Norman Borlaug Centennial Q&A's with Experts:
If Norman Borlaug posed the following questions to you... what would you tell him?
"It is not only the availability of food but also access to food that keeps the world in the safe state of food security."
Indu Sharma, Ph.D., Project Director of ICAR-Directorate of Wheat Research
India
Q: What’s the one thing – the single most important – that we need to address to solve food insecurity?
A: Increasing the crop yield is the only and possible solution to address the global food insecurity. However, it has to be manoeuvred in a multi-dimension perspective. Crop yield cannot be increased in a spurt to meet the future demand against the increasing production challenges from a host of biotic and abiotic stresses apart from the threat posed by increasing population, shift in consumption pattern owing to change in dietary preference, reduction in farmland size coupled with degradation of soil quality and demand for diverse products by the consumers. Hence, as researchers we should work on augmenting the crop yield at farmers field to reach the genetic potential of existing popular genotypes and breaking the yield barrier for the newly released varieties so as to tackle the issue of food insecurity in a pertinent and coherent way.
Q: Do you think we can feed 9 billion people by the year 2050? If so, why? If not, why not?
A: Certainly, the answer is a big Yes but it is a huge challenge as well for the researchers. By 2050, the world has to feed around 9 billion people as projected by the United Nations and a large number of the population will be living in the developing countries where the income levels are already increasing. FAO reports say that the share of malnourished people in world population may drop by 84 percent in 2050 as incomes in developing countries grow. Nevertheless, it will happen only under scenario of increasing agricultural productivity against all odd challenges. Population growth along with rising income level will lead to increased demand for food and it has to be met with an additional 50-60 per cent from the existing level.
Currently, the world agriculture is at crossroads since the yield of major food commodities has reached its plateau. Globally, yield of maize, rice, wheat and soybean has to be increased by 60 per cent by 2050 to meet the projected demand. Hence, for increasing the overall food production, yield barrier has to be breached. As researchers striving for global food and nutrition security, we have to guide the farming community for maximum production with limited use of depleting scarce natural resources.
There should be a synergy between research for development, investment and extension programmes. Success paying strategies like participatory breeding programmes, blending conventional breeding with biotechnological tools for developing genotypes that could withstand biotic and abiotic stresses, and adopting novel strategies like doubled haploid production and developing C4 wheat for efficient use of scarce production resources with adequate investment in agricultural research by the public agencies. Extension agents should serve as transformers and facilitate to adopt the successful technologies from lab to farmers’ field. Harnessing the developments in cutting-edge sciences and technology via an integrated mission mode approach will help to achieve the food and nu security at global level.
Q: Where are the biggest gaps right now in the food system?
A: Currently, the food chain system is embedded with a host of unfriendly policies in public procurement and distribution, limited bulk storage facilities and lack of infrastructure facilities to minimise the transfer cost particularly in developing countries, and poor value chain to increase the livelihood of small holders as well as failure in delivering novel end-products to the customers at affordable cost. Nevertheless, these gaps have to be minimised at an early date to improve the quality of the food chain system.
Q: What’s one piece of advice you would give to young people?
A: As per the estimates, the world fosters around one billion youth (age between 15-24 years) currently. Of them, 85 per cent lives in developing countries with approximately 60 per cent in Asia alone. By 2025, there will be 1.22 billion youths accounting for 15.4 per cent of the total global population (Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations). As a majority of them strive for livelihood, they should have a clear focus and vision to achieve their strides and goals. The youth generation have to understand the painstaking efforts in producing food for mankind and hence they should come forward in a larger proportion to work for producing the food. A ‘farm-food-family’ (FFF) concept should be formed such that under the guidance of elders and experienced individuals of the family/ researchers, youth in every family should take agriculture as one of their sources of livelihood and the woman in the family should try to deliver the end-products at household level with appropriate nutritional mix to all individuals of the family.
Q: How would you explain what you do, and why it’s important, to a 10-year-old?
A: As you are aware, food is the basic and foremost need for a human being, and in fact, civilisation began with agriculture. It is not only the availability of food but also access to food that keeps the world in the safe state of food security. It is only the farmers who strive hard to produce the sufficient food for human livelihood. So their comfort is a must for our living. To ensure this, as a scientist, I work for and with the farm community at large in raising their livelihood and welfare through developing high yielding wheat varieties which are resistant to biotic and abiotic stresses and helping out them to adopt in their farm through extensive demonstrations and training programmes.
Q: Within your area of expertise, what is one misunderstood or neglected topic you could shed some light on for readers?
A: Role of farm-woman in achieving household food security or poverty alleviation, bridging the gender gap and woman empowerment is one of the most neglected research areas in agriculture. Contribution of woman to agricultural growth and development is evident as their involvement in different household activities and farm operations including horticulture, animal husbandry, and fisheries. As per the estimates, the share of women in agriculture labourers has been declining worldwide but still they constitute a significant proportion accounting for about 42 per cent in total.
Gender contribution in agriculture and allied sectors varies across regions/countries based on their socio-economic and socio-cultural status, and type of agricultural production. For e.g., woman contribution is high in staple (rice, wheat and maize) and commercial food crops (cotton, onion, tea, coffee and spices) as well as in livestock production and maintenance but their importance in the post-production activities is negligible. On the contrary, role of woman is very high in fisheries sector in post-harvest operations. Apart from this, there exists a huge gender gap in farm management decisions, farm resources ownership and training received. This is one of the major reasons for keeping women in a vicious circle of low productivity and poverty which has to be researched and addressed strategically to empower woman involved in agriculture.
