> >Dear Regi
>
> I was just in the Philippines for 1 month and came to the same conclusion as
> you in South India (I think), that is that the land base is no longer large
> enough to support the populations food requiremeent with a rice based diet
> any longer.
>
> In the Philippines I also felt they needed to increase the amount of root
> crops they were growing. They can produce 4X as much food energy per hectare
> as rice. Also they had a need to reduce their meat and fish consumption and
> increase the grain legume and vegetables in their diet to provide greater
> food security for the nation. Much of their livestock feed is imported. The
> poor are finding animal protein and rice too expensive. Much of the need
> appeared not to be a production problem on how to grow more productive food
> crops but how to get them to accept these foods into their diet.
>
> With rising population, a decreasing agricultural land base (because of
> rapid development) and the combination of the El Nino, global warming, and
> deforestation to deplete water resources, the outlook for food security
> based on wetland rice was pretty bleak. It seems that there are lots of food
> options available to increase food security rather than putting the emphasis
> on pumping water from deeper wells and more money into rice research.
> However the cultural barriers to changing diet appear strong.
>
> Roger Samson
I agree with you regarding the cultural barriers to changing diet. Sri
Lanka for instances spends millions of dollars every year importing
lentils - a main source of protein - but one that doesn't grow in their
climate. There is a project funded by the Asian Development Bank and
implemented by the Intl. Crops. Res. Inst. for Semiarid Tropics, which is
trying to replace lentils in Sri Lankan diets with pigeonpea - another
legume, which is highly cultivable and adapted to tropical climates and
soils. Increase in pigeonpea cultivation and consumption is aimed at
reducing the huge foreign exchange outflows on lentils. However the hitch
is the non-Tamil population is refusing to accept pigeonpea - reasons
given include "difficult to cook", "not comparable in tatse to lentil",
etc. For researchers, this is difficult to understand, since lentil is
not a native crop and Sri Lankans were consuming pigeonpea prior to the
introduction of lentils by the British when they colonized Sri Lanka. If
the people could so easily shift to lentil, what prevents them from
changing back to pigeonpea. Evidently colonialism is a much more powerful
force than democratic argumentation!
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