Nomenclature is a subtle art which can raise or lower status. It is practised to perfection in government and in PR firms. A joint secretary, despite the adjective, is lower in rank than a secretary in the government. While the whole of India has but one Vice President, a PR firm may have a dozen.
Such naming has come to agriculture as well. Why are dalia (broken wheat) and millets (ragi, jowar, barley, bajra, varagu, sorghum) called ‘coarse grains’ while wheat and rice are ‘fine grains’? Should particle size matter so much? Is this like a colour prejudice? Are fine grains ‘fair and lovely’ and millets, the darker cousins, the runners up and not eaten by city folk? This preference is foolish. Gram for gram, coarse grains offer more nutrition than wheat or rice.
This point was brought out in greater perspective in two recent professional contexts. One was in a seminar organised in honour of Dr. M. S. Swaminathan who turned 90 years young on August 7, on the theme “Science, technology and public policy for achieving the zero hunger challenge”; in other words, how to aim for a hunger-free world. What an audacious goal! The other is a report by Dr Ruth DeFries of Columbia University and colleagues, in the July 17 issue of Science, titled: “Metrics for land-scarce agriculture”- subtitled “nutrient content must be integrated into planning.”
Swaminathan has been the architect of the “Green Revolution,” which let India raise its food-grain production fivefold in sixty years, feeding a population that has risen fourfold. (DeFries and others point out likewise that intensification of food-grain production has increased the world’s cereal supply by almost 3.2- fold, outpacing the 2.3-fold increase in population growth). Over the years, he has emphasised the need for an “Evergreen Revolution” and also the need to address what he terms as “hidden hunger.”
Hunger, we understand, but what is hidden hunger? Even if we produce and consume more rice and wheat, have we nourished our bodies (and brains) with all the requirements for growth and health? Hidden hunger refers to the deficit in essential nutrients that are needed, besides the calories that the starch in food offers. These are minute amounts of some specific vitamins, iron, zinc, iodine, calcium and others, which are termed as ‘micronutrients’. It is here that coarse grains win over wheat and rice. (Gandhiji seems to have known this, since he wanted us to eat not polished, but hand-pounded rice, which keeps the carp, with its set of micronutrients). Fine grains have far less amounts of iron and zinc than maize, oats or millets. The iron content of millet is four times that of rice, the zinc in oats is fourfold that in wheat; and maize (or corn) has the highest nutritional yield among the grains. The rural poor live largely on millets but sadly, not enough of them.
So, in the next stage of agricultural revolution, how do we plan such that the entire world is fed whole food and not just calorie-rich grains? Green Revolution has been criticised (post facto) because of its environmental consequences: excess fertilizers damaging water quality, toxicity of pesticides used, decrease in biodiversity and so forth.
Attempts are already on to make it more acceptable. Cultivation of nutrient-rich coarse grains is expected to be environmentally less demanding (less water and fertilizers) and more eco-friendly.
What we need is thus a change in the mindset, and a newer strategy of mixed agriculture. Rather than measure agricultural production by tonnes per hectare of land (as done now), DeFries et al. propose a new metric termed ‘nutritional yield’, which refers to the number of adults who would be able to obtain 100 per cent of their recommended daily dietary need for one year from a food item produced per year from one hectare.
This new metric can be used to formulate policies for a mix of crops that balance yields with nutritional needs. This would address the problem of hidden hunger and produce healthier, better nourished people of tomorrow.
Put another way, let ‘Fair and Lovely’ cohabit with ‘Dark and Handsome’, so that the disturbing number of 165 millions of malnourished children across the world (23 million in India alone) can be drastically cut within the next decade.
dbala@lvpei.org
