Existing technologies can increase food supply without harming the environment: Tharman

SINGAPORE - Hunger is a global problem, but it can be tackled by scaling up the use of existing technologies to increase food supply without harming the environment, Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said on Saturday.

The change will require policy support, particularly financing help for farmers, he said, speaking at the 43rd Food and Agriculture Organisation conference in Rome.

“And in the next decade, we have to start making significant moves in that direction,” said Mr Tharman, highlighting an opportunity in the way rice is produced in Asia, where over 90 per cent of the grain is produced and over 85 per cent of it is consumed.

“We have a problem because current methods of rice production are simply not sustainable,” he said, noting that rice production is extremely water-intensive and produces a lot of harmful methane.

But solutions to these problems exist, he said, pointing to Vietnam and China.

For instance, the Vietnamese government is promoting new techniques in the Mekong Delta called “alternate wetting and drying irrigation”. Farmers first irrigate the land to fill up about 5cm above the soil and then wait for the water to subside to about 15cm below the soil before adding a little more water.

Mr Tharman said this has led to a significant reduction in water use of up to 40 per cent and an improvement in farmer yields.

Similarly, through affordable drip irrigation and the use of sensors in China, farmers could reduce water use by almost 40 per cent and achieve 22 per cent improvement in yield.

“If we do not adopt these known techniques, Asean or South-east Asia is going to become a net importer of rice before long rather than a net exporter. But it is also possible that you would not have net exporters anywhere in the world. So you then have a problem,” he said.

“We have to change for the purpose of food security; for the purpose of water security; and for the purpose of environmental security.”

Mr Tharman was delivering the 2023 McDougall Memorial Lecture at the conference named after Australian economist Frank Lidgett McDougall. Instituted in 1958, previous speakers include former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan and the late Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi.

He said that while there has been an improvement in global hunger compared with around 60 years ago, it is still at unacceptable levels.

And by 2030, 670 million people – or 8 per cent of the world’s population – would be facing the prospect of hunger, he said.

He noted that this could be an optimistic projection as it excluded the accelerating effects of climate change, the loss of biodiversity, and the destabilisation of the global water cycle.

“We cannot solve for food without solving for water. We cannot solve for water without solving for climate change. And we cannot solve for climate change without solving (for) water. They are intertwined,” he said, adding that these issues need to be addressed as a collective challenge.

Mr Tharman also highlighted the need for policy reforms in the water sector, saying that in most parts of the world, pricing strategies and subsidy strategies encourage inefficient use of water.

“Politicians and many others who take an interest in these issues tend to think of pricing water as something offensive, as something that is unfair to the poor, something that is not good for equality. In fact, the reverse is almost always the case.”

Mr Tharman said pricing water enables governments to get revenue from large corporations, the rich and the middle-income group, which can be used to expand water systems so that everyone has access to clean water and to subsidise the poor.

More efficient use of water encouraged by proper pricing strategies and the withdrawal of subsidies that encourage overuse of water are hence helpful to the poor and enable more inclusive development, he added.