By Devinder Sharma
20 Aug 2010
The devastation wrought by aberrant weather conditions in several parts of the world has posed a larger question about the implications climate change has for food security of a nation.
Food self-sufficiency becomes critical during a natural calamity (photo
courtesy: Washington Post)
Something terrible is happening to the weather. And it is happening right across our home. From the cold desert of Ladakh to the plains of Bihar and Jharkhand, extreme weather conditions have played havoc. In neighbouring Pakistan, unprecedented floods, including in the arid region of Sindh, have hit more than 14 million people. Latest estimates point to 4 million people rendered homeless.
For some strange reasons, rainfall received due to cloudburst in Leh on a single day was higher than the highest in Cherrapunji. Normally, Leh has been known to receive precipitation in the form of snow only. Although rains had appeared in the Ladakh cold desert for some years now, but such intense downpour defies scientific explanation. In Pakistan, what caused the floods was also a massive downpour, more than what it normally receives in a month.
If you think such weather fluctuations are only happening in India and Pakistan, you are mistaken. Severe drought and wildfires have been raging in Russia for almost a month now. A dense layer of dark cloud hangs over much of Russia. Not only in north-eastern India, parts of Africa and eastern United States are also reeling under a severe drought.
Seemingly disconnected, these extreme weather conditions are being increasingly linked to global warming. While the official machinery grapples to ascertain the extent of damage, scientists are now trying to ascertain the causal reasons. Many believe that such drastic weather aberrations are because of global warming, but the linkages are still not that clearly defined.
Whatever be the reasons, the devastation wrought by aberrant weather conditions in several parts of the world has posed a bigger question about the implications it has for food security. Already, Russia and parts of Africa have lost wheat crop in millions of acres. In view of the loss in harvest, Russia has already banned wheat export. Pakistan is also contemplating food imports to tide over the shortages emanating from the deluge.
In the past too, Australia and Canada had low wheat harvests necessitating large cuts in grain exports. Again, wheat harvest in both these countries had been impacted by distortions in the usual climate pattern thereby pushing global food prices. This only goes to show how precarious and at the same time crucial is for every country to maintain food self-sufficiency.
As has been witnessed earlier in 2007-08, when food prices shot up globally, resulting in food riots in 37 countries, even for countries which had foreign exchange reserves to fall back upon there was no surplus food available in the global markets. While this has necessitated the scramble to scout for fertile land in other countries for crop cultivation and shipping the food back, domestic economic policies are being designed to drive out farmers from agriculture. I don’t understand the logic of farmland grab in foreign countries when agriculture back home is sacrificed for the sake of industry.
Unmindful of the growing threat to food security from resulting global warming, India too is busy acquiring good fertile lands for industrial purposes, real estate and infrastructure. In Uttar Pradesh, for instance, 26,000 villages will disappear when all expressway projects are completed. Since 1980, more than 9.8 lakh hectares of tribal land in the country has been diverted for industrial projects. In addition, over 1.5 lakh hectares of land is to be acquired only for Special Economic Zones.
More @ http://www.d-sector.org/article-det.asp?id=1342
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