A People’s Commission on food, nutrition and agriculture

By Sarath Fernando
The efforts made so far to develop an effective policy and strategy for food production, marketing and consumption to solve the most essential aspect of food, namely to solve the needs of food and nutrition of the ordinary poor people have failed over the last 30 years.

The Nutrition and Food Security Assessment in Sri Lanka conducted recently ( March 2010 ) by the Medical Research Institute of the Ministry of Health, UNICEF and The WFP ( World Food Programme ) has revealed this tragic situation. It has revealed that the nutritional situation of the ordinary people has not improved in any way. (with 19.2% stunting, 11.7 % wasting and 21.6 % under weight ). Assessment of hemoglobin levels of children aged between 6 and 59 months showed that 25.2 % were anemic. The prevalence of low birth weight among children born during the five years preceding the survey was 18.1 %. With a mean birth weight being 2.890 - or+ 0.51 Kg.

The last nutritional survey conducted in Sri Lanka was in 1994 which revealed that the nutritional status of the people in general was very poor.

This situation of poor nutrition began, in Sri Lanka many years ago, particularly with the removal of policies of rice subsidy in 1978. The figures have remained the same since then and all measures that subsequent governments promised to improve the nutritional status have failed since then.

The prevalence of malnutrition and anemia in the form of stunting and wasting is widely seen among low income groups, in the plantation sector and in rural agricultural sector. The presence of over 30 % malnutrition among children below five years was the case in the last survey done over 15 years ago ( 1994), since then the food prices have increased tremendously, with essential foods like rice, bread, milk, dhal and other pulses,etc. increasing by over two hundred %. This happened over the last three four years and it would have had a shocking impact on the food and the nutritional situation of the poorer sections of society. Rates of stunting were 40% in Nuwara Eliya district while it was over 30 % in Trincomalee and Badulla. It was also very high in rural districts such as Batticaloa, Hambantota, Anuradhapura and Ratnapura.

Thus, the seriousness of this situation of continued low birth weight, anemia among pregnant and non pregnant mothers, and malnutrition among children should be understood by all people. The whole country deteriorates in health and nutrition. Unless remedies are found in the child hood, this damage cannot be remedied in the later years.

It is known that the growth of the brain cells of a child begins during the time of pregnancy ( 25 % ), while 85 % is to be completed when the child reaches 5 years . This growth becomes incomplete if the child suffers lack of nutrition during the time before birth and during the first five years after birth. When this happens it is known that the brain cells that are necessary for intelligence do not grow at all.It cannot be remedied after this age. If over 20 % of children and around 30 % of mothers suffer malnutrition and anemia, the overall damage will be very severe. This should bring the whole country to serious alarm.

Although this seriousness has been brought to the attention of the policy makers from time to time, it has not resulted in any consistent policy intervention so far. Sometimes promises are made, such as special food subsidies to pregnant and lactating mothers, mid day meals to school children etc. are made during election campaigns, such as the Mahinda Chinthana promises, none of them are implemented with any seriousness.
It is therefore, necessary to properly identify the reasons for this failure and the neglect with which such a serious issue is being looked open by the policy makers and implementers.

The fact that the governments do not look at this issue with seriousness is shown by the fact that while malnutrition remained extremely serious for almost 30 years, even the situation has not been studied consistently. The last survey was done only in 1994, which is 16 years ago. It was not seen as necessary to even study the trends more frequently and subsequent measures adopted in food production and distribution only made the situation worse. The food prices have increased tremendously and still much attention is given to production of commercial crops rather than a type of agriculture that could make much more food available to the poorer section of society at affordable cost. The need to have healthy food is almost completely ignored with companies being allowed to produce, propagate and market artificial processed chemically contaminated food although there is very wide awareness about the diseases caused by such unhealthy food.

Paddy prices have come down again with no lowering of rice prices

In the recent weeks the price at which paddy is being purchased has come down much more, once again. It has reached Rs. 18 to Rs. 20 per Kilo, coming down from over Rs. 30. At the present rates of cost of production this is an extremely low price while the price of rice to the consumers still remains very high at more than Rs. 60 /Kg.

