Feature Article

A future based on oil is looking increasingly precarious

The past 4 years has seen several legislative developments to tackle Europe's growing obesity problem including food labelling, controls on junk-food advertising to children, and bans on fizzy drinks in school vending machines. But critics say they are not enough.

There is a paradigm shift in the agricultural research and development policy of developing countries, primarily driven by scarcity of public funds. The countries with a strong research system like India and China have initiated a number of reforms with an objective to diversify the sources of funding and increase research efficiency. Competitive funding, commercialisation of technologies, strengthened intellectual property rights, facilitating regulations and flexible extension approach are some of the major reforms undertaken.

This paper summarises the key findings of a number of studies that were prepared for two international conferences devoted to comparing the rural development and agricultural reform experiences of China (the dragon) and India (the elephant) over the last several decades.

The main objective of this study is to assess the overall debt position of the farmers in Punjab and identify the factors affecting their indebtedness.

This paper estimates and compares the paid-out cost of cultivation of wheat in India, the most state-protected crop, during the input subsidy regime of the 1970s and 1980s and after its abolition in the 1990s, when economic reforms were initiated. The study uses the valuable time series information collected as part of the "comprehensive scheme' of the ministry of agriculture.

This paper discusses the various factors that have been identified as responsible for the current global crisis in the availability of food and for the rise in prices of cereals. It argues that the crisis is different from the ones in the 1960s and 1970s in that there is now likely to be a permanent upward shift in real prices. It is important that developing countries place renewed emphasis on selfsufficiency to ensure food security, since they are unlikely to be able to afford expensive food imports.

The inflation in food prices of the early 1970s that arose out of excess demand for cereals disappeared in later years not because of any significant supply augmentation, but because it was substituted by an income deflation on the working people, including the peasantry, over large tracts of the world. This income deflation, brought about by the imposition of neoliberal policies, compressed demand and kept food and other commodity prices in check. But over the longer term, income deflation has undermined the very viability of peasant agriculture, adversely affecting supply.

The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Programme in the Philippines has made substantial progress in dealing with land reform. Much more remains to be done and Filipino society is actively engaged in critically discussing the past and the future of CARP. There are lessons here for India where policymaking circles remain obsessed with growth and have forgotten land reform.

This paper attempts to analyse the current global crisis in the availability and prices of rice by drawing upon the long-term developments in the rice market. The instability and thinness in the world rice markets are shown to be mainly due to the predominantly precautionary export policies of major exporting countries, which in turn are a result of domestic food security considerations. Some possible policy options are also discussed.