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This article was published in 1956
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INSTITUTE OF INSPECTORS OF STOCK OF N.S.W. YEAR BOOK.
FOOD PROBLEMS OF SOUTH-EAST ASIA
F. H. REUTER, Ph.D., F.R.I.C., F.R.A.C.I., Associate Professor of Food Technology, University of Technology, Kensington, N.S.W.
I thank your Executive for having asked me to address you on Food Problems of South-East Asia, and especially for the honour of selecting me as a speaker at your 1956 Annual Conference. I also thank you for having chosen a title which allows a wide interpretation of the topic.
I take South-East Asia to mean what we often refer to as the Colombo Area; embracing Pakistan, India, Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Their food problems can be epitomized in this way:—
(1) There is not enough food.
(2) There is not enough of the right kind of foods.
(3) Too much of the foods produced doesn't reach the consumer because the foods don't live long enough and they don't travel far enough.
(4) The traditional pattern of nutrition is not good enough to produce optimal health.
(5) The standard of living of the masses is too low, and so is their nutritional status.
These problems are interlocking and the solution of one will help to solve the others.
To get an idea of the magnitude of the problem, let us look at the population figures: using FAO of UN figures we see that 16 years ago 500 million people lived in this Colombo area and that since then the population has grown to 625 million people. Thus there were five mouths in 1953 for every four in 1937. With this phenomenal rise in population the number one food problem therefore is: Can they maintain a corresponding increase in the volume of food produced?
It is clear that food production in that area has not risen correspondingly, that there are not five blades of grass where there were four some 16 years ago. Is there a temporary disequilibrium between population growth and food supply? Will it reach a state, at a later date, when each increment in population is matched by a corresponding increment in foods produced? Taking India as an example, the present rate of increase requires an extra 450,000 tons of food grain alone per year. Let us realise at the same time that a rising standard of living will further aggravate that problem. If we express prosperity or standard of living in the calorific intake of man, we find Australia, the U.K. and U.S.A. with a daily intake of 3,000 calories, as against 1,700 for India (which figure incidentally represents a drop of 250 calories as against pre-war days), Pakistan 2,000, a drop from 2,200, and the Philippines 1,960. Their calorific intake therefore is about two thirds of ours, and made up of a high proportion of cereals. A rise in prosperity will mean a demand for still more foods, and let us note it must be enough of the right kind of food.
Superimposed on this basic problem of sheer volume of foods to hand, there is another very big one. Assume that there is a bad harvest in an area where the people eat rice, you cannot make up for that deficiency with wheat or millet. Rice it must be, if you are dealing with rice eaters. That is quite a tragic situation. In times of famine that attitude has caused great calamity, as for example, during the terrible famine in Bengal in 1940, and on many previous occasions where wheat was not accepted as a substitute for rice and vice versa.
This is quite a well-known phenomenon: That in times of stress, people want familiar foods which they associate with orderliness in daily life, and with security. There is nothing specifically Asian to that attitude: it is reported that during the Irish famine in 1845 people rejected the maize that had been sent from the United States for relief. They did not know it and therefore would not eat it.
Realising that such is human nature, Indian scientists are working on the development of a substitute rice, a product which looks exactly like rice, stores like rice, cooks like rice, satisfies and nourishes like rice, cost no more; and yet is not rice. They have succeeded in developing a product which is largely made up from cassava or tapioca flour, i.e., essentially pure starch, contains 15 per cent. defatted ground nut flour, half of which consists of protein, and 20 per cent. wheat flour. They also have developed a machine to manufacture this product by an extrusion process as one uses in noodle manufacture. One mechanic operating this machine can produce half a ton of this material per hour; which is equal to the yield of polished rice from an acre of land in the course of a good year in South East Asia.
The Japanese are reported to be very interested in this project, and to have produced some 100,000 tons in 1952, but at a comparatively high price.
It appears that the Indian Government is at present not really interested in this process since they have had a series of good harvests, and a feeling of security prevails. To me it has the makings of a great invention.
