Make most of farm subsidies, grow food safely

Devinder Sharma
Food and agriculture specialist

ACCOUNTING for over 25 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), intensive agricultural practices over the past few decades have not only deepened the agrarian crisis, but also taken a huge toll on the natural resource base. While the realisation that agriculture is a predominant reason for the climatic aberrations the world is witnessing is gaining ground, the world is slowly seeking a change in the way farming is being practised. The call for safe and organically produced food is growing.  

At the base of the environmental crisis afflicting agriculture are the massive subsidies being pumped into agriculture that have left behind a trail of destruction. This is the price the world has paid, often unknowingly, to keep food cheap so as to keep economic reforms viable. According to a study conducted by the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU), 2019, a global coalition of scientists, experts and economists, cheap food comes at an enormous ‘hidden cost’ on human health, natural resources and environment. Estimated at $12 trillion — equal to China’s GDP — the report warns that half the world may remain undernourished by 2030 if business as usual continues. The report goes much beyond ascertaining the reasons leading to the farm crisis and lists 10 measures that need to be adopted for transformation. 

While growing undernourishment or ‘hidden hunger’ will be one of the tragic outcomes, the devastating impact it will leave behind by way of destruction of natural resources and the climatic havoc wrought will be nothing short of an ecocide. The report, Growing better: Ten critical transitions to transform food and land use, estimates $700 billion a year is what is being spent on growing food. The figure may still be higher since it becomes difficult to decipher every explicit and implicit farm subsidy being provided. But before you form an opinion, let me make it clear — not all these subsidies go to the farmers. They hardly get a minuscule proportion as direct income support. 

Yet another study has on the basis of producer subsidy equivalent (PSE), which measures the amount of support received by farmers, worked out that the richest trading block — Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and China — leads the table in 2016-17 with an annual subsidy support of $235 billion and $232 billion, respectively. 

As the lead author of a report, The first 10 years of agreement on agriculture of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which was presented at the Hong Kong Ministerial in December 2005, my estimate was that more than 80 per cent of these subsidies (at that time, the WTO had worked out close to $360 billion of farm subsidies that rich countries paid) actually went to agribusiness companies. Mostly for export-driven agriculture, these subsidies were for intensive farming practices which had devastated soil health, contaminated the ground water, and were also for clearing rain forests for cattle rearing and palm oil plantations, raising bio-fuel crops, industrial livestock farming, processing and trading which had not only polluted the environment and decimated biodiversity but also produced unhealthy diets. 

Only one per cent of the $700 billion of global farm subsidies a year had gone in for environmentally safe farming practices. In India, too, less than one per cent of the annual subsidy support goes for regenerative agriculture or for organic and holistic agriculture. “There is incredibly small direct targeting of subsidies at positive environment outcomes, which is insane,” Jeremy Oppenheim, principal at the Food and Land Use Coalition, told The Guardian, and added: “We have got to switch these subsidies into explicitly positive measures.” 

The challenge, therefore, is enormous, but small baby steps taken in the right direction can lead to a visible transformation in how food is safely grown.

Though Prime Minister Narendra Modi has appealed to the farmers to shift from chemical fertilisers, the scientific fraternity thinks that such a move will jeopardise the gains of Green Revolution. On the contrary, as per a paper published in Nature (March 2018), China was able to increase crop productivity — by an average of 11 per cent — in the rice, wheat and maize cereal crops by reducing the application of fertilisers by 15 per cent. 

But this remarkable turnaround happened when a mission mode approach was followed over the years with 14,000 workshops, engaging 65,000 bureaucrats and technicians as well as 1,000 researchers. Meanwhile, it has also announced to achieve zero growth in fertiliser and pesticides subsidy by 2020. There is no reason why India cannot take a cue and re-orient the state agricultural extension machinery towards organic practices. At the same time, take firm steps to reduce fertiliser subsidy every year.

Besides cutting down on fertiliser subsidies, China’s effort is also to promote the use of crop rotations, crop residues and keeping the land fallow. Picking on the highly successful strategy of setting up demonstration plots at the time of Green Revolution, China has at least 40 sustainable agriculture demonstration farms. Not enough, but shows a determination to move away from chemical farming. Similarly, while Punjab and Haryana are faced with a serious crisis resulting from the water-guzzling cropping pattern they follow, Queensland province has established a $500 million (Australian) fund offering financial support to farmers who demonstrate reduction in water usage. Why can’t a similar stimulus package be given to Punjab farmers to switch from paddy to other less water-consuming crops? If Rs 1.45 lakh crore stimuli can be given to the industry, there is no reason why a similar economic package cannot be given to the farmers. 

But essentially, it has to first begin by ensuring that agricultural universities undertake a complete redesigning of their research programmes, shunning chemical inputs. This will require a mindset change, which may take some time, but is not impossible. At the same time, the budgetary support for agriculture, too, has to shift to ecological farming systems. At the global level, the FOLU report strives to redirect at least $500 billion of agricultural subsidies towards sustainable farming, poverty alleviation and ecological restoration. A tall order, but certainly attainable.