1. Opening ambit as appropriate.
2. As you all agree, inflation especially that in food and fuel prices, not only in India but the world over, has touched record levels. The main reasons for these I feel are dwindling supply stocks due to extreme weather events at several critical spots, depletion of grain stocks, speculation by traders, diversion of food for bio-fuels in developed countries and higher cost of energy and fertilizers. Behind these immediate causes one could discern longer-term trends such as sluggish growth in cereal yields, rapidly increasing demand for cereals in Asia, emerging scarcity of irrigation water, continuing land degradation, increased demand for fuel in Asia and the unfolding effects of climate change that is already on us. As a result, our food, fuel and economic security are under threat. Can we do something to alleviate the situation?
3. The obvious panacea for attaining food security is to increase the food production and productivity in a sustainable manner, which in turn means producing enough food for every one at present plus the ability to produce enough food in future as well. But how do we do that? This calls for sound policies as well as investments in managing our natural resources such as land and water, flora and fauna, forests and bio-diversity – the ecological foundations essential for sustained food security plus sustainable intensification of crops and animal production.
4. In this scenario, biotechnology offers a ray of hope. For instance, biotechnological interventions could be applied to conventional agricultural practices to enhance our crop productivity especially through genetically modified crops. We are seeing this globally. The area under transgenic crops is increasing year after year at sustained double digit growth rate and had reached the level of 115 million hectare during the year ending 2007. The number of countries growing these crops have also increased over the years to 23 comprising 12 developing countries and 11 industrialised countries. The major GM crops grown are maize, soybean, cotton, canola, papaya, sweet pepper, tomato and poplar.
5. We too are investing heavily in biotechnology and although some critics worry about detrimental environmental impacts, there is now overwhelming evidence that our farmers are benefiting from genetically modified Bt. Cotton crops and other agriculture related biotechnology developments. The Bt. Cotton area in the country has now risen to over 6 million hectare which is almost 90% of the total area under hybrid cotton. While the total area under cotton remains nearly unchanged, the cotton production in the country has doubled to 3 million bales from that in 2002. We have overtaken the US to become the second largest producer of cotton. There are reports which indicate that Bt. Cotton has increased yield by 30% with reduced insecticide sprays of about 40% with consequential beneficial environmental impacts. It has also increased income per hectare for Indian farmers by around 40% - albeit a small step for farmers’ security.
6. Another emerging class of biotechnologically modified crops is being developed that provides improved human or animal nutrition. These nutritionally enhanced crops have the potential to lessen nutrient deficiencies; improve the nutritional value of food and feed; promote well being through elevated levels of beneficial compounds; lower levels of natural toxins, toxic metabolites, or allergens; improve processing; and enhance taste. Corn modified to resist insect attack, for example, has been shown to have lower levels of mycotoxin than conventionally grown corn. The most widely known example of nutritional modified food crop is rice. ‘Golden rice’ is a modified variety with a high level of beta carotene, a precursor of vitamin A. Also, other rice and maize varieties with enhanced vitamin A that can be absorbed efficiently in the human gut are being developed for cultivation in developing countries with a goal that 300 gram of modified rice consumed per day could provide a significant contribution to the human daily vitamin A requirement. Another example of biotechnology based modification is for vegetable oils, that avoid trans-fatty acids by altering the chain length and saturation level of fatty acids.
7. However, we have been cautious in introducing GM food crops in the country due to a variety of health and environmental concerns. The Government is now taking a major step to establish an autonomous statutory National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority (NBRA) to safeguard the health and safety of the people and to protect the environment by identifying risks posed by, or as a result of, biotechnology and managing those risks through regulating the safe development and deployment of biotechnology products and processes. The NBRA, a professionally led Authority, would provide single window mechanism of clearances of GM crops and other GM food products. I am sure that with the NBRA in place, we shall reap the benefits of modern biology more fully.
8. Also agriculture is the biggest water consumer. It uses around 70% of all fresh water withdrawals world wide. With growing population, irrigation will face much severe competition from domestic and industrial consumers in India. Thus, in time to come, water may not be available for agricultural purposes at such subsidized rates as today. Also, if we continue to apply current water management practices by 2050, we will need double the water supply for our agriculture. Trials at ICRISAT show that using farmer-affordable improved biotechnology based agriculture techniques, the water productivity could be increased four fold – from carrying capacity of 4 persons per hectare per year to 18 persons. Admittedly, the improved system requires changes to tillage, fertilizers and micronutrients and for it to succeed. We must educate and sensitise our farmers to these changes.
9. As regards biofuels, as you all know they are renewable fuels. They are preferred the world over as partial substitutes to traditional fossil fuels on two major counts, primarily this is a renewable fuel with least environmental externalities. Secondly, it is economically viable and associated with strong income transfer effects – that is farmers’ security.