Previous policy before 1977


Availability of rice at low cost to all consumers was seen as necessary to keep the ordinary people healthy and nourished. Production of other pulses and cereals were seen as necessary too. Therefore, there were times when domestic products of such food were encouraged by policy by restricting imports and by providing support policies in production and marketing of such food. This policy that began as a result of the food shortages that were created during the time of the Second World War were continued by all subsequent Governments after independence until 1977.

It was in 1977 that this policy of support to domestic food producers was given up counting on the possibility of cheaper food imports and emphasis was shifted to production of high value export crops. Although this policy of non support for domestic food production has proved to be a failure over the decades and domestic food production deteriorated over the years, no consistent policy has been adopted to remedy the situation.
The policy regarding the production and marketing of paddy and rice is a clear case in point. The policy of sustaining small farmer based paddy production was the policy of the Governments for many years after independence. Settlement of farmers on irrigated agricultural settlements was a policy to prevent landlessness of small farmers. They were provided land, water at no cost and were provided other inputs such as seeds, fertilizer etc. at subsidized rates.

Protecting producer farmers from the exploitative operations of middlemen traders was seen as necessary, which led to the formation of government machinery for purchasing paddy at guaranteed prices. This was the Paddy Marketing Board (PMB). In relation to other food crops too there were similar policies, with Marketing Development Board for vegetables, pulses, cereals, fruits etc. National Fisheries Board for Fish, National Milk Board for milk and so on. Another objective in setting up of such government machinery was to protect the consumers form the excessive exploitation by the traders. There were price controls on many essential items of food.

Such intervention by Government in production and trade was seen as necessary since it was seen that the Government had a responsibility of protecting both the producers as well as the consumers. Another effective arrangement for such protection was the establishment of the Cooperatives system. It has been proved on many occasions that cooperatives could protect people from the undue operations of the private traders.

The policy of allowing private trade to handle all production and marketing was the policy advocated by the WB and it was under the guidance of the WB and IMF that these government machineries for intervention have been dismantled.

Both Governments as well as the multilateral financial institutions now admit that these policies have not worked. The WB in its more recent documents has stated that the small scale farmers and domestic production are far more efficient ways of fighting poverty and of feeding the hungry.

The governments, both Mahinda Rajapakse Government as well as the UNP have clearly declared that they would reestablish the paddy purchasing arrangements and intervene in giving a guaranteed price to farmers.
However, the implementation of these policies such as domestic food production by small scale farmers, purchasing of their produce with reasonable price assurances and also making food available to poorer sections of society at affordable cost do not seem to work at all.

A brief look at why this is so will clearly show that one of the major reasons is that the power , authority and policy support given to private businesses to have control over production and marketing is still in place and the Governments do not have any serious intension of dismantling them either.

Since, governments are influenced by private sector businesses as well as international financial institutions to have policies that are beneficial to them but are extremely detrimental to the poorer sections of society such as the small farmers, the small scale fishers, the plantation workers, other workers in the industrial and service sectors, it is now necessary to set up proper machinery to ensure that the voices of the affected people are brought to be heard by the policy makers more strongly and consistently. That the promises made by the politicians during elections are seriously carried out.

If this machinery is not sufficiently strong not to be ignored by the top level decision makers, it can so happen that they would prefer to follow the guidance and dictates of the local and foreign private businesses.

A people’s Commission on Food, Nutrition and Agriculture


There should be a mechanism for people to intervene in setting up policies that ensure that all people get sufficient quantities of healthy, nutritious, food at all times at affordable cost. For this to happen there should be a way of studying the production processes, the ways of marketing and food policies aim at delivering food to different sectors of society at prices that they could pay, based on their levels of income.

