Whither food security?

May 9, 2009: Sometimes, not for any particular reason, this 72-year-old man from Semtokha pays for a taxi ride along the black-topped serpentine stretch of the Thimphu expressway.
Until a few months back Dorji Khandu used to look out the window when the taxi reached Chang Jiji, letting the breeze catch his receding hairline. Over the paddy fields he once owned to feed his family of eight, sprawls the road. Where his 180 apple trees bloomed once, now stand tall neon street lights.
Along with Dorji Khandu’s rice fields turning into roads, the contribution of Bhutan’s agriculture to the GDP also decreased. Over a period of 10 years, Thimphu itself saw about 469 acres of agricultural land being rapidly eaten up by construction.
Just the Chang Jiji Housing Complex and the expressway took away most of 327 acres allocated for town planning.
“We are losing very productive agricultural land to developmental activities,” said the agriculture minister, Lyonpo Pema Gyamtsho (PhD).
Where laws exist only on paper
However, discussions on needs to preserve wetlands for cultivation are always shadowed by mega development plans. Concerns about food self-sufficiency never survived outside seminar halls and documents.
Bhutanese, however, were jolted last year when India stopped rice exports to preserve the food grain reserve in the country.
It was the honeymoon days of the DPT government and the cabinet had to act quickly as shopkeepers started hoarding rice in Thimphu and the prices were shooting up.
On Bhutan’s request the Indian government lifted the rice export ban to Bhutan, staving off potentially a major food shortage crisis.
“I personally don’t think we had adequate contingency plans to cope with such an event at the time,” the agriculture minister told BT.
Environmentalists say the loss of massive land for developmental activities will lead to the loss of more agrarian land in the coming years.
“Land transformation is one of the most important fields of human-induced environmental transformation,” said an environmentalist. “It disrupts the whole ecosystem.”
Though a land act has been in place for 30 years, rules in paper have failed to conserve the fertile agricultural land.
The preamble of the revised Land Act of Bhutan 2007 is written to ensure that proper regulations are in place for the effective use of land resources and conservation of the ecosystem.
“For a country like Bhutan, with a large population dependent on agriculture, land degradation has clear implications for food security and sustainable livelihoods,” the Act states.
But in the past 10 years, this small country has lost about 2,240 acres of wetland and dry land for development activities, and to natural disasters.
Paying for development
An environment consultant said urbanization is putting pressure on the environment and natural resources of the country. And human activity has caused the displacement of the soil through water erosion leading to land degradation.
For decades, development activities have paved their way with roads, houses, power projects, schools, and towns, swallowing a massive chunk of agricultural land.
Punakha lost 87 acres of agricultural land of which about 85 acres went into the town planning of Khuruthang.
A total of 217 acres of agricultural land was lost to schools and institutes and another 55 acres to power projects.
According to a consultant for environment and social impact assessment, the land lost to hydropower projects were always replaced with government-owned land.
“We normally suggest the farmers to take land for land compensation instead of cash,” he said.
About 300 acres of wetland were converted for various other purposes and an additional 664 acres were lost to floods.
Yet a further 323 acres were lost to unauthorized conversion of dry and wetland for other uses by private parties of which Chhukha topped the list with 111 acres.
Lyonpo Pema Gyamtsho said the ministry has a policy which bans the conversion of wetland to other land use, such as orchards and constructions.
Not so innocent farmers
Farmers normally apply for land conversion with various reasons. In fact there is a procedure where a team of officials from the ministry goes to check whether the reasons are valid.
“There are others who just go for conversion without going through this procedure,” said the minister.
However, the ministry has no mandate to take action against people who convert wetland into dry land without valid reasons.
A discussion paper published by the United Nations Development Program in Bhutan states that agricultural land constitutes only about 7.7% of the total land area; most of this in the form of small highly fragmented landholdings scattered over difficult terrain.
The ministry of agriculture has started several schemes to increase food production, the most significant of which aims to place very fertile land under the National Food Security Reserve Scheme.
With fund from the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the ministry will be looking into incentives and subsidies required to support the farmers in the scheme. “If we are not food secured then we are not secured as a nation,” said the minister. “It is important that we increase the production of food within the country.”
Green Bhutan’s grey buildings
A lot of agricultural land goes to construction because Bhutan has not looked into eco-friendly housing seriously. Modern civil engineering in the country has not thought about green housing ideas that gel into the development philosophy of Bhutan.
Painting roofs green and dumping environmentally damaging cement onto walls ostentatiously made to resemble traditional homes: that is how far eco-friendly Bhutan’s creativity to preserve tradition and culture goes.
Planners and engineers are trained only to construct infrastructure on flat land and not on slopes or hill sides.
As a mountainous country Bhutan should have people who can design structures to suit the natural landscape.
“That is the reason why we have so many towns at the bottom of the valley in flat areas,” the agriculture minister said.
Lyonpo Pema Gyamtsho added the ministry will make sure the fertile agricultural lands are not being converted to other forms of land use.
“We have already lost a substantial area,” he said. “Infrastructure development should be looked at in a much critical manner.”