FEATURES NEWS THE RISING NEPAL (DAILY)

By Khilendra Basnyat

THE world population stands at 6.1 billion plus at present. It is likely to increase by 9.3 billion by 2050. The population of the developing countries is expected to increase significantly in the years to come.

Failure

Despite untiring efforts for reduction, population growth has become a worldwide problem in recent years. Most countries, especially the developing ones, have failed to check population growth. Consequently, the annual addition of world population is close to ninety million.

Today, world population is the largest in history and is increasing at a rate that if not reduced could double in the next four decades.

In fact, evolution has prepared us to compete with other species to survive and multiply. However, it has not equipped us well to either understand or deal with the threat we pose to ourselves.

Food is an essential requirement of mankind. However, due to an imbalance between population growth and agricultural production, food problem is increasing in many countries, especially in the developing ones. Due to this, many countries are enrolling their names in the list of importers of food, forgetting that they were once self - reliant or even exporters.

In most developing countries, the poor population lives on agriculture. However, there has been no substantial agricultural development in these countries. For this reason, in these countries, the situation is particularly acute. Therefore, access to sufficient supply of a variety of safe good quality foods has been a serious problem in some countries.

Despite some progress made in increasing global food supplies and in improving the national state of population, one out of five people in the developing countries are still unable to meet their basic daily nutritional needs for a health and active life. Millions more are exposed to contaminated food.

Actually, food problem persists thoughout the world due to adverse weather, civil strife and economic problems. Presently, about 37 countries face food problem of varying degrees. The situation is especially grave in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

If the food demand of the world population continues at the present rate, more than six hundred millions people will be undernourished within a year.

In reality, frequent drought and unrest depress food availability.The continued civil strife in some countries had reduced domestic food production in the past.

Since cereals at present provide 60 per cent of calories and 50 per cent of the protein consumed by the human race, the need for increased cereal production is undoubtedly evident. On a global or national scale, augmenting output per unit area can increase cereal production. However, it is unrealistic to expect present acreage to be maintained unless there is an effective incentive to produce cereals.

It has been estimated that there is at least twice as much land physically available worldwide for crop protection that the 10 per cent that is presently being used. However, prospects for bringing this extra land into production in the short and medium term are not very encouraging. The existence of this unused resource has been appreciated for several decades. For instance, a detailed study conducted by FAO in developing countries quantified the actual area of land crop production together with the potential land area estimated to be suitable for crop production.

It was obvious from the results of the survey that in the developing regions of the world, cultivated area, as a proportion of the potential was only 45 per cent. Proposals were made whereby this figure would be raised by 0.7 per cent per year. This predicted rate of increase contrasts sharply with the reality of about one per cent increase in total arable land.

In fact, fighting hunger is a moral imperative. It also brings about large economic benefits. It has been estimated that halving hunger could yield economic benefits worth at least 120 billion-dollar a year, resulting from longer and healthier living for all those benefiting from such improvements. For this reason, the United Nations food body unveiled an ambitious new plan to fight hunger across the world, at a cost of 24 billion dollars a year a week ahead of a World Food Summit in Rome.

According to FAO, the anti-hunger programme would have the number of hungry people by 2015. This programme combines investment in agriculture and rural development with measures to improve direct access to food for the most severely undernourished people. In addition, this programme emphasises on creating more opportunities for small farmers who constitute 70 per cent of the world population to improve their livelihood on a sustainable basis.

In fact, in both the developed and developing countries, adequate quantities of topsoil are lost annually through erosion. In the Indian sub-continent alone, more than 100 hectares are lost per day as a result of salinisation due to faulty irrigation. Therefore, there is little justification for dramatic improvements in global food production in the short term at least, arising from an increase in area under production.

Estimates

Within the next twenty-five years, the world's population is estimated to increase at a staggering rate. Therefore the total demand for food will be greater than ever, and the demand will be different due to changing lifestyle, urbanisation and increasing incomes.

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