Don’t make farmer shoulder climate burden: Prof. Glenn Denning

Prof Glenn Denning of Columbia University, globally renowned for his work on universal food security and sustainable development, believes that to reduce carbon emission in agriculture, one cannot just say to farmers- don’t do it. To do it, they need to be compensated by all of us who are going to be benefiting from that. Farmers act in their interests principally driven by income. That’s the driving force. Denning, the author of the book Universal Food Security: How to End Hunger While Protecting the Planet, says that half of the world’s food production is the result of fertilizer. It cannot just be stopped. In conversation with Harvir Singh, Editor-in-Chief of Rural Voice, he says that there is no clear definition of organic farming, natural farming, and regenerative farming. They’re being defined by organizations that are promoting a set of ideas to benefit from that. Excerpts:-

-Dr. Glenn, with your extensive experience in agriculture, encompassing various aspects of the field and a deep global perspective, how do you view the challenges of ensuring global food security and achieving sustainable growth in agriculture and food systems? Considering the current climate conditions, fragmented land holdings, and prevailing geopolitical issues, what strategies or approaches do you think can effectively address these concerns?

Well, first of all let’s look at it from a macro point of view. What is the purpose of agriculture? The purpose of agriculture is principally food security for 10,000 years. We’ve been producing food for food security. Over time, farmers became commercialised. They started to engage in markets. They didn’t just produce for themselves. They’re generating surpluses because it enables us to have cities. It enables us to specialize in manufacturing and doing other things. So people like you and me are no longer farmers.

The population of the planet has now passed 8 billion. The population of India is 1.45 billion. So the challenge is how do we nourish that many people on the planet without degrading the environment? Because if we nourish them now and degrade the environment, then we won’t nourish the future. And the population is not stagnant. We will reach globally close to 10 billion by 2050. 

Our dietary practices are changing. We’re now starting to consume more livestock products, more horticultural products, and more seafood. These things are changing the way the food system is responding. And ultimately, it comes back to the farmers. In the last 30 years or so, there’s been this growing realization that we’re affected by climate. Our agricultural systems developed under a very different climate to today’s climate and to the future climate. A climate that is going to be warmer, it’s going to have more frequent adverse weather events. It’s likely in coastal areas to become more saline, likely more droughts and even floods. We’re not even achieving sustainable, healthy diets for everyone now, let alone in the future. So we definitely have a crisis. And globally, I’ve estimated that probably half of the world’s population does not have access to a healthy diet.

In India alone, although we can look to the great successes of the Green Revolution that essentially took India from in the 1960s from being viewed as almost a hopeless case, a nation that could only survive through humanitarian food aid from abroad, to a nation that is now the world’s largest exporter of rice. During that period, India’s population went from just over 500 million to 1.45 billion. So it’s an extraordinary achievement and it is, of course, subject to much criticism. But when we put that aside, last year when the government imposed a ban on non-basmati rice, it was felt around the world. It was felt in Africa, Philippines and Indonesia. All these places that were depending on importation of food, particularly rice, the ripple effects were very significant.

So India, particularly with respect to cereals, has put itself into a position where not only is it important nationally in terms of food security, but it’s actually important regionally and internationally.

Glenn Denning is professor of professional practice and founding director of the Master of Public Administration in Development Practice program at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

-From being a food importer, India has become the largest exporter of rice in the world. What would you attribute this transformation to? The Green Revolution?

Absolutely. But to be clear, it’s a combination of improved technology, which is, in fact, principally two things. Improved varieties, new strains and organizations like the ICAR, IARI and so on. Also there is fertilizer use, there’s no question about that. The advent of the Haber-Bosch process, in which nitrogen is turned into fertilizer. Nitrogen is the major ingredient that cereal crops need. It’s the most important nutrient. And obviously expansion of irrigated areas as well. 

Putting those three things together gives you the technical capability. But what was very important for the Green Revolution is that the government also came in and played a role in supporting small-scale farmers- with inputs, with credit and with market support, price support. Nothing unique about India in that respect. Exactly the same situation in Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, even China. It’s sometimes criticized that it was very much propped up by the government, but why was that in case?

