The hype about food shortages was created by the west in the early sixties and the fear led to the creation of the international research centres. The wheat and maize research centre was located in Mexico. The centre is in the equatorial region and at an altitude of 7000 feet above sea level, making it inappropriate ecologically for the wheat system.
That is because genetic material [human as well plant] is shrivelled at certain temperatures. Borlaug, Nobel laureate [NL] was a person with a sense of interactive process and the fear was such that the international agencies supplied him with the necessary support. He got what he wanted and that was always in huge supply. He won the Nobel prize and was honoured for his work. Since then more of the same have not helped. For one, the deleterious affects of the chemical fertilisers are now all too clear.
India was a very strong user of chemical fertilisers for the culture that has developed in that part of the sub-continent was to consider that technology could drive the economy. Technology is not the only thing that can drive economy. There are other human and economic measures that have to be taken into consideration. Now the view is that all those wasted financial implications were loaded in a different way.
The soils have now become toxic and the food security in Pakistan is no longer a function of chemical fertilisers. The game by the west was well played and although one may not like their policies, but their manner of doing things was very thorough and exclusively self-serving. One after the other they created policies through fear, and with the help of our ignorant leaders as to what to do, they did it.
It started with Ayub Khan and it has continued ever since. In a developing economy and where the social contract is not operative it is very easy to get the country to do their bidding. The route is easy. Every government in the developing country is short of cash.
The carrot that is dangled in front of policy-makers is that the budget support for the five years will be provided. Everything desired by them is done. The consequences come later on. The dependency that Samir Amin, the West African economist, used to talk about comes then. He was not aware of the route that is generally taken.
WTO and the recent work that the west is trying to do in the collection of statistics is not for the use of the country's policy makers but for the use of the West and in time of distress so that the entire media can be hyped to abuse the policy-makers. One can narrate a number of instances. In recent times, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak was used by the west for its own purpose and once the utility was not there the Egyptians were dumped. The governments of the west have no conscience.
There is no need to have that conscience that was supposed to be one of the universal values by which singly and collectively every one lived. All that they require is how to benefit from the resources of the developing countries. The self styled leaders of the free world do not seek to let the developing countries develop and make it on their own.
In that sense they are the new emerging imperialists that destroy everything that is worthwhile in order to ensure their own hegemony. Hypocrites to the core, they will stop at nothing to destroy the very human aspects of life that we used to cherish.
Of late the economic imperialism has been laced by the war-mongering effect of the west. The two, from now onwards, will go in tandem. The sources of economic strangulation were the MNCs and the hype about foreign investment that is generally talked about by all the PMs, whether they are from here or from the more developed country.
From where we get our patriotic financial minds indicates not the development of technology but the siphoning off of the resources of developing countries from two sources namely extractive industry[s] and from food MNCs-like McDonalds. KFC, doughnuts and what have you. Culturally this has destroyed the cuisine of a country and has made it dependent on the eating habits of the west and secondly this is junk food and the profits are being repatriated to the base country that is outside Pakistan so that there is no further investment in Pakistan. The continuum is such that the inputs to agriculture have affected the overall economic development of the country.
To my mind fertiliser is not meant for plants but meant for the soils. It is the replenishment of soil health and not the health of the plant, for after all the uptake of fertilisers is always limited. Had the promise of chemical fertiliser held then the food security element would not have been such an issue. In fact the more chemical fertiliser is put into place the worse it gets for the soil health as well as productivity. East Punjab [India] used to place 200 kilogrammes of fertiliser per acre and now that productivity has dwindled quite significantly.
Punjab no longer provides the food security for India. There are a significant number of organic fertiliser plants in India. That of course is elsewhere; we have our own problems and the biggest one is efficiency of scarce resource inputs into agriculture. Organic fertiliser is just one of those inputs but a very critical one as there is no water holding capacity in the soils. That has been diminished by the continuous use of chemical fertilisers.
What options are there? The fear of scarcity created by the MNCs is meaningless for at the NARC during the last three years this has been proved. There is an improvement in yields and in productivity. There are as many as 53 variables in agriculture productivity that have to be attacked for a reasonable degree of productivity.
The science part is ill served by people who do not use their mind in an iconoclastic manner. On the financial side, can any country afford a subsidy of 82 billion rupees [last year] that was paid to the MNCs in the name of the farmer and as a reminder that the policy makers are involved in the welfare of the small farmer? The farmer remains poor while these fattened corporate cows use the sums for spending at a level of luxury that is beyond comprehension.
Cheaper inputs should be used so that productivity is sustained and in fact enhanced. Fear should not be allowed and this has been demonstrated by the research results that National Agriculture Research has put up. One of the other elements that have never been highlighted was recently researched and the findings are that the rusts that come on wheat were due to the excessive use of fertilisers.
In a recent visit to a farmer's field he explained what had happened? Since price was exorbitant the farmer's inputs was limited to nitrogen fertilisers and this led to excessive green growth and that in turn led to the attack of aphids and in one day the entire crop was decimated. What of the farmer? What of his future? Where were the extension services? Grow up! There is more to life and there is a bigger picture that has to be tackled. Take care for there will be some more on this subject till we decide to eliminate Pakistan's dependency on the received knowledge from the west.
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