LAND | Global food production has already appropriated almost half the land suitable for agriculture. And there is no adding to that because the remainder supports the world’s surviving natural ecosystems vital to our future and that of our planet. We have no other option but to zealously protect every field and furrow and maximise yield with sustainable technologies
Tehelka, June 3, 2013
A few miles from Pasighat, one needs to take a hanging bamboo bridge to cross a roaring Siang and continue on a goat trail for half an hour to reach Pongging, a village of around 50 families belonging to the Adi tribe. Ote Panyang, one of the headmen, surveys the fertile cropland that stretches all the way down to the river. “All these fields and our entire village will be gone. even some of those forests where our yaks graze will be submerged,” he points uphill to indicate how far the water will rise.
Tehelka, June 3, 2013
OCEANS COVER two-thirds of the earth’s surface. Of the remaining one-third, about 30 percent comprises deserts, tundra and mountains where no food can be grown. From the remaining land, we have been clearing forests ever since we learnt to use the plough and reached a point in the past century when it became ecologically suicidal to fell more trees to grow foodgrain. So, since 1960, agricultural land has expanded by just 12 percent.
Though global population has more than doubled in the same time, technology has helped us feed more and more mouths. In 1960, it took 0.45 hectares of cropland to grow enough food for one person. Today, it takes just 0.22 hectares. Yet, hunger is widespread and the future looks uncertain.
Globally, the per capita cropland availability is about 0.23 hectares. High-income countries cultivate more than twice the area per capita (0.37 hectares) than low-income (0.17 hectares) countries. And population stability in high-income, developed countries will ensure that their average per capita of available cropland will not significantly change until 2050.
But in less developed countries, a person may be left with less than 0.1 hectares in the next four decades. Given the poor farm yield in these countries, this amounts to sinking below the per capita bottom line of 0.07 hectares set by the UN required to maintain a minimal nutrition level. That would be disastrous.
At the same time, as developing countries make economic progress, their dietary preference seems to be shifting from cereals and grains to animal products. In China, for example, annual per capita grain consumption in the cities dropped from 145 kg to 78 kg between 1981 and 2004, while intake of meat products jumped from 20 kg to 29 kg. This puts huge pressure on land. Potato or rice grown on one hectare can feed 20 people for a year. The same area will produce enough lamb or beef for just two people.
While the sustainability of using pastureland for livestock grazing has become a contentious issue in India between conservationists and herders, mechanised mega dairies and their demand of processed feed are putting additional pressure on land. At the same time, sacrifice of prime agricultural land for infrastructure, industry and urbanisation continues unabated.
Between 1955 and 2000, more than 23 lakh hectares of agricultural land was converted to support urban growth in India. The pace of urbanisation, including the rush for SEZs, has only increased since. An alarm was sounded last year: the UN Convention on Biological Diversity report released in Hyderabad during the COP-11 said rapid loss of farmland to urbanisation would risk India’s food security in the near future.
As farmers resist acquisition of agricultural land across the country, TEHELKA travels to the hilly state of Arunachal Pradesh where a spate of dams will drown the few available patches of fertile alluvial land. We also turn with hope to arid Karnatakawhere 55 lakh hectares of fallow land has been recharged with micronutrients in the past five years.
LOSING THE BEST CROPLAND TO DAMS
The 2,700 MW Lower Siang hydroelectricity project will drown 52 sq km of land, including prized paddy fields
LAND IS at a premium beyond the Assam plains in the Northeast where two-thirds of the area is made up of hills and mountains. With less than 3 percent cropland,Arunachal Pradesh is India’s most sparsely cultivated state. of the few patches of fertile alluvial fields, the most priceless are the lower banks of the Siang river that becomes the Brahmaputra after being joined by Lohit and Dibang downstream.
So imagine the shock of the villagers when they were told that the 2,700 MW lower Siang hydroelectricity project will drown 51.51 sq km, including those prized paddy fields. Ironically, as India proposes to build more than 150 dams in Arunachal Pradesh, one of the touted USPs of these projects is their relatively small socio-economic impact. the state’s population density of 17 per sq km is the lowest in the country and very few people would be displaced by the submergence caused by dam reservoirs.
On the ground, however, it will cause significant damage to livelihood and food security. Vijay Taram, convenor of Pasighat-based Forum for Siang Dialogue, explains their predicament: “It is wrong to argue that we have so much land and only a small fraction of it will go under water. You have to realise that the land we will lose is the very fraction where permanent cultivation is possible. Almost the entire stretch where we do riverbank agriculture will be drowned by this project.”
A few miles from Pasighat, one needs to take a hanging bamboo bridge to cross a roaring Siang and continue on a goat trail for half an hour to reach Pongging, a village of around 50 families belonging to the Adi tribe. Ote Panyang, one of the headmen, surveys the fertile cropland that stretches all the way down to the river. “All these fields and our entire village will be gone. even some of those forests where our yaks graze will be submerged,” he points uphill to indicate how far the water will rise.
Kangong Taying owns six hectares of Pongging’s prime land and is angry: “Be it education or medical care, be it day or night, we need to walk all the way across the river to the road for everything. We never complain because we belong to this fertile land by the river. Now they want us to take their money and move. Why don’t they realise that nowhere else in this state can money buy us such land?”
Arunachali tribes living by other major rivers of the state share the predicament. Tone Mikrow belongs to the Idu-Mishimi tribe and spearheads the anti-dam movement in Roing. “Much of our good land is occupied by government and security establishments. Further loss of plain land to dams will leave nothing for farming and shrink the jhum cycles,” he says.
Traditionally, jhum (shifting) cultivation on hill steps follows a 5-8 year cycle (the length of the fallow period between two cropping phases) to allow the soil to regain its vigour. loss of agricultural land will shorten this cycle to 2-3 years, leading to erosion, and also clearing of new forest areas.
In Siang valley, however, the anti-dam resistance is in no mood to budge. since the affected villagers clashed with police last year, the state has been on the back foot. But Taying knows that the worst may not be over. “our land should not be snatched away just because we are a peaceful lot. Nobody is too far away from guns in the Northeast.” -- JM
Click to read: Sunflower miracle in parched fields
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