Statement by H.E. Sangay Ngedup
Minister for Agriculture of Bhutan at the 27th Session of the IFAD Governing Council

We in Bhutan have a very unique development philosophy. It is called gross national happiness. This term was coined by no other person than His Majesty the King. Sometimes he likes to say gross national contentment. When we are to translate that gross national happiness and contentment into practical action, when we have to transfer that dream into reality, the first thing that comes to us is do we have enough to feed our people? Fill their stomachs—that is one of the ways that people can be content. And when we ask that question, we also have to ask what challenges are there.

If you look at my country you will understand that the challenges are many. We have only 7.5% of arable land that is utilized by 79% of the Bhutanese population that only practice subsistence farming. The land holding of that 79% is less than two hectares per unit. We have not been able to achieve food self-sufficiency. At the moment, we import 50% of rice, which is the staple diet of my country. These are some of the challenges and yet, we are ready to meet these challenges. How are we willing to meet these challenges is through careful strategic planning. The ways that we are going to meet it are through what we call Triple Gem. One of the gems is enhancing production, the second is accessibility and third is market. We intend to package these three together always, never delinking but always integrating these three, in order to achieve our dream of national contentment.

In some countries the soil feeds the man, but in my country—most parts of my country—we feed the soil. And, therefore, the drudgery of life is even much more pronounced and, therefore, hard work, ingenuity and careful utilization of meagre resources are something that we need to put into action.

One of the things that we want to do is to strengthen our human resources, to have a strong institution, and through that human resource and strong institution, we would like to look ahead, meet the challenges of globalization as well as look forward to the opportunities that are open to us. We would like to explore niche markets, so that the little we can produce can be value-added, and we can encourage food imports.

Very few would know that by law we are expected to keep 60% of the land mass of Bhutan under forest coverage because we respect environment and conservation. So there is very little to play around, but nevertheless we are ready to meet those challenges, but we cannot do it alone. We need the help of the international community and particularly we look up to IFAD. There are some projects in the pipeline, and one of the important projects in the pipeline is the Agriculture Trade and Enterprises Development in the eastern part of our country. I would like to urge IFAD to help us in the shortest possible time to pass that project in the pipeline, because the eastern part of our country is one of the remotest and there are communities that are disadvantaged and poor. That project will make a very big difference in their lives. Is it not to say that other parts of our country would be ignored but we like to be focused—focused with IFAD’s assistance; focused so that we can achieve results and come back to this august gathering and say “yes, we have done it. Yes, we have achieved a policy of contentment at least in one part of our country”, and maybe other parts of our country can be picked up with other collaborations.

This is my first time to Rome, this is my first time to IFAD, and I have just been the Minister of Agriculture six months ago. I am still in a learning process, but I feel that it is a great privilege and honour for me to have had the opportunity of participating in this Governing Council. I hope to spend many more years in these halls, contributing to the process of realizing our aims and objectives of reducing poverty nationally, regionally and globally, and I hope that I will have that opportunity.