Not enough to eat

Small, landless farmers must form the backbone of agricultural development initiatives to improve food security.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation has warned that millions of people around the world are at a renewed risk of starvation, since the World Food Price Index has now risen to record levels. Such warnings should be given due attention in a country like our own which is recovering from devastating floods, and where poverty, growing inflation and sluggish economic growth remain serious problems.

A plethora of reports have been pointing to this growing problem. The UN has also placed Pakistan in the ‘alarming’ category in the Global Hunger Index.

A recent report by the Social Policy and Development Centre in Karachi, “Social Impact of the Security Crisis”, points out how the allocation for health and nutrition in the federal government’s public sector development programme registered a marginal average annual increase of 0.4 per cent over the last five years.

It is estimated that a 100 per cent increase is needed within the agricultural sector in developing countries to meet the demands of a growing population over the next 40-year period. However, the focus cannot only be on increasing production. While there is ample room in countries like Pakistan to increase per acre yield through use of appropriate research and technologies, caution must be exercised so that the preoccupation with boosting yields does not bypass poor farmers, as happened during the Green Revolution. Small and landless farmers must form the backbone of agricultural development initiatives, in order for food security to improve in the longer run.

In the more immediate future, ensuring food security depends on the government’s ability to improve monitoring and management of the food produce supply chain. It must take note of the huge discrepancy between the price of wheat and flour, and take necessary action to make flour prices more reasonable.

Over the past weeks, there have been indications of attempts in Islamabad to ponder over some other options to deal with food inflation. The government has identified key food items on which food security depends and a high-powered National Price Monitoring Committee has also been established to regularly determine the need to import or export key food items in the country. It is about time that our policymakers realise the need to put in place an effective process to address the need to replenish or relinquish supplies in key food items. Whether this committee will actually give priority to assuring that all our citizens have enough food to eat, or will give in to the pressure of exporters and the compulsion to earn foreign exchange, remains to be seen.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 19^th, 2011.