The ‘impending’ famine and poverties of seeing

Hyperbole seems to be an essential tool in a politician’s repertoire. ‘Promises’ would constitute another. ‘Politician’ of course is not a term that could only be used for those aspiring to political office. Even those who do not contest or do not intend to contest elections can be political creatures. Indeed, it could even be argued that wherever choices have to be made, things are political and those who consider choices, even if they decline one and all, are politicians.

Nevertheless, we do have degrees of being political. Some just vote. Some offer a casual opinion and even then rarely. Others are more emotionally invested. It’s such ‘politicians’ that are relevant here.

So we see a tendency to use sweeping statements. Molehills are turned into mountains. And mountains denied existence. Depending on where one’s sympathies lie, which outcomes one prefers. Typically, those in power inflate the good and deflate the bad; those out of power play doom’s day prophet and pooh-pooh the positives. Par for the course.

Today there’s talk of impending food shortages. The worries weren’t altogether illegitimate. Those who have sworn by a certain kind of agricultural paradigm were mortified by the very idea of moving away from chemical inputs. Yields will decline, they declared. Fair enough for the ‘yield mantra’ was all about yield and not nutritional density. And we know that the seed regime was all about higher yields predicated on chemical inputs. So, since you can’t have chemical thirsty seeds producing similar yields when starved, you can quickly conclude: lower yields leading to food scarcity, provided of course the deficit is not sorted out by imports.

With regard to rice this issue seems to have been resolved courtesy a pledge by China to gift rice by way of commemorating long decades of friendship. Of course, we hear people snickering, ‘went for organic and had to obtain/import chemical rice.’ Paradigm shifts don’t deliver goodies overnight though. Such details are glossed over.

Wait. Is paradigm shift even possible over many nights? That’s a legit question, surely? Yes. People have screamed ‘show me one country where agriculture is totally chemical free!’ What happened to Bhutan, some ask. Well, for one, it is not that those who want a different kind of system have got it all right from Day One. There are mistakes. There are obstacles. There are learning curves. More importantly, if we took the trouble to think of a chemical-free time, someone could have similarly screamed at anyone who said ‘chemicals are the future,’ insisting that he/she name one country that has succeeded with chemical inputs. The Green Revolution came with much propaganda and little or no talk about negative repercussions. When that idea went down the tubes no one said ‘sorry, we were wrong.’ So much for logic!
 
But let’s talk about famine. Ok, so we have the rice factor sorted out. So it’s not an availability issue. There could be an affordability issue. As the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and his longtime collaborator Jean Drèze have emphatically argued, it is an issue of entitlements and not necessarily availability. People, historically, have fallen victim to famines not necessarily in situations of failed harvests but even when there have been bumper crops. ‘Class structures’ would be an appropriate explanatory window. And when there’s inflation, things can get nasty; relative ‘ease’ (let’s say) compared with the other countries in worse situations is no comfort, no consolation.

Back to rice. It’s not the issue but since it is the staple, it should help retire fears (but of course not for the politician, as described above). However, it is not that people eat rice and salt or rice with pol-sambola. We need vegetables and fruits. Other grains too. The prices are certainly very high. So, can we say ‘we will have to boil rice and be happy that something is better than nothing’? ‘We might have to,’ I’ve heard people say. Let’s hold on to that.

Just the other day, I visited a village a few kilometers from Ingiriya, courtesy an invitation from ‘Ceylon Food Trails,’ an innovative venture focusing on gastronomy tourism. The food served at the village, Halwathura, was exclusively made of what grew or was grown within a five-kilometer radius. So we didn’t have carrots, cabbage, beetroot, beans etc., some of which by the way can be ‘home-grown’ even in that area.  

In a country such as Sri Lanka a severe drought could bring on a food-shortage of famine proportions, yes. That’s not on the cards. We could, however, still have people suffering from food-related issues. For example, a daily-wage earner in a city with little or no room to cultivate even some spinach would have a problem. However, the more serious problem would be of the mind: having lost the sight to see potential, having got used to getting things easy and acquiring or submitting to consumption-doctrines that result in spending large amounts of money on things that are for the most part unnecessary. So there's an induced decline in income that could be spent on food and there’s sloth as well as myopia that prevent people from obtaining something (obviously not ‘everything’) from the good earth around them.

And yet, if you asked those who scream ‘impending famine’ if they’ve even grown a few chillie plants, maybe a couple of coconut trees and can recognise the dozen or more plants that can be used for a malluma, they would be embarrassed. Unless of course ‘shameless’ is part of the political makeup.

Sure, these are not things that will sustain anyone every single day. However, they would surely complement and coupled with a more wholesome and prudent consumption culture, they would certainly ensure no one starves.

Mountains. Molehills. Hyperbole. Great for the rhetorician. Useful for the politician. Reality, however, is not an inevitable companion. Sooner or later, truth surfaces. As mentioned, the shameless do not care (why should they?). Some truths however, again as mentioned, will go unseen, unhonoured, unsung. A bit of self-reflection and a sober assessment of entitlements (denied, stolen and unrecognized) wouldn’t harm, though.

malindadocs@gmail.com. www.malindawords.blogspot.com
[Malinda Seneviratne is the Director/CEO of the Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute. These are his personal views.]