgenic plant, developed in 1992 at the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology in Zurich, contains almost twice as much
beta-carotene, a precursor to vitamin A, as ordinary rice.
…
Nevertheless,
there has been so much public resistance to genetic engineering that it
has yet to be approved for use anywhere in the world.
…
But in many cases, genetic engineering is unnecessary anyways. There
are often natural varieties with grains that already contain the desired
vitamins or nutrients. Rice is a perfect example, with about 100,000
varieties in existence worldwide.
“You can basically find any trait you
can think of,” says Swaminathan. In the laboratories of his M. S.
Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in Chennai, scientists are
experimenting with high zinc-content rice. The biologists analyzed
thousands of rice strains and eventually discovered about a dozen
varieties with especially high zinc levels. They are now being crossed
with high-yield varieties.
…
But Swaminathan isn’t opposed to choosing the high-tech approach if
it can help alleviate hunger. ” I won’t worship nor discard genetic
engineering,” he says. “It is important to harness all the tools that
traditional wisdom and contemporary science can offer”
…
Because, for example, it is very difficult to increase iron levels in
rice with conventional breeding techniques, the scientists have turned
to biotechnology. “We isolated genes from mangroves and introduced them
into the genome of rice,” explains Ganesan Govindan, one of the
bioengineers at MSSRF. The transgenic rice grains contain elevated
levels of iron, and the plants are more tolerant of drought and salt.
Researchers expect the variety to be ready for market in two or three
years.
‘25,000 Farmer Suicides’
But these high-tech solutions are also controversial. Vandana Shiva, a
prominent opponent of modern agricultural engineering, lives in the
Indian capital New Delhi. In the offices of her organization, Navdanya
— located in the affluent neighborhood of Hauz Khas — are decorated
with a flower arrangement on a glass table and clay vases containing
sheaves of grain.
…
Shiva, dressed in a flowing robe and with a large bindi on her
forehead, is an impressive figure, steeled by her tough, decades-long
battle with the establishment. The civil rights activist never tires of
castigating seed companies. “A globally operating industry is pushing
hard to make the world dependent on their products,” she says.
Farmers
who have made the switch, she explains, give up their traditional seed
and are then forced to buy the commercial varieties, which often come
with license fees, in perpetuity.
….
“This type of agriculture has taken the lives of 25,000 farmers in
India, who committed suicide because they couldn’t pay back their
debts,” says Shiva. She doesn’t think much of biofortified varieties,
either. “Harvest Plus is focused on one nutrient,” she says critically.
“But a single nutrient is not a solution to multidimensional
malnutrition crisis; the body needs all the micronutrients.”
….
Instead of these “monocultures,” Shiva is calling for a return to
diversity in fields. “Most of our traditional crops are full of
nutrients,” she explains. Why create Golden Rice with lots of vitamin A
when carrots and pumpkins contain plenty of it already? Why develop
genetically modified bananas with high iron content when horseradish and
amaranth contain so much iron?
…
Shiva recommends field crop-rotation, and the fostering of vegetable
and fruit gardens and small family farms primarily geared toward
nutrition instead of maximized profit. Because Shiva believes organic
farming is the only viable approach to defeating hunger, her
organization has trained 75,000 farmers in organic farming methods since
the late 1980s.
‘There Isn’t Enough Arable Land’
Harvest Plus Director Bouis believes that Shiva’s approach is naïve.
“We have the fundamental problem that there isn’t enough arable land for
a constantly growing population,” he says.
…
A UN Environment Programme report predicts that by 2050, agriculture
will have to produce 70 percent more calories than today to feed an
expected global population of 9.6 billion people. This “food gap” can
only be closed, says Bouis, if we “make agriculture even more
productive.”
…
But in Maharashtra, it’s clear that new varieties of super grains are
not always the entire answer. A third farmer from the town of Vadgaon
Kashimbe, Santosh Pingle, 38, and his family are visibly better off than
their neighbors. They live in a plastered house, they have cows and
goats for milk, and they enjoy the occasional luxury of a chicken from
the market. Pingle’s recipe for success is that he has done more with
his land than other farmers.
…
The farmer grows iron-rich Dhanshakti millet to satisfy the iron
needs of his family of five. On the other half of their field, the
Pingles grow tomatoes and high-yield hybrid millet, which they sell in
the market. They also grow protein-rich pulses and other vegetables in
their house garden, and his wife Jayashree and her daughters harvest
lemons, coconuts and mangoes several times a year.
…
The Pingles are well on their way to achieving “prosperity and strength” — and they always have enough to eat.
……
….
regards