Governments in all these countries have been well ware of the gravity of the food situation and all have some form of "Grow more Food" plans or campaigns. The measures taken can be described broadly as follows:—
(1) Increase in the area of arable land; and in India alone it is reported that from 1952 to 1955 they have increased the useful acreage by 7 per cent.
(2) The extension of irrigation schemes; which is a most effective measure, and often is combined with the production of hydro-electric power. In Ceylon, in addition to setting up new irrigation facilities, they are able to revitalise some extensive irrigation schemes which had been in commission some hundreds of years ago and got into disrepair.
(3) And finally, improvement of yields; which is, of course, a major problem.
In the third "measure" lies the most serious deficiency of Asian food production, or the greatest hope of improvement, whichever way you care to look at it. Take the case of rice: Italy produces just over 2 tons per acre, and so do we in the M.L.A.; Spain gets even a higher yield, and U.S.A. about half the yield. Ceylon, India and Burma on the other hand get only a quarter of our yield from an acre. The wheat figures are similar: The Australian average is 0.5 tons/acre, the United Kingdom figure double that, and India and Pakistan less than half.
Moreover, productivity from the land has been rising in the western world and still is improving, whereas only the beginnings of such a change are noticeable in the countries under discussion.
This is due to an interplay of a number of factors; individual holdings tend to be very small and the land is frequently the property of an absentee landlord who is disinterested in farming. The tenant in turn is a person who suffers from insecurity of land tenure and thus is not concerned with raising the productivity of the land even if he had the means to do so, intellectually and economically. Moreover, in those countries agriculture is a vocation and not an investment.
These conditions are of course reflected in the very low consumption of fertiliser and agricultural chemicals such as insecticides, as well as the lack of agricultural machinery. The complexity of the problems of land ownership is frightening: Considerations of productivity naturally are foremost in the minds of the rational political leaders, i.e., the ways of extracting the maximum value from the production of the land. These goals unfortunately are not identical with the alternate object of modified land ownership; namely, a more equitable distribution of property in arable land and its income. In this connection, it is well to realise one of the outstanding differences between the western world and the Orient, and particularly SouthEast Asia, is the very large number of people who are engaged in agricultural occupations. Whereas in Australia, it is 14 per cent of the population, in Canada 16 per cent, and in the United States 11 per cent., and 5 per cent. in the United Kingdom, you have 85 per cent. in Thailand, and 70 per cent. in Indonesia. It is not alone this high proportion which is so marked. It also is the lack of change in this pattern. The figures I gave you were post-war figures (averages of 1940-1952). The trend in the western world has been to reduce the agricultural population, and a comparison with the 1937 figures shows these changes:
Canada from 26 to 16 per cent., U.S.A. from 19 to 11 per cent., Australia from 19 to 14 per cent.; and yet there is hardly any change in Asian countries in this period.
You also have the problems of the lack of conditions for an effective agricultural extension service, as a farm population with a low state of literacy can little benefit from that activity which in the western world is the basis of agricultural progress.
Very strenuous efforts are being made on this last aspect of the problem, namely, the limited receptivity of the villager for extension work, and the Indian community projects appear to be very successful; as is the movement of university students to villages to do a spell of teaching before taking up their professions.
So much for productivity in general as a major food problem. Nutrition studies have shown that the diet of the Asian masses is not only low in total calories but unbalanced. The protein intake is extraordinarily low, and there is a severe lack of the so-called protective foods. Two major causes bring this about the low standard of living keeps these foods out of reach of the peoples; the meat, fish and eggs for protein, or a sufficient quantity of vegetable proteins in the case of vegetarians. Moreover, land usage and dietary habits mitigate against the production of the protective foods.
The other major cause for the unavailability of these foods is the extremely unsatisfactory state of the management of fresh foods, or to use a more familiar terminology, the low standard of the technology of perishable foods. This is in my opinion so important that in addition to having their "grow more food" schemes, there is a crying need for "waste less food" campaigns.
