by Isagani R. Serrano

      When barraged by critics during the May 2008 annual meeting in Madrid, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) president Haruhiko Kuroda said there’s no lack of concern for food security on the part of ADB.

      ADB went to Madrid to talk mainly about its future and money. It came back to Manila happy. President Kuroda reported a record $10.1 billion loans in 2007. His obra maestra for ADB’s future, the Strategy 2020, aka Long Term Strategic Framework (LTSF), is now up and running. He was able to kick-start negotiations on capital increase (ordinary capital resources or OCR). And he brought home an $11.3 billion commitment to replenish the Asian Development Fund, the institution’s soft loan facility dedicated to poverty and to meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.

      But bringing home the Madrid bacon, so to say, did not come easy. Apart from the expected US opposition to president Kuroda’s wishes, worries about the food crisis clouded the Madrid agenda. Many doubted if ADB’s new vision and strategy could be of any relief. In what may look like knee-jerk response to criticisms, president Kuroda announced his commitment of $500 million in immediate budgetary support to address rising food costs and pledged to double lending for agriculture to $2 billion in 2009. No small deal for a bank whose annual lending averages around $6 billion US.

Food security in ADB’s Strategy 2020

      Food security, as defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and presumed to be accepted by ADB, refers to a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. A companion concept is food sovereignty, defined as the right of people and sovereign states to democratically determine their own agricultural and food policies. That’s the principle, the present reality is very different.

      The meaning of food security has strayed farther away from that definition. More and more food security is getting reduced to a question of access. Forget about sufficiency, health and safety, people’s participation and sovereignty. You don’t need to grow your food to have food security, all you need is to have enough money all the time. An oil-rich country is food secure, the rich need not worry for as long as farmers and fishers are willing to trade what they produce and there are factories to manufacture food.

      Strategy 2020 reaffirms the vision of a poverty-free Asia. Its five ‘change drivers’ are private sector development and private sector operations, good governance and capacity development, gender equity, knowledge solutions, and partnerships. The five core areas of operations where resources will mainly go to are infrastructure, environment and climate change, regional cooperation and integration, finance sector development and education. Other areas include health, agriculture, and disaster and emergency assistance. These drivers and areas of operations—both core and secondary—are guided by three visionary strategic agendas: inclusive growth, environmentally sustainable growth, and regional integration.

      So where’s food security? ADB would say it’s implicit in the vision and entire operations, more than just spelling out agriculture even only as minor area of operations. President Kuroda also would argue that infrastructure, as one of the five core areas, is basically about rural infrastructure like farm-to-market roads, rural electrification, etc. and therefore supportive of agriculture and rural development.

      There’s more to the non-inclusion of agriculture, not to mention sustainable agriculture and fisheries, as core area than meets the eye. That and the overriding emphasis given to private sector development and operations would suggest what ADB values most and where its priority lies.

      Poverty has largely been a rural phenomenon since ADB was born. Despite rapid urbanization most of the poor today are in rural Asia. How on earth can ADB help eradicate poverty and deliver food security for the poor if it fails to give due consideration to agriculture, especially sustainable agriculture and rural development? One can’t help suspecting that President Kuroda’s idea of agriculture is stuck in the Green Revolution mode of old. Most probably, that’s where his $500 million immediate budget support and $2-billion pledge for increased agriculture lending would go.

      Green Revolution gave us a fascinating kind of farming that depended on a narrow base of high-yielding variety of seeds, a heavy dose of chemical inputs—fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, fungicides—and profuse supply of irrigation water. This HYV-rice farming produced ‘miracle’ harvests, all right, but at what costs? The GR technology pushed down farmers into a rising production-falling income trap. Bumper harvests cheapened rice prices even as production costs continued to rise. Farmers got 100 cavans or more per hectare on average but awere left with a mounting pile of debts. They lost their lands to their creditors and were consigned to landlessness with little hope of recovery. More, farmlands choked in chemical pollution, water resources got depleted and poisoned, biodiversity declined and many diverse species that used to populate farmlands disappeared.

      The problem was compounded by government failure to provide adequate support in extension, irrigation, farm-to-market roads, post-harvest facilities, credit and marketing and insurance for crop failure. The hapless farmer is hit by a double-whammy at the farm gate—he’s priced up at entry and priced down at exit.

      ADB is indifferent to land reform, arguing that it is the borrowing government’s lookout. The same goes for fisheries where it concerns reserving the coastal areas for small fishers. And yet in principle ADB sees support for asset reform as crucial to poverty reduction.

      A new approach for ensuring food security calls for a radical change in the way we do farming. Such view has long been advocated by farmers’ movements worldwide. Recently this got a strong boost from the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) in a conference held in April 2008 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The IAASTD admitted to the shortcomings of the GR technology and recognized the critical role of indigenous knowledge and sustainable agriculture in attaining food security. The findings of the three-year IAASTD indicate that modern agriculture will have to change radically from the dominant corporate model if the world is to avoid social breakdown and environmental collapse.

