The nutrition equation

The National Economic Council (NEC) in its annual report has admitted that “one in three Pakistanis still does not have regular and assured access to sufficient nutritious food”. On current estimates of the population (which is growing at over two per cent a year), that is almost 67 million people. This goes beyond food insecurity and is an indicator that not only do people have no assured supply of food every day, the food that they do get may be of poor quality, adding another layer of deprivation. The NEC blamed the poor performance of the agriculture sector in recent years, which is a considerable over-simplification of the picture.

The problem of poor nutrition is complex and links to a range of other problems that have a synergetic circularity, each feeding into the other as a perfect storm of dysfunctionality. Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, commenting on the report, said that meeting the nutritional needs of many millions meant that agriculture had to be made to be more pro-poor — a statement of the blindingly obvious if nothing else. And here is the rub. For that to happen, there needs to be a linkage between farm and non-farm sectors and particularly through agri-business and, crucially, the provision of basic health and education facilities. Without especially the latter items, the farm and non-farm sectors are not going to develop diversity and employment, thus reducing poverty and — hopefully — nutritional values at the same time as reducing food insecurity. Basic health and education facilities are deficient or absent across much of rural Pakistan and according to the NEC, the immediate sticking-plaster solution is to import more wheat, which will be supplied at subsidised prices to those that are the most food insecure. All very well but not sustainable. The finance minister has proposed “a comprehensive social protection system” with improvements to health and education services at the core — but we have been here before. Improving either is dependent on improving power provision and water, to say nothing of political will, which is far from guaranteed. A lot of people are going to be poorly nourished into the foreseeable future.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 23^rd, 2015.

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