10. Biomass energy sources have thus become the most promising, most hyped and most heavily subsidized renewable energy sources the world over. They have real potential to heighten energy security in regions like ours. For in an idealized case, biomass energy does not contribute to climate change with greenhouse gases. A plant by removing carbon dioxide from the air through photosynthesis and using that plant as biomass energy returns the carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, with no net change in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, plants, or soils. Also the global terrestrial annual plant growth is more than five times the ~8 billion tons of carbon released to the atmosphere in fossil fuel combustion. In principle, diverting a small fraction of total plant growth into biomass energy could satisfy the majority of global energy needs. However, the challenge is producing biomass energy without negative environmental or food security impacts.
11. For increased exploitation of biomass energy risks sacrificing natural areas to managed monocultures, contaminating waterways with agricultural pollutants, threatening food supplies or farm lifestyles through competition for land and increasing net emissions of carbon to the atmosphere, as a consequence of increased deforestation.
12. The future of biomass energy in the global energy system is therefore dependent on the complex interplay of four major factors. The first is conversion technology and the prospects for using new plant and microbe varieties as well as novel biomass-to-fuel conversion processes for increasing the yield of usable energy from each unit of available land or water. The second is the intrinsic productive capacity of the land and ocean ecosystems that can be used for biomass energy production. The third is alternative uses for the land and water resources that are candidate sites for biomass energy production. The fourth is the offsite implications of biomass energy technologies for invasive species and for levels of air and water pollution. These factors must be effectively balanced and integrated to maximize the benefits and minimize the ecosystem and societal costs of biomass energy production. In particular, constraints owing to ecosystem characteristics, competition from alternative land uses and offsite impacts can lead to practical or desirable levels of biomass energy production that are much smaller than theoretical potential levels.
13. Currently, the dominant sources of biomass based liquid fuels are ethanol from corn or sugarcane and biodiesel from rapeseed, soy, palm oil or jatropha. The production systems for these sources of liquid biomass energy are characterized by different yields (in terms of fuel energy per unit of land area) and different net energy balance ratios (the ratio of energy captured in the fuel to the energy inputs for growing, harvesting and manufacturing). The picture for ethanol from corn is particularly depressing; the entire global harvest of corn converted to ethanol with current technology would yield enough transportation fuels to supply a mere 6% of the global gasoline and diesel demand. Furthermore, the fossil energy required to produce this amount of ethanol would represent 80-90% of the energy stored in the ethanol. Combining these then converting the entire global harvest of corn into ethanol production would offset well under 1% of global carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Even in the best case scenario, making ethanol from corn is not an effective route for lowering the carbon intensity of the energy system.
14. The picture is more promising for other technologies especially for sugarcane to ethanol as it has a net energy balance ratio of 8 to 10, mainly because of the use of bagasse as the heat source for the distillation step. Thus our biofuels strategy is more efficient than that of USA or Brazil. For biodiesel from Jatropha and soy the net energy balance ratio range is 1.3 to 1.9. However, there are not enough of these crops presently for conversion to biodiesel. But we have about 63 million hectares of wasteland, out of which about half of it has been allotted for tree plantation. Multi-purpose trees such as Jatropha can grow well in this wasteland with very little water requirement. The present day cost of bio-diesel production just about competes with that from hydrocarbon sources. With more R&D, biodisel can be made more competititve through optimization of the process technology and using genetically modified high yield variety plants. Thus, bio-diesel plants grown even on one-third of the wasteland allotted for three plantation can yield over 20 million tonnes of bio-diesel. Not an insignificant contribution to our energy security, especially to the liquid fuels.
15. But much of the recent enthusiasm for increasing the production of biofuels is based on the prospect of getting ethanol from cellulose, using a new class of enzymes. The emphasis is on creating the second generation biofuels from cellulosic biomass from agricultural and forestry waste. Cellulosic biomass processing to ethanol will permit all parts of the plant to be processed to ethanol and the choice of plant is not limited to those plants that produce large amounts of starch or simple sugars. The challenge is envisaged in three major areas where focused biological research can bring down costs and increase productivity, these are - first developing energy crops dedicated to biofuel production; second, improving enzymes that deconstruct cellulosic biomass and third, optimizing microbes for industrial scale conversion of biomass into ethanol and other bioproducts. Although these processes have not yet been implemented at industrial scale, the results from pilot installations world over indicate that cellulosic processing might eventually yield 70 gallons of ethanol per tonne of dry bio matter, only slightly less than current yields of ethanol from corn grain, with a net energy balance ratio that will possibly eventually be grater than 4. Also, recent technological developments by US based biotech companies have resulted in a 30 fold drop in the cost of enzymes for hydrolysis of cellulose. Thus I feel that considering the inflation in crude oil prices, cellulosic ethanol has the potential to compete on a large scale with gasoline without subsidies in the next decade itself. While most of these pilot facilities are being established in the US and Japan, we too have initiated work in this area and I am hopeful that in the next 5 years, we shall be at par with the world in developing this technology, which I believe will be a significant step in securing our fuel security.
16. Closing ambit as appropriate.