      The IAASTD report—opposed by the US, Canada and Australia—criticized genetic modification and the conversion of farmlands to biofuels production. The so-called GM technology was not the way to feed the world’s poor. Growing agrofuels to feed cars in lands that used to feed people will surely worsen world hunger and malnutrition. Which in turn could lead to political destabilization and more social conflicts.

      ADB’s obsession with energy and infrastructure will not only undermine agriculture, it will also enlarge Asia’s carbon footprint and threaten the region’s food security. To help attain the twin goal of productivity and income, without compromising environmental sustainability, ADB must give up on high-energy agriculture and fisheries. A massive and immediate shift to low-energy, sustainable food production will require huge political and material support from both ADB and its member countries.

      ADB is setting up a climate change fund and targets $1 billion a year for funding renewable energy. This is laudable but the intent must be seen in light of greater financing for coal, oil and gas. And thanks to ADB’s bias, the energy and infrastructure sector would soon be mostly in the hands of the private sector.

      ADB wants to “scale up private sector development and private sector operations in all operational areas, reaching 50% of annual operations by 2020”. Ironically, ADB is also well aware of the widening disparities between countries, between rich and poor, men and women, urban and rural in country after country across the region. And yet, it continues to put so much trust on the sector that cannot be fully trusted to help close those divides.

      The Eminent Persons Group (EPG), source of the major input to the Strategy 2020, sees future Asia as mostly middle class and therefore food secure.

      ADB commits to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and sustainable development. But its policies and projects indicate a bias toward economic growth that is proving to be unsustainable because of mounting social and environmental costs. The growth that we see in ADB’s member countries show in high-yield but poisoned farmlands, in over fishing, in more logging, in further degradation of the soil, rivers and water bodies, in rising air pollution, and in more frequent disasters.

      Asia may now be the growth center of the world but it’s running out of room to grow. Its sources are sinking and its sinks are malfunctioning. Asia’s fast -rising contribution to CO2 emissions is worrisome. And ADB has little to offer to counter the trend. Its safeguard policies (environment, involuntary resettlement, and indigenous peoples) are not working in many cases. From a human rights perspective these safeguards were inadequate to begin with. Now, these safeguards are on the line of fire and may be weakened further.

Food and energy (in)security

      Food security or energy security means having the money to buy. In a sense, there’s no crisis for the rich, there’s crisis only for the poor.

      What if money’s not the issue, would there still be enough to feed everyone? Is there enough for the world’s 6.6 billion, for Asia’s more than 3 billion people? Maybe, maybe not. There’s enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed, if you believe Gandhi. In communities that are used to sharing, if there’s enough food for two there’s food for three. It may not really be a problem of carrying capacity but of justice, though we cannot make light of rapid population growth.

      Food production has a huge climate footprint. Obviously climate change threatens food security. Agriculture and fisheries, and their associated activities, all run on oil. When oil prices rise you get a drop in production , when they soar to levels like we see now you get recession.

      Food crisis together with oil crisis make a deadly combination.

      Why has it come to this? Maybe it’s peak oil, maybe the earth can no longer feed so many people. It’s hard to say where this situation is leading to and how it’s going to end. You might say we’ve been through crisis after crisis before, there’s no reason why we can’t ride this one. Let’s hope it’s not a sign that global warming has crossed the limits.

      Beauty, like ugliness, is in the eye of the beholder. In this crisis you see both. Maybe the high prices of oil and food are just right because they somehow reflect the true costs of production and consumption. Thanks to this crisis, people are forced to go on oil and food diet. When they do that our health and environment would be served better. The crisis is also a test of our good sense, solidarity and resilience.

      Problem is, the oil and food prices are soaring not because they account for the full costs of resource depletion and environmental pollution and the needed rehabilitation. The increases may be due mainly to monopoly and the greed of a few big oil and food companies who make money while we and our environment suffer. ADB may be responsible due to its policies that effectively, though indirectly, subsidize the rich.

      The crisis makes good counsel, telling us that it’s about time we consumed less, adopted clean and green production, and slowed down. It makes compelling reason for a shift to soft energy paths and sustainable food production.

      Renewable energy should get increasing share in the energy mix. It’s about time we shifted from high-carbon to low-carbon food production. Agriculture, to say nothing about deforestation, contributes hugely to climate change. Reducing or abstaining from use of fossil-based, high energy inputs will instantly reduce agriculture’s CO2 emissions, in addition to easing the heavy oil import bills of ADB’s borrowing nations.

Sustainable farming and food security

      If only we could shorten the food mile, meaning growing food as close as possible to where it’s consumed. This way we reduce our food’s carbon footprint as we strive to become more secure in food. It’s crazy that corn has to leave our farm gate and is made to circle the world and return to us as corn chips. Wherever we are—in the city or countryside—we can help grow food. A tiny plot can supply a family with enough veggies. In Singapore part of the demand for vegetable could be met through rooftop gardening.