I can best illustrate what I mean by contrasting South-East Asian conditions with ours to-day, which of course are typical for the western world; U.S.A., U.K. and some parts of Europe. We expect practically every food to be available right round the year, we are used to rather even levels of supply, with few gluts and shortages and therefore with very limited variations in price. We expect very minor variations in the quality of the foods we buy, we expect all foods to be available anywhere we go, inland, and at the coast, in city, town and village; we expect all foods to be offered in a sanitary and safe condition and to have a predictable shelf life after purchase; be it milk, meat, vegetables or fruit. We also take it for granted that the greater part of our foods is held for sale in the raw state, i.e., in a highly perishable condition, and yet that it is economical for the producer and the middle man to handle food in that state.
A hundred years ago, you had to go to a dairy if you wanted reliably fresh milk. Milk protein could only be sent beyond a distance from the shed in the form of cheese. Butter could not be kept, and had to be converted to clarified butter fat to stabilise it for commerce. Fruits and vegetables were on sale only when they were in season nearby in farms and orchards within a short distance of the consumer. That has fundamentally changed and our modern western world food pattern has become possible because (1) the foods are produced where it is most economical to do so, and because (2) we have learnt to store, transport and preserve foods. In short, we have developed the modern technology of foods. As a consequence there is a very large movement of foods, in the fresh state, or preserved in one form or another, from the places where they are produced most economically to the centres of consumption. In Australia, that movement is largely within the country, and so is it in the United States. The United Kingdom on the other hand receives a great proportion of its foods from all over the world. In fact, the large scale movement of foods is an integral part of our modern way of life.
The basis of it all is the knowledge of how to extend the useful lifetime of an article of food, from the farm-gate until it reaches the consumer. This may be as fresh food, or rather raw food; where cold storage, and freezing, are the key to success. It may be as semi-processed foods such as pasteurised milk, our fats, pulped egg, frozen egg, tomato pulp, fruit pulp,etc., or as the finished product-the manufactured food.
In addition, let us be quite clear that while moving from the farm and the orchard to the consumer in every instance there is a chain of events each of which has a bearing on the life expectancy of the particular item of food. Take fruit: it must be a variety which suits the purpose, fresh marketing, cold storage, freezing or canning. It must be picked at the right stage of maturity for one purpose or the other; in fact very small margins are permissible if the fruit is to be top quality. It must be handled with appropriate care; care in picking, no bruising, no damage to the tree.
It may be essential to pick in the early morning to reduce the amount of field heat in the fruit before packing, it may be necessary to pre-cool before shipping for greater distances. Packaging has to be done to a certain standard, size grading may be an integral step for proper marketing, wrapping for overseas shipment, washing and treatment with a fungicide for appearance and shelf life, such as is done with oranges. Strict timetables are absolutely essential, shipping schedules to get the chilled meat to Britain, to get the cooled apricot from Leeton to Townsville, to get the frozen berry pulp from Tasmania. I am sure there is no need further to elaborate; there is a chain of such events for each and every kind of food and the chance of the primary producer to obtain a reward for his labour and a return from his land is no better than the strength of the links in this chain; negligent trans-shipment of cooled fruit in Albury, badly washed cans at the dairy, bruising of cattle in droving; they all mean quality deterioration, and monetary losses to somebody.
And that is what I meant when I said, there must be "Waste no Food" campaigning in South-East Asia because they will have to learn about this philosophy of the unbroken chain in the management of foods; and since they work in tropical climates, their problems are still more formidable.. As an example the city of Calcutta draws its perishable foods from a radius of not more than 50 miles. There are plenty of people in the towns and cities of South-East Asia who even now could afford to purchase more of the perishable foods, if they could be brought to them, fresh. There are plenty of farmers who have produce to sell if it could be taken to the consumers, but there are not the techniques or the physical resources to do the job, there is not the transport, there is not the know-how of the handling of the produce, there is no co-operative marketing which brings the profits to the primary producer. There are the gluts and the times of shortages, and the food perishes in times of plenty.
