Food security versus food habit

THE Bengali proverb machhe bhate bangalee (Bangalee lives on fish and rice) no more exists in its totality. Rice is there but fish has become rare on the plates of the commoners. Not only fish but sometimes vegetables and pulses also become scarce. To feed 15 crore people in a land of 1.43 lakh square kilometres area is really a challenging matter. During the last four decades all fallow lands and small and medium forests have been brought under cultivation of cereals. Most of the country's rivers and water bodies have also been turned into arable land, which has an adverse impact on our ecology and environment.
To attain food security, i.e. self-sufficiency in carbohydrate production, pertinent issues like availability of protein and vitamins, environment and ecology, sustainability etc., are blatantly ignored.
With the increase of population we have to increase food production, but we have to recognise that rice or wheat is not the lone food item on which we need to rely. No country other than Bangladesh depends so heavily on rice, which is one of the lowest-yielding food items on the planet.
The food habit situation is so bad that if you ask a person to take more potatoes than rice, he will just scold you. Hence, food security has become synonymous with rice security.
Consequently, the government's attention has been shifted to production of rice to build rice security. Even at cultivators' level, they first want to store enough rice to meet the demand until the next harvesting season.
This dependency on rice is the main obstacle to attaining food security in Bangladesh. We may cope with the demand for rice up to a certain level with our scarce limited land resources but, at some point, we will not be able to.
For the people of this country, especially the rural people, rice is the only food. But in reality, rice is not the lone staple food for a lot of people in the world. There are hundreds of plants and plant products that are used as food.
An average Bangalee takes 600 grams of rice a day against 300 grams by a Chinese and 350 grams by an Indian. That does not mean that the stomachs of the Chinese or Indian people are smaller than ours. In fact, they take potatoes, sweet potatoes, vegetables and fruit.
The country's cultivable land at present can produce at most 3 crore metric tons of food grains. Rice, especially the hybrid and high-yielding variety, is the most energy-consuming crop, and needs huge non-renewable fossil fuel for its production. In producing 3 crore metric tons of rice, we need about 3 million metric tons of urea fertiliser, 1,500 megawatt electricity a day and several lakh metric tons of diesel to run irrigation pumps, along with hazardous ingredients like pesticides.
About 40 percent of our produced gas goes to the fertiliser factories for production of urea. Besides, more than 400 MMCF gas is needed per day to produce 1,500 megawatt of electricity. The use of our precious and limited natural gas resource to produce rice is not only unsustainable but will also put the food security endeavour at stake.
If we reduce dependency on rice by 50 percent with alternative food items and spend one-third of the energy needed in production of rice, we can produce 4 times more potatoes and vegetables. An acre of land can produce 2,500 kgs of rice but, using only one-third of the energy, the same area can produce 11,100 kgs of potatoes.
Moreover, rice is poor in terms of food value. For a human body, proteins, vitamins and minerals are the most essential ingredients. In Bangladesh people mostly suffer from protein and vitamin deficiencies. Actually, Bangladesh does not suffer from food deficiency, but from protein scarcity. An acre of rice can produce up to 180 kgs of protein against 300 kgs produced by potato. The production cost of a kg of rice is Tk.16 while it is only Tk.5 for potato.
There are other serious hazards linked to rice production. The unabated use of underground water for irrigation will soon dry up the country's sources of potable water. Underground water is almost the lone source of pure drinking water. Besides, use of fertilisers and insecticides is causing harm to human beings, cattle and the soil. Rice cultivation is also a major source of hazardous methane emissions.
So, there is no alternative to changing our food habit to attain food security. That means we must take items other than rice.
During a recent visit to China, I had an excellent experience at a restaurant. According to our habit, we ordered fish, chicken and rice. But they served green tea, varieties of vegetables, chicken, fish, scrambled eggs and finally a small quantity of rice in a cup. At home, I generally take more than double the amount of rice they served, but I could eat only half of the quantity as my stomach had already been filled up with other items.
Taking food items other than rice is not new in Bangladesh. The rural people of Bangladesh used to produce varieties of food items in the past. In my boyhood, I myself and the villagers used to take sweet potatoes, varieties of pulses and seasonal fruits as breakfast during lean season.
But gone are those days. Today's children do not know what a sweet potato is. They can't think of taking boiled pulses as breakfast.
Of course, there have been some changes in food habit in urban areas. Health-cautious people take less rice and more vegetables. But the trend should be spread to the majority of the people -- the rural ones. The age-old habit cannot be changed overnight. But programs should be undertaken on a long-term basis to explain the people that taking rice is not mandatory for leading a healthy life. There are other food items that are delicious, rich in food value, cheap and easily available.
I think that with sustained campaigning the message can be reached to the common people and they will change their food habit, like the many other changes they adopted in the past.
Growing of more rice will not meet our requirement, and it is an unsustainable endeavour that will ultimately fail. So, urgent steps are needed to diminish the dependency on rice. Otherwise, attaining food security will remain a far cry in the long run.

Nazrul Islam is an environmentalist.