COUNTRIES ACROSS Asia, including China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam, are fighting to curb soaring food prices. After peaking at a record high of 238 points in February, the Food Price Index averaged 234 points in June, 39 per cent higher than the same period last year. In Asia, it has translated into an average 10 per cent increase in food prices and could push 64 million Asians into extreme poverty. In the Asia Pacific region, 578 million people were undernourished in 2010.

 

The Neglect of Agriculture

 

The crisis, while triggered by recent trends such as rising consumption, environmental degradation, climate change and demand for biofuels, has its origins in flawed government policies. Lured by the arguments of Western institutions and economists concerning a fast track to prosperity through “Washington consensus” models of economic growth, Asian policymakers have shifted their focus from a development path traditionally dominated by agricultural self-sufficiency to one mandated by the industrial and manufacturing sector. The common belief was that Asian countries could “manufacture their way out of poverty”. This led to policies that sowed the seeds of the exigency by not recognising that manufacturing-led economic growth would further push agriculture to the background and also result in worsening rural-urban disparities and unwittingly encourage over-consumption.

     The critical role of the rural economy in being the breadbasket that feeds the nation as its people aspire to consume more, together with the consequences of giving priority to the industrial and manufacturing sectors and disincentivising the agricultural sector’s workforce, have been ignored by many political leaders owing to the conviction that the rural sector comprised a backward population and that agriculture was a “poor cousin” of industry. The waning of rural agriculture in the region was caused by institutional neglect and policy shortcomings. In particular, a lack of public investment in rural infrastructure (irrigation, water conservation, roads, electrification, housing and communication), social infrastructure (basic education and health care) and agricultural services (rural banking) exacerbated rural poverty, increased rural-urban migration and hastened the degradation of arable land – land vital to the survival of any nation.

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