      We have to change our eating habit, too. It’s not only about rice. A full healthy meal can be had with just a fistful of unpolished organic rice, corn, sweet potato, yam, veggies, fish, meat, fruits.

      Sustainable farming and ecological waste management could go hand in hand. We don’t need waste landfills and dumpsites. Dumpsites can be closed immediately and biodegradables can be turned into organic fertilizers and distributed to farmers to augment the composting they themselves do in their own farms. Together with watershed management and climate change adaptation measures, ecological farming can help ensure food security.

      Appropriate farming systems and practices are already in place, ranging from low external input to full organic. An example is the system of rice intensification (SRI), a rice farming cultural practice that involves early transplanting, wide spacing and single plant a hill, intermittent irrigation and therefore less water use, three or four times weeding in a cropping cycle, use of organic compost. This practice is now being adopted by a growing number of farmers in Asia and elsewhere.

      Small farmers are breeding their own seeds, making their own organic fertilizers from materials available within the farm and neighborhood. They are managing communal irrigation systems and watershed areas. They educate each another on how best to promote, plan and practice sustainable agriculture and rural development. In Thailand small farmers bring their produce directly to market centers and negotiate a fair price. If only farmers can get all the basic support from government—farmer schools, barrio roads, irrigation, hand tractors, shredders, composters, dryers, silos, market centers, credit and insurance for crop failure—there is no reason why our agriculture could not become sustainable.

      Consumers can help. They can buy only organics, pay a premium for soil and water regeneration and watershed protection, lend a hand in promoting ecological farming in government, schools and media. They can help elevate farming as an equal of other professions.

Sustainable fishing and food security

      Coastal fishers have been striving to make fishing sustainable. But they are up against an even worse tragedy, a tragedy that usually befalls commons. Just 10% of the world’s oceans, the coastal zones are the seat of biological diversity and source of nearly all the fish catch. These zones are now heavily polluted with sediment, sewage, and human and industrial wastes.

      Small fishers and their communities are among the poorest although their habitat is rich in gifts and their labor enriches the nation. Basic services like education, health, water and sanitation have not worked for them generally. The MDG that ADB committed to achieve for the Asian poor has made little progress in coastal fishing communities.

      The tragedy expresses in many ways and forms. You see it in rising ocean temperatures, in the collapse of major fishing grounds, degradation of mangroves and coral reefs, ‘fishless’ oceans, malfunctioning estuaries and coastal areas, fish price inflation, no fish diet. This is the legacy of 200 years of industrial fishing, of fishing going global, of advances in technology from trawl to sonar to satellite, of policies and institutions that tend to facilitate fisheries destruction. Even more basic, the tragedy is a consequence of a hunter mindset that respects no boundaries and thinks that fish will always be there for the taking.

      Yes, it’s a tragedy of the commons, a tragedy for all of us. It’s true we all suffer but the poor among us suffer more. We may all be responsible, but some will have to answer for more. Surely, we’re not equally responsible for what happened and continues to happen to our fisheries.

      Fisheries development, which ADB supports, is basically oriented to growing the economy. Send the big boats out to sea and you’ll get a higher GDP. Fisheries as usual is technology-dependent and capital-intensive and biased toward the rich and so-called national interest, whatever that means.

      In fairness, some fisheries development projects funded by ADB had small community-based coastal resources management (CB-CRM) component. Yet this is marginal relative to direct and indirect support that goes to big fishing.

      Oceans are warming and failing in their function as stabilizer of the global climate system. They can no longer capture carbon emissions and dissolve wastes as well as they used to do. They could only take so much shit, as it were, and beyond that their ecological functions start to fail. With mangroves and corals gone, not only are fishes rendered homeless, nothing more stands between vulnerable coastal communities and the raging tsunamis.

A food secure Asian future

      Knowing where we are now, it’s hard to be optimistic. But we can always look forward to a future where every Asian has access to healthy food at all times. What that means is sustainable farming and fishing and effective natural resource management, food factories producing not junks but enough healthy food at affordable prices.

      Let’s scenario a future where Green Revolution really means green, where farmers are sovereign and practice sustainable farming to produce green crops, livestock and freshwater fish and biomass fuels for themselves and the whole nation. Suppose most of the big boats are grounded and destructive fishing is no more. Coastal zones are reserved for exclusive use by small fishers, coasts are cleaned up, rivers and forests are restored, and waste dumping in water bodies is no more. Aquaculture is expanded and done ecologically. More, let’s say 20% of oceans were already secured as global marine protected areas and the UN and other intergovernmental organizations are able to manage them well.

      We may not be able to do all that before climate change reaches the so-called tipping point. Whatever, we owe it to ourselves to do something like all these now, not a day later.