Asia Times: More funds won't end hunger, say analysts


	June 16, 2000	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

More funds won't end hunger, say analysts
By Muddassir Rizvi

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has announced a five-fold jump in agriculture spending to feed its growing population, but critics say bigger farm harvests alone will not end widespread hunger.

The hike is part of the new agricultural development policy unveiled by the military government. According to Agricultural Secretary Zafar Altaf, the main goal is ''to ensure food security and self-reliance in food crops''.

Listed as a food deficit country by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Pakistan has faced severe food shortages in the last three years, which officials have blamed on hoarders and smugglers. According to the latest FAO figures, nearly a fifth of the 135 million Pakistanis do not get enough food for their daily caloric requirements.

The details of the new policy, titled ''Agricultural Strategies for the First Decade of the New Millennium'', were disclosed at a weekend press conference here. The increase in the farm budgetary allocation from the present 1 percent to 5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) by the year 2010, will bring higher returns to farmers, easy access to credit and effective extension services, Altaf explained. Pakistan aims to produce 26.3 million tonnes of wheat by 2010 against expected demand of more than 25 million tones. Rice production is targeted to increase to 6.3 million tonnes against the demand of 4 million tonnes.

The new food security strategy is based on Pakistan's commitments at the 1996 World Food Summit organized by the FAO in the Italian capital Rome. It has been prepared with the FAO's help to deal with a situation of population growth exceeding food supply. In the past 50 years, Pakistan's population has grown fourfold, while the production of staple wheat grew just threefold. Although farming is the mainstay of the economy, accounting for one-fourth of the GDP and employing nearly half the total labor force, successive governments failed to increase spending on this vital sector.

But food rights activists think that the new strategy is shortsighted as its only looks at the supply side of food security and does not take into account the key issue of people's access to food. ''Unless we ensure an equitable distribution of food, we cannot overcome food insecurity in the country,'' said Mushtaq Gadi of the Sustainable Agriculture Action Group (SAAG), a nationwide coalition of farmers and food rights groups.

The Network for Consumer Protection based in Islamabad too pointed out that the issue of food security cannot be resolved by increasing productivity alone. ''What good is food if people can't buy it?'' a spokesperson for the network asked. ''In a country where more than 48 million people are living in absolute poverty, the government should take measures to ensure people's physical and economic access to food.'' The network advised the government to look at the issue of food security in its entirety. ''Food security could be ensured only if the government's social and economic policy targets are not self-contradictory,'' it said.

However, the government has insisted that the new strategy would ensure that food production is not outstripped by population growth. ''We have set the production targets for food as well as cash crops. The food crops targets have been worked out taking into account the population growth, daily caloric intake and the per capital food demand,'' said an official of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council.

The government would reach these goals through efficient use of water and fertilizers, better quality seeds and by encouraging mechanization. ''We aim to take certain measures to decrease prices of agricultural machinery in order to increase the pace of mechanization in agriculture,'' said Altaf. Food rights groups agreed that while mechanization is essential to boost farm yields, the government must ensure that small farmers too could buy farm machinery at subsidized rates. They expressed the fear that mechanized agriculture would encourage big corporate style farms, and drive small tillers out of their ancestral jobs.

They also demanded that farm credit should reach the small farmers. According to figures quoted by these groups, 10 years ago less than half (about 46 percent) of the 8.21 billion rupees (over $155 million) agricultural credit provided by the government went to farms that were five hectares in size or less, but formed 81 percent of all farms in Pakistan.

The government claimed that the new agricultural strategy was designed after consulting all interested groups, but SAAG's Mushtaq Gadi complained that farmers' groups were not involved. ''Important policies having wide ranging impacts on people are devised without public participation and consultation. Such policies are usually not reflective of the problems on the ground and therefore fail to achieve the desired results,'' he said.

The national coalition of farmers' and food rights groups has demanded wider public debate on the new agricultural strategy before it is implemented. It has pointed out that this is all the more necessary at a time when the country is ruled by the military.

(Inter Press Service)

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