India Searches for Food
WEISBROD, DAVID A.
AMID THE WORLD GRAIN SHORTAGE India Searches for Food by david A- weisbrod Washington After five bountiful harvests in a row-from 1967 through 1971-The bloom on India's Green Revolution has...
...asked recently: "Are we now more interested in selling our surplus grains than in fulfilling the high purposes of the Food for Peace program...
...Finally, in early 1971, after having received approximately $5 billion worth of surplus commodities from the United States since 1954, India announced a new, self-reliant agricultural policy, and abruptly ended PL 480 purchases...
...Administration spokesmen counter that the Food for Peace Act was originally intended to boost exports of U.S...
...Experts generally agree that the pace of the Green Revolution must be stepped up quickly...
...The world is now less able and less willing to rally to India's support in times of shortage and, during the next few months, just about everyone on the subcontinent will be looking to the skies, hoping for a season of strong monsoon showers...
...Until the efforts to achieve self-sufficiency succeed, India will remain at the mercy of the weather, and will continue to run the risk of not having enough food to feed its enormous-and growing-population...
...It would pose a question we've never faced before...
...Critics in the United States have begun to complain that commercial considerations are subverting America's traditional role in the fight against worldwide hunger and malnutrition...
...These imports, together with reserves reportedly accumulated in the time of plenty, should enable India to squeak through the current crisis-if the monsoons come with sufficient force...
...Unfortunately, the concessional sales outlook at the present time is not bright, what with threats of famine elsewhere in Asia and Africa, and world grain reserves at their lowest levels in 21 years...
...The immediate hope, of course, is that the question will not arise, that a good monsoon in India will make concessional purchases unnecessary...
...True, prospects for the year's harvest are favorable...
...It certainly would be a colossal burden," admitted an Indian government economist...
...I think the effect was a good one...
...Les Brown, a senior fellow of the Overseas Development Council and a former adviser to Orville Freeman, Secretary of Agriculture under Kennedy and Johnson, noted: "For the past 25 years it has been American policy to intervene with our food resources anywhere that famine threatens...
...If additional grain purchases are required, they say, India could dig still deeper into its dwindling foreign exchange reserves...
...Indeed, supply is so short that Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz has withdrawn 600,000 tons of wheat from the program, breaking formal agreements that had been previously reached, and rankling some recipient nations who have grown dependent on the food shipments...
...This situation could create a new ohallenge for American food aid policy, as Irwin Hodges, director of the Food for Peace program, has observed: "If there is a crisis in India that calls for large quantities of U.S...
...Yet should the drought prove as damaging as last year's, up to 6 million tons of grain would need to be imported (which at present prices would cost $600 million...
...harvest, there has been a drastic reduction in the amount of wheat available for America's Food for Peace program...
...In the long run, however, India's best bet for averting future shortages is to improve its irrigation facilities and extend technology into the production of lentils and coarse grains...
...Some food from the United States continues to be donated (primarily in the form of special blends used in child-feeding projects administered by American voluntary agencies), but that last remnant of food aid is expected to be terminated by the end of 1975...
...Davtd A. Weisbrod served recently with the International Rescue Committee on the Asian subcontinent...
...But no mechanism is built into the law allowing for his interfering with commercial sales...
...Although the food ultimately arrived in time, preventing widespread starvation, the delays and the uncertainty irritated New Delhi...
...AMID THE WORLD GRAIN SHORTAGE India Searches for Food by david A- weisbrod Washington After five bountiful harvests in a row-from 1967 through 1971-The bloom on India's Green Revolution has faded...
...Yet so far, despite domestic food prices that are at an all-time high, grain reserves that are disappearing at the rate of a million tons a month, tight rations, and water and power shortages, Indian officials have ruled out an international appeal for aid...
...The decision to avoid seeking assistance has been expensive-reducing India's foreign exchange supply by 20 per cent-but, within government circles at least, it has not been unpopular...
...If the worst comes to India, we won't be able to respond...
...agricultural goods, and specifically prohibits concessional sales in place of commercial transactions...
...Some of the complacency of the original euphoria is being punctured," said an Indian diplomat...
...credit could be obtained from the World Bank, or even from commercial banks...
...More than anything else," said a high level Indian Embassy source, "it was President Johnson's deliberately tough stance that is responsible for the attitude we now have...
...To maintain their policy of independence through this worrisome year, officials are considering severe measures...
...concessional terms for industrial items could be sought...
...Suddenly there is the possibility that we may be abandoning that...
...What is known, though, is that by the end of the first half of 1973 reserve wheat stocks in the United States will fall to 400 million bushels-a figure some consider an inadequate strategic cushion in the event of a poor domestic crop...
...grain, the President could intervene...
...With our foreign exchange so low, we would have little choice but to seek concessional sales...
...administrations give their bounty...
...In addition, the Nixon Administration has decided to reduce food aid for the coming year...
...They have turned instead to commercial markets in the United States, Canada and Argentina, and made the largest grain purchases in their nation's history, buying 2 million tons of wheat and sorghum on strict cash terms...
...In the end the shortfall should produce some changes, just as the 1966-67 shortage led to the jump in the production of wheat...
...During the last shortage, after the back-to-back monsoon failures of 1965-66, the United States provided more than 14 million tons of grain on special concessional terms-through the Food for Peace program (Public Law 480...
...As one senior diplomat here explained: "To again approach the world with an outstretched beggar's bowl would require a degree of abjectness and political courage that does not obtain in India...
...Furthermore, they argue, it is much too early to predict whether India will actually need aid, and neither the size of American availabilities nor the degree of foreign demand for the coming year is yet known...
...It would be difficult to supply India with PL 480 food at the expense of our commercial sales...
...Following the 1965-66 shortage, the Indian government, in a strong effort to sever the humiliating food aid ties, achieved remarkable advances in grain production, mainly by the introduction of high-yielding wheat seeds and chemical fertilizers...
...It has fostered self-sufficiency...
...And should poor rains produce another dry summer this year, the result would be a famine of disastrous proportions...
...Millions of people in the central states of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujerat, and Madhya Pradesh are once more living at the brink of starvation, victims of last year's drought, one of the most severe in a decade...
...Senator Edward Kennedy (D.-Mass...
...But most planners expect demand from abroad to remain high, and are doubtful that grain stocks in other exporting countries will increase significantly...
...it has also created a certain psychosis among us about the way U.S...
...But President Johnson, pursuing what he called a "short tether" policy, released the grain on a monthly basis, demanding a reform of India's farm program in exchange...
...Because the Russian wheat deal-The largest international grain sale in history-has committed fully half of the 1972 U.S...
Vol. 56 • June 1973 • No. 13