There should be a national body that studies this consistently and makes policy suggestions and there should be the possibility of campaigning on the above recommendations. As we have already mentioned the issue of food and nutrition is serious enough to set up an ongoing National Commission. Presently policy formulations are left entirely to the political parties and the tendency among parties have been to blame each other and while in power the parties are known to carry out the same policies that they criticized while in opposition.

The private businesses have the power and authority to utilize governments to adopt policies that are profitable to them. The poorest people, the malnourished children do not have any political machinery to pressurize governments or international financial institutions to adopt policies that are extremely important.

Setting up a powerful Civil Society Commission to look into these issues is one way in which this situation could be remedied. Looking at the seriousness of the situation of malnutrition that has prevailed at extremely dangerous levels for over a generation, It is sufficiently serious to set up a public Commission to work on this issue.

The intellectuals, social leaders and religious leaders should take a serious look at this situation and the terrible consequences that the whole country has already suffered and would suffer if this is allowed to continue.

There have been many instances when such civil society actions became effective. One tragic situation is that this situation of hunger and malnutrition has been allowed to continue when there are very easy solutions to the problem.

An illustration of this was seen when some civil society organizations gathered information and made a presentation a few months back, that small scale ecological agriculture can be done at much low cost, with the possibility of producing much healthier food and making this food available to the people at very low cost ( almost free of cost ) and showing that there was tremendous potential for such natural food production with technologies that can easily be adopted by all poor people. One very powerful person within the present government who was invited to listen to this presentation responded saying that he agreed fully with this idea, but an implementation of such a plan would antagonize the companies very much and the government could not antagonize them. This shows why such foolish and destructive policies continue. It is well known that chemical farming creates terrible health problems, Kidney diseases, diabetes, gastritis, cancer and so on are becoming very prevalent due to this quality of company directed chemical input dependent agriculture. The present type of chemical agriculture destroys natural soil fertility, contaminates all water and food, makes agriculture very expensive and almost impossible for small produces to continue and small scale consumers to have food. The children and mothers and the weaker sections of society suffer the most.

A powerful, influential People’s Commission should be supported by similar smaller Commissions at regional level, comprising of people with capacity and credibility, particularly covering areas where food production is done and also where people suffer food shortages most, such as the plantation areas, the war affected areas, here agriculture has largely been disrupted. Such region specific commissions could allow people to make their submissions and experiences compilation and study of which could help area and sector specific policy and programme recommendations. Such recommendations should be made available to the public, the political representatives and to intellectual and social leaders, which should lead to intelligent campaigning and questioning of policy makers and planners continuously.

Much of the work required is already done. There are a very large number of organizations carrying out low cost ecological agriculture or natural farming. These experiences alone should be enough to guide government programmes such as “Api Wawamu Rata Nagamu” ( let’s grow and build the nation), Gama Neguma, Gemi Diriya and so on. The funds available with such programmes should be more than sufficient to carry out such a programme at national scale.

It is good that the Government made a courageous statement that Sri Lanka would be made the miracle of Asia. Uthuru Wasanthaya, Negenahira Udanaya are words that bring hope. Let us achieve these dreams firstly by stopping the great tragedy of over 20% to 30% of our children getting their brains and bodies destroyed for life in their earliest years and with about half the population of mothers becoming weak and anemic. It is the right of people to achieve these dreams by preventing our soils, our water, our climate, our food and health being destroyed merely to allow a few private companies to dictate how land and agriculture should be done in the country. Let us adopt easy and affordable ways of making our soil fertile, our water pure, our trees to grow freely and give us sufficient food and sufficient fertility, fodder and energy.

Let us push for a policy where the tremendous creative potentials of the people be harnessed to allow “Nature” to ensure survival and fertility of our land. Land and natural environment, the sea and the forests, should belong to the people, where ever they are, in the villages, in the towns, in the North and East, in the plantations and in the coastal regions, whether they are the Sinhala, the Tamil or the Muslims. whether they are the farmers, the fishers, the plantation workers, the urban poor or the rural poor.

30 th June 2010

Posted in Agriculture , food , nutrition , Sarath Fernando