Centre for Science and Environment Food Connection: Nutrition, nature, livelihoods (in an increasingly warming world) Sunita Narain Centre for Science

Centre for Science and Environment

Food Connection: Nutrition, nature, livelihoods (in an increasingly warming world)

Sunita Narain



Counting wellbeing

• Sum of goal is human and environmental wellbeing

• Question is how to achieve this? • What we decide to measure is important. • SDGs reflect interconnections between goals

and targets within goals• SDGs are about a different theory of change• Question is how to add the targets and not to

subtract and then how to count


Lets deconstruct to construct

• Why hunger• Why malnutrition

Is it only about lack of food Or

Is it about access to food because we have no safety net to put floor to poverty

Is it because small food producers (who are also consumers) are impoverished

Is it because extreme weather is double-whammy for vulnerable groups


Small scale producers

• Why do they lack productivity?

Is it because they are poor Or

Is it because we do not know how to value agriculture that is low-input and so low-output?

Modern agriculture is expensive and so subsidized (green or amber)

Or it is industrial and so built for large volumes of low-cost food, feed, fibre and fuel


Support systems

• Increasing productivity of small scale producers requires investment in support systems

• 60-80% agriculture remains rainfed. Dependent on increasingly variable rain and hit by extreme weather events

• Farmers invest in groundwater infrastructure• This is private investment (but not recognized).

In India 19 million well-owners


Groundwater more crucial


• We use water in ‘decentralised’ manner. But we recharge water in ‘centralised’ manner.

• Lakes, ponds and tanks were the sponges, to harvest rain, to harvest the flood water so that groundwater could be recharged

• Critical for rainfed agriculture• Critical for a climate risked world

Rain is decentralised


But decentralised recharge structures disappear


Measure investment in water

• Recharge of groundwater critical• Rain in decentralised and so must invest in

water storage systems • Can invest in labour intensive water holding

structures, not only large irrigation systems

• Link water investment to increasing productivity of agriculture


Climate increases vulnerability

• Across our world farmers are hit twice• Once because of increasing cost of agriculture

and decreasing returns• Twice because of increasing extreme and

variable weather events

• Adding to loss• Destroying coping ability


The face of India’s farmer Grief, despair, desperation Unseasonal rain, hail, freak storms have destroyed crops over millions of hectares


Not just normal variability


Extreme rainfall events

Heavy rainfall events (> 100 mm/day) and very heavy events (>150 mm/day) are increasing and moderate events (5-100 mm/day) are decreasing.


Link method with resilience

• Increase of productivity has to low-cost• Higher cost, higher risk, higher loss

• Measure resilience as managing risks

• Resilience is about multiple crops; need crops that are water resilient; need systems of agriculture that can improve coping abilities of farmers


Resilience is not technology

• It is about cropping pattern• It is about food we eat• Diets are about food we are ‘sold’• Need to make this link• Need to change nature of food industry in

climate risked world


Measure investment in resilience

1. Investment in weather forecasting and information dissemination systems

2. Investment in crop insurance systems

3. Investment in building water infrastructure that will improve resilience

4. Investment in complex agro systems – agro-silvo-pastoral systems – that provide fall back options

All in ways that do not increase costs of agriculture and so burden on farmers


Measuring investment

• Small producers caught in spiral of debt• Measure investment in their wellbeing• For inputs – seeds, pesticides…• For water infrastructure• For health• For education

So SDG2 rural infrastructure investment has to be measured in all these areas


Food-sustainability link

• Cannot ‘green’ agriculture after we ‘brown’ it• Sustainability is about what we grow –

biodiversity rich and nature-friendly • Sustainability is about who grows – local food

for livelihood security• Sustainability is about how we grow – less

intensive and less toxic• Sustainability is about what we eat – less

processed and more bio-diverse and local


This is not sustainable


Measure sustainability

• Not in terms of what it takes to first grow food unsustainably and then mitigate its emissions

• Industrial size livestock management reduces cost of meat produced

• But it has high environmental costs that need to be measured and accounted for

• This will value small-producers method of production


Costs of food safety

• Input intensive agriculture requires greater surveillance and enforcement

• Farmers add pesticide, antibiotics etc, which needs to be managed safely so that human safety is not compromised

• Food safety and traceability becomes a new barrier for small producers

• Measure this cost so that we value and promote different methods of production


How to value good food

• Measure under-nutrition and over-nutrition• World is moving from too little food to food

that is high in salt, sugar and fat• Has high health costs• Governments need to regulate for over-

nutrition• Need to promote value of home-cooked,

seasonal, diverse, organic food


Measuring genetic diversity

• Food• Is nature• Food diversity about biological diversity

• We lose one, we lose the other• We lose culture, we lose nature

Maintaining genetic diversity will need world to celebrate regional food diversity


First Food: taste of India’s biodiversity


Long, white not rice

Huge diversity of rice lost today on our plates

Rice for nourishment

Rice for medicineRice that can adapt to rising flood waters •Kerala’s Navara•Maharashtra’s Ambemohar•Karnataka’s Kayame (drought and salinity resistant)•Chattisgarh’s Alcha


Rice diversity: nutrition


Makhana: Protein from water-lily


Food

• Is about livelihood• Business of growing, collecting, storing,

selecting and improvising on its seed; its value and its taste

• Culinary tradition is about diversity


Food

• Is about culture

• Is about our lifestyles• Do not first have to eat bad and then learn

good food• Celebrate nature, nutrition and food


Food culture

• Designing new food cultures for a different future

• Link to safety• Link to nutrition• Link to livelihood• Link to biodiversity


SDG2: Different model

This is about different model of growth – one that is affordable, inclusive and so sustainable

•It puts last person (woman) first•Values their knowledge•Values their frugality and rationality•Values their diversity

Our evaluation must capture this richness

Documents

Centre for Science and Environment Food Connection: Nutrition, nature, livelihoods (in an increasingly warming world) Sunita Narain Centre for Science