Asia must embrace technology to overcome food supply shocks brought on by climate change
The father of India's green revolution, M.S. Swaminathan, once famously said: "If agriculture goes wrong, nothing else will have a chance to go right."
A blistering heatwave and patchy monsoon rains in Asia have reinforced this claim, as food prices remained stubbornly high for months due to inclement weather and supply shocks from the Russia-Ukraine war.
Millions of tonnes of unharvested rice have also been affected by unusually heavy rain in central China's Henan province this week.
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For the second year in a row the region is experiencing extreme weather, which shows climate change is happening here and now.
That's bad news for everyone, but it's probably worse for the food insecure Asia-Pacific where 450 million small farmers produce more than 80 per cent of what the region eats. By 2030, Asia will be home to the world's largest middle-class population, with food spending expected to reach more than US$8 trillion.
According to the Asian Development Bank, yields for irrigation-needy crops such as rice, wheat, maize and soybean could drop by 20 to 40 per cent by 2050. Scientific models suggest that Southeast Asian countries are likely to turn from net food exporters to importers due to water scarcity.
Could there be any silver lining to such grim tidings?
A small band of tech entrepreneurs and farmers - whose innovations gained traction amid pandemic-induced disruption to supply chains - are showing that adversity can become an opportunity even in the face of catastrophic climate change.
After learning that a farmer in southern India took his own life due to a lack of monsoon rains, Aadith Moorthy established Boomitra (Friends of the Earth in Sanskrit) - an initiative helping farmers earn extra income through agricultural practices that increase soil carbon.
The carbon credits are sold to corporations and governments worldwide who want to offset their greenhouse emissions, enabling them to meet sustainability goals. According to the World Economic Forum, soil can serve as a huge carbon sink and help mitigate catastrophic global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
Indonesian coffee growers have turned to minimising pesticide use to meet stringent export requirements for markets like Europe and reduce the impact of chemicals on agricultural land, while Thai farmers have started deploying drones to spray pesticides on rice fields as part of precision-based agriculture.
As an additional line of defence, varieties of rice, corn, and other drought-resistant crops such as mustard are being planted throughout the region.
Gene editing, a technique that makes it possible to alter crops without introducing new genes, can also be used to help them withstand climate stress, said Shivendra Bajaj, a technical adviser at Asia-Pacific Seed Alliance, an organisation with more than 500 member companies in the region.
"There is no magic wand. No technique alone can give you the solution you are looking for," he said. "If you keep on stacking everything, incremental changes will follow."
Ravi Khetarpal, executive secretary of the Asia-Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Institutions (APAARI), says innovative techniques remain out of reach for most small farmers in the region with land holdings of less than 2 hectares (5 acres).
"We have the largest number of small farmholders but who actually cares for them. We care for them only academically," Khetarpal said. "What we need are some good practices to be adopted by the farms."
Through projects with the US Department of Agriculture and Standards and Trade Development Facility, APAARI aims to create multi-stakeholder platforms in Asia that create compatible biopesticide regulations that can be adopted by farmers and will meet World Trade Organization standards to ensure food security.
The power of digital technology can only be fully realised when governments work together to plan for water sharing, encourage farmers to switch to less resource-intensive crops, and save areas affected by natural disasters.
Earlier this month, the G7 club of rich nations at a meeting in Japan promised to fulfil a long-awaited pledge to give US$100 billion a year to poorer countries from 2023. It would probably be in everybody's interest if the funds are directed to innovation at the rural grass roots.
Of course it remains to be seen if world leaders are able to look past narrow political agendas, but as Randall Mindy - the protagonist played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2021 film Don't Look Up - says as Earth's doom approaches: "We really did have everything, didn't we? I mean, when you think about it."
Hopefully, real world leaders will be wiser than the ones in the film.
Biman Mukherji is a correspondent at the Post's Asia desk.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Copyright (c) 2023. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