Q: What is the most interesting project going on right now – yours or someone else’s - that more people should know about?
A: Of the different abiotic stresses faced during wheat production, heat stress i.e. high temperature notably at grain filling stage just before the harvest, significantly hampers the yield potential. A novel facility created at the ICAR-DWR funded under NPTC functional genomics project combines advantages of screening of the genotypes in the larger plot size (as is in the fields) as well as under controlled conditions with a precise temperature control facility. As long as the structure remains open during the initial growth stages, it receives environmental conditions prevailing outside and hence no extra expenditure, as compared to the field conditions is required.
The uniqueness of the structure is that it could be instantly converted into a temperature controlled facility through a single push button thereby ensuring temperature treatment for the required duration at specific crop stage, as and when required. As compared to the other growth chambers, the temperature regulation in the structure is very precise and is linked to the ambient temperature. An automatic push button closes the roof and windows from all the four sides within 90 seconds. It has a PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) facility for differential time regulation in closing down the roof and windows. Once the structure is closed it enables precise regulation of temperature, humidity and photoperiod. Temperature of both the structures can individually be programmed from 0-100C higher as compared to the ambient temperature. The data logger system provides storage of temperature and humidity data of both the structures and also the ambient conditions. It has facility to display the data date-wise in an archive manner. Data on ambient temperature and humidity can be visualized, stored and is updated every 30 seconds.
For increasing the temperature, a boiler based heating system has been installed in which warm water runs through the pipeline hanging from the roof with three inlets and outlets to avoid formation of temperature gradient and the structure is cooled down through 16 air conditioners. Mist system provides fine water droplets for maintaining required humidity level and the drip system for efficient irrigation. This temperature controlled precision phenotyping facility is a unique one and is a pride for ICAR-DWR and wheat community.
Q: What’s one thing the general population could do to make an impact on global food security?
A: Despite a significant share of the population goes to bed on a hungry stomach, the world is wasting enormous quantity of food to the tune of 1.3 billion tonnes per annum which is almost equivalent to one-third of food produced for human consumption. In monetary terms, around US$ 680 billion worth of food (0.67 billion tonnes) is wasted in developed countries and US$ 310 billion worth of food (0.63 billion tonnes) wasted in developing countries (Source: FAO). It has been estimated that the food losses and waste per year is about 30% in the case of cereals, 20% from dairy, 30% from fish and seafood, 45% from fruits and vegetables, 20% in meat, 45% in the case of roots and tubers, and 20% in oilseeds and pulses. Reports also indicate that food wasted in India alone can feed the entire Australian or United Kingdom population for a year.
On the other hand, consumers in developed countries waste food to the tune of 222 million tonnes which is equivalent to the net food production of sub-Saharan Africa while in developing countries wastage occurs in processing and post-harvest levels. This also has a serious policy implications in terms of wasting the scarce resources used for crop production like groundwater utilisation, land, labour, capital and energy sources which unnecessarily impacts global warming and climate change by producing greenhouse gases. Hence, the general population should know the painstaking efforts in producing food for mankind and the consequences of food loss and waste. They should join hands together in reducing the food wastage at all desired levels.
Q: What is one of your favourite quotes or words to live by?
A: The future depends on what we do in the present – Mahatma Gandhiji
Q: Share with us one of your most unique life experiences and what it taught you.
A: Life is full of learning with experiences and lessons. A good learning experience will be an experience and acute incidents will be a lesson to correct. Here, I would like to share my experience of surveillance during 2006-07 which taught me a lesson of how important is to create awareness amongst farmers to avoid losses under a situation of high disease incidence, especially the rusts which lead to economic losses.
During regular monitoring of wheat crop for knowing its health status we observe several diseases like rusts, flag smut, loose smut and blight at pre-harvest stages, and Karnal bunt and black point after the harvest in the samples which are collected from the grain markets. Besides, we also observe the incidence of other pests and weeds. It was in the year 2006-07 that high incidence of stripe rust was detected in several fields of Punjab. Further monitoring revealed that the disease has been spreading very fast in several villages and posed a huge threat to overall wheat production. Most of the affected fields were heavily irrigated and farmers were resorting to application of ‘N’ thinking that yellowing has occurred either due to less irrigation or nutrient (‘N’) deficiency. Farmers suffered a huge loss without realizing the fact that they are adding fuel to the fire.
Seeing things getting worse, we reacted immediately and recommended the farmers to go for spraying Propiconazole against the period wherein no fungicide was recommended for rust management. Gradually farmers were made aware the importance of visiting their fields regularly after 40 days of sowing. They are advised not to grow the susceptible varieties through mass and print media, and, trained with self-detection of rust (by touching the infected leaves, yellow powder sticks to their fingers which is an indication for rust). Under such situation, farmers were suggested to seek the advice of experts. Following this, in 2011, pocket cards were developed at the Directorate showing the disease symptoms along with the management techniques and distributed to lakhs of farmers in high disease prone areas. This simple and cost-effective method led the farmers to contact the experts directly which considerably reduced the economic loss by timely management of yellow rust.