The 'other' food crisis

Below is the article from Down to Earth.
It highlights several things:
1. Number of rural problems India is unaware of.
2. Importance of Water
3. Common Property Resources & how they are to be managed.

The 'other' food crisis

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There is so much about rural India that escapes notice that one more
area of neglect will not break the camel's back. I am talking about
the crisis of fodder for livestock. A grim silence surrounds it. 'Grim
', because in rural India, domestic animals aren't 'pets' but engines
that drive the economy. They provide resilience and wealth -- people
cope with adverse conditions because of their livestock. But no policy
exists on how to feed these 500 million or so animals. Rural India
today isn't fodder-secure, and the grim reality is that food security
in this country is not possible without fodder security.

Fodder insecurity begins with the question: where are these animals to
get their food from? In India, less land has been set aside for
domestic livestock than for 'flora and fauna': protected areas such as
sanctuaries and national parks sprawl over 15 million hectares (ha),
while land classified as 'permanent pastures' cover 11 million ha.
Moreover, over the years, these 'permanent pastures' have shrunk or
simply degraded.

In addition, there officially exists 13 million ha of land classified
as 'culturable wasteland'. Couldn't such land provide fodder? Yes, but
not country-wide: only two states, Rajasthan and Gujarat (both
livestock-dependent), account for roughly half such land. Also,
'culturable wastelands' are controlled by state revenue departments:
usually, the rich are allowed to encroach upon them, or politicians
distribute them as 'largesse' under so-called land reform programmes.
If these lands, critical for rural life-support, don't get gobbled up,
they remain neglected and degraded.

Animals survive by foraging on available land and on agricultural
residues. But the productivity of our common lands -- forest and
revenue land -- are pathetic; grass yields on these are mostly
illusionary. Sheer grazing pressure ensures animals literally nibble
away a pasture's productivity, suppressing regeneration of grasses and
tree fodder. Add to these the fact that agricultural production is
stagnating, or that farmers are shifting to crops that do not yield
fodder. The result? Crisis.

How serious is this crisis? We don't know, empirically. What we know
is that unlike most other neglected issues -- be it fuelwood to cook
food or water to drink or food to avert famine or malnutrition
deaths -- this is a crisis about many kinds of neglect. First, it
concerns the very poor that depend on livestock to survive another
tomorrow. Second, it relates to the country's most neglected lands:
common forests. Third, it is about neglected animals.

So it is that I say: we must know now, to find the ways ahead. Trying
to put together a fodder-scenario is literally like catching straws in
the wind. Every time I travel to villages in dry and drought-prone
areas, or forested areas, I enquire about fodder. Poor people, living
within what we would believe is a non-cash economy, tell me what they
spend on buying fodder. That in the dry months, of peak shortage, they
end up spending as much as Rs 6,000 - 7,000 of their household income,
buying fodder at Rs 500-800 per tonne.

Ghazala Shahabuddin and her colleagues, studying villages in and
around the Sariska Tiger Reserve, find similar trends. They report
that even in villages located within forests, pastoral households
spend 31 per cent of their household expenditure on buying fodder -
commercial and farm fodder. This is the single largest expenditure
after food. In times of fodder stress, it costs a livestock owner Rs
600 - 1,000 per month to feed a buffalo. When milk yields improve, and
the buffalo owner gets an average daily yield of two litres per
buffalo, then selling this milk at Rs 10 per litre provides Rs 3,000
per month. But such yield is seasonal, so this earning is temporary;
expenditure on fodder, on the other hand, remains constant year-round.

Couldn't the solution to the above problem be animals with higher
milk-yields? The problem is also that animals with higher milk
yields -- the crossbred cows our planners are fond of -- need better
quality fodder. These animals do not forage on degraded land; they
require stall-feeding. Improving the animal economy, then, demands
improving the quality and quantity of fodder available to livestock.
But this has simply not been planned for, or done.

The fact is that the fodder crisis is part of the larger land and
water crisis of rural India. Better agricultural productivity on
private lands is a sure-shot source of additional fodder. But this
productivity is limited by the non-availability of water to irrigate
crops. Every time I ask people why they persist in taking their
animals to graze in forestlands, I am told that part of the problem is
there is no water to grow crops, and so, no agricultural residues for
animals to eat. Water then becomes the first enabling tool. It is,
therefore, imperative that we link fodder security to water
security -- building water recharge structures for irrigation.

But this is still half the story. The other half relates to the
largest grazing lands -- the common lands -- degraded through sheer
pressure. It is understood these lands ought to be regenerated. But
what needs to be further understood is that such regeneration is not
possible without factoring in the animal economy. Building boundary
walls to keep grazing animals out will not succeed; the pressure is
too great. Planting non-browsable species will also not work. In the
past, this has always led to greater shortage of fodder and,
domino-like, to greater pressure on forestlands. It has always led to
an unproductive stalemate between the forester and the grazier. It is,
therefore, clear we also need to link fodder security with forest
security -- replanting and regenerating our vast common lands.

But all this is still not the real story. The real story is that this
is an 'other' food crisis, raging through a forgotten animal world.

-- Written by Sunita Narain