Food security of basic staples can determine the stability of a society. If you’ve messed that up, if food prices suddenly double, you’ve got another chaos. And no society wants that. So that’s why particularly in Asian countries, there’s been a very strong focus of leadership on food security. Xi Jinping, in December 2022, declared agriculture as a national security issue, not just a food security issue. They will throw everything into food security. And that’s why it’s very high on the agenda. 

One of the biggest impacts of the Green Revolution was the stability of food prices. That was very important and it is also one of the reasons why Asia generally has taken off as an exporter to the world. Because by maintaining relatively low and stable food prices for urban workers from the manufacturing sector and the service sector, Asia has been able to be very competitive compared to other parts of the world where food prices were higher. So I would say that’s a combination of positive factors that came together under. But if I would refer specifically to India, there was also tremendous scientific leadership. 

My mentor for several years and my director general was Prof. MS Swaminathan, the father of the Green Revolution. I got to work very closely with him for six years between 1982 and 1988, at the International Rice Research Institute. Many of the ideas that were inspired from India, we took them to other parts of the world as well. I think it inspires us to believe great changes can happen when leadership institutions, technology and policies come together. 

-Despite huge foodgrain production and free foodgrain distribution, why does India still rank poorly on hunger reports? Why do we struggle to ensure nutritious, healthy food for all?

In the production of cereal crops, which are principally calories, India has been hugely
successful in that respect. But the hunger index has a major focus on actual human nutrition. Calories are just one component of human nutrition. A balanced diet requires protein, micronutrients and minerals. Living on calories alone won’t suffice. And how does that become manifested? It becomes manifested in an indicator known as stunting, which is representative of chronic undernutrition. 

Now there are a couple of issues. First thing to say is, what’s sometimes called the South Asia Enigma or the India Enigma is that overall economic growth is moving very well in India, the country has become an exporter of grains, why is it that it still has such a high stunting level?

These are children under 5 who are short for their age. The malnourishment associated with stunting results in lower immunity. It is shown to reduce educational performance and it’s even shown to affect livelihood incomes into the future. It is you’re more or less setting children up to fail. They’re never going to achieve their full potential. It doesn’t necessarily kill them, but it reduces their potential. India’s current level of stunting is estimated to be 36%, which is one of the highest levels in the world. And it is a major component of the hunger index.

Prof. Denning worked in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research for 24 years and held senior management positions at the International Rice Research Institute and the World Agroforestry Centre.

-Do you think India is growing as two separate countries? One India, rooted in villages, reliant on agriculture, with very low incomes below Rs 10,000 per month. The other, a rising middle class and affluent professionals, attracting global luxury brands. While one India thrives, the other is left behind. What policy failures do you see here? Are we acknowledging this divide, or are policymakers still in denial?

Prof. Swaminathan used to tell me, whatever the experts tell you about India, the opposite is also true. So that’s exactly what you’re talking about. I would say there are many Indias, not just two. We get sort of divided into two broad categories, but there’s more in between. There’s extreme deprivation and there’s extreme wealth, but there is a lot in between them.

Coming back to the stunting story, actually India has made reasonable progress. Over the last 20 years, it’s come down from 48% to about 36%. But 36% should be viewed as a national tragedy that a third of the children are getting off to a bad start in life. That issue should be lifted to the highest level of national policy. And how do we overcome that? 

Actually reducing stunting is a bit like rocket science. It requires a lot of expertise and a lot of application. We basically know how to reduce stunting. Many countries in the world have been able to reduce their stunting. Brazil is a fantastic case. Even your neighbors, Bangladesh and Nepal, have been quite successful. Indonesia, Vietnam, even a number of countries in Africa have been able to halve their stunting levels. It requires a combination of several factors. There’s no silver bullet.

Diversification of diet is very important, exclusive breastfeeding is important, nutritional supplementation is very important. The inequality within households and the fact that women and children are often disadvantaged within many households in terms of access to quality food. And basically something underlying almost all of it is poverty. If people are poor, all they can really afford are basic staples. Pulses are always more expensive than cereals. Livestock products, even milk and eggs, are expensive. Fruits are all expensive. 

