India becoming net food importer: UNDP

New Delhi, July 2 (UNI) India like other Asian countries has been neglecting agriculture, bedrock for the poor and turning out net importer of food under the free trade regime, according to UNDP's Asia-Pacific Human Development Report 2006.

After many years as a food exporter, the Asia-Pacific region, particulary India has turned to cheap imports as a result of opening up to agricultural trade.

Richer farmers and agribusinesses are moving out of food production towards the cultivation of more profitable commercial crops- which has profound implications for more than half of the billion people living in the region with a majority in India who are food insecure.

India in the last decade has largely neglected the agriculture sector as serious decline in investment began in 1980s falling by 29 per cent uptil 1990 adversely affecting the farm growth.

If India wants broad-based and equitable development, it will have to invest more in agriculture-- particularly for capital formation-- while providing price support, affordable loans, assistance with irrigation and marketing and help with storage, processing and distribution facilities, said the report released last week.

Yet despite impressive overall economic growth and improving levels of poverty, in South Asia including India, public expenditures on agriculture have fallen sharply to as low as 1.9 per cent in 1990. By 2001 such expenditures reached barely to 1.2 per cent and the farm sector continued to support the vast majority of sub-region's poor.

The report said the Asian governments including India need to make serious efforts at land reforms for effecting agriculture development.

In India, 71 per cent of rural households are classified as land-poor, while Bangladesh accounts for 78 per cent and Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Philippines at more than one-third of the farm population.

India, like other Asian nations, is on the verge of facing net food deficit in the near future from food surplus till recently.

Indian remained surplus constantly for almost two decades while Bangladesh, Pakistan began using the food-surplus status in 1990s.

Of the Asian countries, China had a surplus till 2003 and the Philippines upto 1994. However, in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, the surpluses have gone.

On the other hand, liberalisation of the agricultural markets as a consequent of the WTO regime have helped reducing the food price - particularly food produced with the backing of the subsidies in the US and the EU. But, this does not seem to have led to any constant improvement in food security, the Report added.

More countries now face food deficit and Asia including India still have more hungry people than in any other region of the world -- over 510 million in 2002. This was because progress slowed in China, Thailand and Vietnam and in some countries the advances of the first half of the 1990s were actually reversed as in India, Indonesia and Pakistan.

The report underlined that opening up of the markets by Indian and South Asain countries have not been helped in boosting their farm trade to developed countries.

On other hand, subsidies given by the rich nations to their poors have an adverse impact on the developing countries including India.

''Rice subsidies in the US, for example, which enabled to maintain exports even during the 1990s when the world prices were falling, have affected the rice farmers all over the Asian region including Thailand, Vietnam and India'', the report added.

Now, the report said, the transfer of advance farm technology and reserach has become difficult because of the patent regime.

India which improved its wheat production from semi-dwarf improved varieties of wheat developed in Maxico and claimed of bringing about Green Revolution, will face obstacles in the crop improvement because of patent protection enjoyed by big seed multinationals like Monsanto.

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