According to a recent study, the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has predicted that food prices will soar by as much as 30 per cent over the next 10 years. Angel Gurria, Secretary-General of the OECD, said that any further increase in global food prices, which have risen by 40 per cent over the past year, will have a “devastating” impact on the world's poor and is likely to lead to political unrest, famine and starvation”. It goes on to say that people will be forced either to eat less or find other sources of income. The fact that food will become even more difficult to produce and procure is worrying because we all depend on food and water to keep ourselves alive. Policy makers in our Naga context should also study these findings and take necessary corrective measures so that we can respond to the challenges that lie ahead. It has been our continuing concern that the State government must need to get right its policy on agriculture and allied activities. We have already experienced what a year of drought can do to the overall agro production in the State. The question is whether we have learned anything from the drought like situation we faced a few years ago. How well are we building our water infrastructure so that our farmers can have access to water to irrigate our crops during a drought? And what about floods occurring, whether we can prevent loss of our crops? According to the above study, world food prices are already at a near-record high as droughts and floods threaten to seriously damage this year’s harvest. The media here may not have reported but global food prices hit a record high in February, prompting demonstrations across the world. The last extreme food price rise in 2008 led to riots in 20 countries across three continents.
We need to prepare a road map for ensuring sustainable development of our agriculture sector so that we are in a position to neutralize any global food crisis of the future through our local ingenuity and our own Naga solution. It is important for the government to work on a self sufficiency model where we are able to produce at least the minimum food for our consumption so that when food exports stop (from outside), we can rely on our local production and feed our people. Off course it is not that our villages or farms are unable to produce. In fact when they produce more, they are not able to market or store it because of poor post-harvest infrastructure. Then there is also a need for a proper land use policy. For instance, recently, the Mizoram government has introduced a New Land Use Policy (NLUP) to help farmers move away from the traditional slash-and-burn method of cultivation to more sustainable land-based means of livelihood. Interestingly, the NLUP intends to keep 60 percent of the state's total geographical area under forest cover and the remaining 40 percent for land-based development. Obviously what is applicable in Mizoram may not be the same here; nevertheless the government there has a clear policy direction especially in the agriculture sector for sustainable development as well as self-sufficiency in food grain production. A team from Nagaland can always visit Mizoram to find out more about the NLUP. This is something worth giving a try. It is being observed that large tracts of cultivable land, is being brought under plantation programmes or other development projects, which in the foreseeable future will lead to adverse impact on food crop production. Our various government departments are in fact working at cross purposes. There is no uniform policy to guide the so called ambitious Vision 2020 food for all objective set out by the present government.
We need to prepare a road map for ensuring sustainable development of our agriculture sector so that we are in a position to neutralize any global food crisis of the future through our local ingenuity and our own Naga solution. It is important for the government to work on a self sufficiency model where we are able to produce at least the minimum food for our consumption so that when food exports stop (from outside), we can rely on our local production and feed our people. Off course it is not that our villages or farms are unable to produce. In fact when they produce more, they are not able to market or store it because of poor post-harvest infrastructure. Then there is also a need for a proper land use policy. For instance, recently, the Mizoram government has introduced a New Land Use Policy (NLUP) to help farmers move away from the traditional slash-and-burn method of cultivation to more sustainable land-based means of livelihood. Interestingly, the NLUP intends to keep 60 percent of the state's total geographical area under forest cover and the remaining 40 percent for land-based development. Obviously what is applicable in Mizoram may not be the same here; nevertheless the government there has a clear policy direction especially in the agriculture sector for sustainable development as well as self-sufficiency in food grain production. A team from Nagaland can always visit Mizoram to find out more about the NLUP. This is something worth giving a try. It is being observed that large tracts of cultivable land, is being brought under plantation programmes or other development projects, which in the foreseeable future will lead to adverse impact on food crop production. Our various government departments are in fact working at cross purposes. There is no uniform policy to guide the so called ambitious Vision 2020 food for all objective set out by the present government.