If you don’t have the money, it doesn’t matter how successful I am in convincing you that it’s better for your diet and better for your children. Most of your income is spent on rice or wheat. So I think pushing hard on poverty is going to be very important. Social protection programs are extremely important to reduce those differences that exist. There are some good programs in the country, like targeted food distribution programs. Again, you can say it’s inefficient, not sufficiently targeted. But I tell you, in many parts of the world, it doesn’t exist at all. So it’s a question of how do we make these programs better? How do we make the midday meal program more effective, more nutritious? How do we introduce nutrition into the school system?

It is fairly complicated. So we’ve got to operate on multiple fronts. It’s not just the job of ICAR and the Ministry of Agriculture. All the related ministries need to be working together. That means at the highest level, Chief Minister or Prime Minister, they need to say, this is vital for our future.

-Now scientists are discussing the need for a Green Revolution 2.0 or 3.0. Ten years ago, no one anticipated the scale of agricultural challenges we face today- not just in India, but globally. Sudden droughts, floods, rising temperatures, and poor wheat harvests two year back highlight these issues. These are the pressing challenges of sustainability. How do we move forward?

I think we are definitely under-investing in research and development. You might think that we have lots of PhDs in India, but we need to invest more in R&D, particularly, I would say, in areas like building resilience. We have droughts, we have floods. We need to come up with better technologies that can anticipate and handle that. We need to diversify. We need to actually spend more money in improving the productivity of pulses and some of these other cereals that are maybe from the past. They’ll never replace rice and wheat, but they are still important in certain regions of the country. But we’ve tended not to invest so much in those crops. 

I think the first green revolution was very much driven by the public sector. We now need to look for more opportunities to partner with the private sector, get them incentivized to be part of this national mission. I think infrastructure is going to be important, more sort of strengthening physical infrastructure, transport, electrification and the like. And I think the know-how is there. We can improve, for sure. 

Again, to quote Dr. Swaminathan, you need a combination of the know-how and the do-how. And I think somehow the do-how or making it happen has sort of fallen behind a bit. And I spend a lot of time thinking about this in my book. I wanted to not stop by saying do this or that, but how do you actually do it? How do you formulate programs that really incentivize farmers to act in different ways that create much stronger linkages between producers and consumers?

We have another problem going on. It’s called the double burden of malnutrition. I’ve spent most of the time talking about undernutrition. There’s another form of malnutrition. And that is overconsumption of unhealthy nutrients. And that’s creating this epidemic of obesity and overweight, which is leading to all kinds of health issues, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancers and the like. So that needs to be part of the discussion as well. You don’t just need to reduce the nutrient gaps, but you also need to bring down the nutrient excesses-the sugars, the salts, the fats. These things have been consumed by many of us in society at too high a rate. So that’s why an overarching view of healthy diets from sustainable food systems is important.

Sustainability is another factor that I think needs to be prioritized. Clearly there’s many parts of India where there’s over-extraction of water and the water table is going down. Those areas need to be highlighted. 

You can’t just say to the farmer, don’t do it. You have to create an incentive system so that they don’t do it. It shouldn’t just be sticks, but there should also be carrots. To encourage people and the farmers to move towards more sustainable systems. One thing is true all over the world- India, Australia, everywhere I’ve been, that farmers act in their interests principally driven by income. That’s the driving force. No farmer is going to change behaviour thinking necessarily for future generations. Or for climate change affecting the United States and wherever else. They will act in their interests. So governments need to step in, look at these environmental issues, and reverse degradation.

-Recently, our government has placed significant emphasis on natural farming, even launching a two-year Natural Farming Mission. How do you view this push toward natural farming? Do you think it’s practical and truly feasible?

To somebody who walks in here and says, let’s get into natural farming, I’d ask, please explain exactly what you mean by natural farming. And if the response is an alternative to natural or the regenerative, then I’d ask again, please explain what you mean by regenerative farming. The response could be improving soil health, improving the nutrition of crops, and reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. I think that’s good agriculture. We should be doing all of those things. But then if they add no external inputs or very minimal external inputs, I’d say, what do you mean by that? The response could be- no genetic modification, no GMOs, no genetically engineered-genome edited crops. That’s not natural. 