Let me briefly touch on two other aspects of the food problems of South-East Asia. One is the question of rice handling and the incidence of beri-beri; the other is provision of the right kind of proteins. White rice is the food of the rich, and less white rice has always been the poor man's food. Nobody wants to eat the poor man's food, and nothing will make people change their attitude and revert to the more nutritious rice, that is the less white rice. Thiamin is lost from rice in the whitening process, the polishing. and also by the cook who washes the rice prior to cooking. Yet in most of India they pre-cook the rice by soaking it in hot water, when thiamin and other soluble matters are evenly distributed throughout the grain. They finally dry the grain again and can store it for a limited period of time. Parboiling, as this process is called, very much reduces thiamin losses but it produces a product which is different from un-parboiled rice, different in texture and colour. People who are not used to it, don't take it; particularly as manufacturers often produce a shoddy article, with off-flavours and a bad colour. It is well-known how to produce a first class article, but what is marketed is often not up to that standard.
For these reasons and obvious others one has not been able to convince the people of other parts of South-East Asia.e.g. the Philippines or Thailand or Malaya, that they should change their food pattern and give up the white rice and eat rice that is prepared according to Indian techniques.
Fortification with synthetic vitamin is therefore strongly advocated, particularly since the results of the Bataan experiment in the Philippines became known. One zone in the famous Bataan peninsula with 60,000 inhabitants was selected to receive fortified rice and another zone with 30,000 people was kept as control. Rice was fortified by the addition of thiamin and only in the experimental zone could people get the fortified product; but they got no unfortified rice. The result was dramatic. The incidence of beri-beri in the experimental zone declined by 94 percent., the death rate from beri-beri dropped from 263 per 100,000 to a tenth of that figure in the first year, and beri-beri disappeared as a cause of death after that. At the same time infant mortality dropped to half in the first nine months. Fortification on that scale is very cheap indeed, and reckoned to be well within the limits of income of even the poorest country or the most impoverished population, since the insidious lowering of man's vitality by the disease is one of the greatest obstacles on the road to the raising of the standard of living.
The other matter I wanted to touch upon is the supply of protein. Milk is considered indispensable for infant raising, and yet in many areas the present and projected forms of land usage don't permit of dairying and the supply of cow's milk. Nor is it expected that intensive dairying in one area will provide a sufficient supply for others that cannot produce their milk, be it cow's milk or buffalo milk. One has therefore developed what we might call a vegetable milk, which is based on the defatted ground nut or soya beans. This raw material consists of 50 per cent of highly nutritious protein, and a product very similar to cow's milk has been produced from it by processes of grinding and pre-treatment. Not only is it acceptable as drinking milk, it also lends itself to the preparation of the indigenous dishes which ordinarily are obtained from milk by some form of curdling or fermentation. Intensive work has been done at Mysore at the Central Food Technological Research Institute, and at what was known as the Eyckman Institute at Djakarta, with the full support of F.A.O., and the first factory is now being installed in Indonesia.
You all know that steady growth produces the best type of animal. The same applies to humans; the healthiest adult body is produced if it is consistently well nourished right through the infant and child stage. Protein deficiency is one of the great problems, and such a vegetable milk may alleviate it, where animal proteins are unprocurable.
Let me summarise: the number one food problem is the race between the growth of population numbers and the increase of total food supplies. Intensive attention is given to the production of more foods, but you hear little of the better management of foods, the avoidance of waste. The western world has learnt to extend the useful life time of foods, and them where they are wanted. This has raised the standard of living of the primary producer and of the mass of consumers as a whole. It has made food production an industry and not an occupation. To learn this is the second big food problem for Asia. The third problem is the provision of a well balanced diet and last but not least the introduction of the practice of contraception. It is my sincere conviction that progress in the solution of these problems will make the world a safer place.