2.4 Effects of AKST on Development and Sustainability Goals
2.4.1 Effect of modern AKST on livelihood, poverty and hunger
2.4.1.1 History of agrarian change and development
Science and technology, especially irrigation and chemical inputs, have been responsible for increased agricultural production and decreased rural poverty in parts of ESAP. However, for resource-poor farmers in drought-prone areas, the benefits have been minimal and have had environmental and social costs. These costs include adverse effects on human and animal health from pesticides, decreased genetic diversity of food crops, intensive use of chemicals, loss of traditional knowledge and practices, loss of local biodiversity, loss of soil fertility and farmer dependency on external inputs. In recent years, this dependency also perpetuated indebtedness, especially among poor farmers, and further inequality of benefits. Much of the ESAP population depends on rice as a staple. There has traditionally been much diversity in rice—50 kinds were cultivated in one part of India, many with cultural importance (Dharampal, 1971). These varieties were lost with the introduction of high-yield varieties and associated farming practices. Some estimates suggest that of the 30,000 strains of paddy rice a few years ago, no more than a dozen are expected to dominate three-quarters of the riceland in Asia (Development Forum, 1989).
2.4.1.2 The Green Revolution, food security and poverty alleviation The introduction of modern AKST, associated with the Green Revolution, more than doubled cereal production in Asia between 1970 and 1995. Poverty steadily declined and nutrition improved through increased income. However, debates on the effects of modern inputs on the poor include common questions: Do modern varieties help poor farmers absolutely or relatively compared with rich farmers? Do rural workers gain or lose income? Do poor consumers gain or lose nutritionally? Has the economic benefit of using modern varieties been uniformly distributed across the farming families? How has a focus on increasing productivity affected social and ecological systems? No easy general and clear conclusions regarding the consequences of the Green Revolution can be based on the literature. The effects have been hotly debated and different researchers have come to different conclusions (Box 2-3).
Greater production came with a price for social and economic systems and was well substantiated from observations from different countries in Asia. Also, considerable contradictory evidence demonstrates that increasing the productivity of smallholders by providing greater farming inputs did not necessarily alleviate their hunger and poverty (Ladeginsky, 1969a,b; Brown, 1971; Frankel, 1971; Rudra, 1971).
Some studies have shown that in some ESAP countries, the population living in poverty increased despite a rise in the production of cereal per head, the main component of the diet of the poor (Lappe et al., 1982). In the Philippines, rice production increased faster than the growth in population, but it had the most widespread undernutrition in all |
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Box 2-3. The impact of the green revolution in India The roots of agrarian changes in India go back to the era of colonization, when agri-exports increased under the obligation to pay taxes, which resulted in a diversion of resources away from domestically consumed products, decreased availability of food and increased vulnerability to famine (Arena, 2005). After the second World War, there was a concerted effort to increase food productivity. One such effort was the Green Revolution, whose high yielding varieties (HYV) used larger quantities of nutrients and were more water efficient than earlier varieties, which tended to lodge or fall down if grown in soils with good fertility. HYVs could also be planted more densely and did not require long growing periods. They thus have a more favorable harvest index, i.e., the ratio of the economic yield to the total biological yield (Shiva, 1993). A shorter growing season in some cases allows farmers two to three harvests per year when irrigation is available, often requiring the use of machinery and thus becoming more capital intensive (Bhagavan et al., 1973).
The early benefits of the Green Revolution in India were captured by the big farmers (Lewis, 1970), and technical change had strengthened the political dominance of land owners and accentuated income inequality (Frankel, 1971; Griffin, 1979). In South Asia and particularly India, total food available per person actually increased but hunger prevailed due to unequal access to food and food-producing resources (Rosset and Collins, 1998).
Another impact that has been linked to Green Revolution technologies in India is the increase in indebtedness and the increased rates of suicide of farmers on marginal lands. It has been suggested that this is due to the need for capital, lack of seed saving and thus the dependence on buying seeds and the uniform varietals plantings that expose the farmers to the risk of crop failure during droughts (Shiva, 2004).
Asia. Similarly, the government of India, in 1979, was holding 16 million tonnes of surplus food grain in storage, while the per capita consumption of food grain in 1975 to 1977 had fallen below that in 1970 to 1972, even below 1960 to 1962 consumption (Lappe et al., 1982). In India, the total food available to each person actually increased, but greater hunger prevailed because of the unequal access to food and resources.
The remarkable difference in China, where the number of hungry dropped from 406 million to 189 million, begs the question, which has been more effective in reducing hunger, the Green Revolution or the Chinese revolution (Rosset, 2003). It has been suggested that the Chinese revolution's broad changes in access to land paved the way for rising living standards.
Assessments on the effect of the Green Revolution on food security and poverty resulted in mixed conclusions, from using different approaches, methods, locations and periods. Agrarian studies in Asia on the effects of agricultural modernization on poverty and food security varied widely |