I believe, in terms of fertilizers, which a lot of organizations do not consider natural, half of the world’s food production is the result of fertilizer. The consequence of moving to natural, if we did that on such a grand scale, would mean probably worse. Worse than an asteroid hitting the earth in terms of the consequences. It’d be completely apocalyptic.

Have a look at what happened in Sri Lanka, where they abandoned the import of fertilizers. In a short period of time production dropped so low. There were riots on the streets. People were going hungry. And within a short period of time, the government reversed its decisions. Because it won’t work. So let’s stop this. It’s actually nonsense. Of course You can do it locally and say, I’ve got an organic farm and I’m selling it to the Taj Palace restaurant. And I’ll make some money because they’ll buy organic from me. Because rich people like it, that’s not much of their income. They’re happy to do it. But it will not work. So we need fertilizers.

-We’ve been discussing organic farming, natural farming, and clean, regenerative farming. Could you explain the differences between these three approaches?

First of all, nobody has a clear definition of any of them. They’re being defined by organizations that are promoting a set of ideas. And when you promote a set of ideas, you know, you’re doing it also because you tend to benefit from that. You’re associated with that. You know, I won’t pick any national organization, but I’ll pick Greenpeace. Greenpeace has long rejected any type of genetic modification. Greenpeace does wonderful things, saving whales and tigers and all that. So great.

But when they start to say, oh, no GMOs, absolutely not. There is one GMO called Golden Rice, which is a rice variety that is high in the precursor of vitamin A. So if consumed in sufficient amounts, it reduces vitamin A deficiency, reduces the likelihood of blindness and death in children. There’s zero scientific basis for rejecting it. Few ideological people would say that multinational corporations will benefit. No, it’s completely in the public sector. But most countries have been bludgeoned into believing that somehow this is risky.

These are the people making those decisions. They’re not people who’ve had a child go blind from vitamin A deficiency. So my feeling is that we need to really work hard to bring policy makers to their senses in terms of realizing the potential benefits, but also to understand what are the risks and downsides of inaction.

-Dr Gurdev Khush was associated with it. 

He’s been the champion of improvements. India has the best scientists in the world, like our plant breeding department at IRRI. This has been run by Indian scientists. It’s a tragedy that they can’t come back to their own country and do the kinds of genetic modification. We need to democratize technology. 

American and Australian farmers have access to machinery. They have access to digital technologies, access to weather forecasting and very precise application of nutrients and water to their fields. And varieties that are well adapted. At any time when it becomes less adapted, there are more in the pipeline. Why is it only available in high income countries for relatively large farmers? We need to somehow democratize that. It’s even an ethical issue. We need to make sure that those can be downsized and can be used by small scale farmers. And if you want a future for small scale farmers, it has to be through these technologies.

-What kind of threat does climate change pose to the future of agriculture and food security- particularly sustainable agriculture and ensuring a stable food supply?

If the climate changes, gets warmer because of greenhouse gas emissions, it affects droughts, affects floods, affects sea level rise, salinity, and it affects glaciers melting. It’s very likely, and the scientists have shown that many of these will bring down productivity and production.

So, our agricultural systems are very vulnerable to that. Rain-fed farmers in India are going to be struggling more than your irrigated farmers. I think irrigated farmers often have more options, and they’re often wealthier, therefore they can afford to sort of shift their production methods. Rain-fed farmers, particularly in eastern India, are more vulnerable to these kinds of shocks. 

So, you require a pretty radical change. There’s another side to it too, that agriculture also contributes to climate change. The food system as a whole contributes one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. So there are opportunities also for agriculture to be part of the solution. But again, we can’t ask farmers to help us solve the world problem without some level of compensation. We need to compensate farmers. If they are going to change their practices to reduce carbon emissions, those farmers need to be compensated by all of us who are going to be benefiting from that.