The great hunger

K-P will only fulfil its own food needs when government devises a food security strategy — and that is a distant dream

Pakistan is hungry and poorly fed. A ranking issued by the international relief and development organisation Oxfam places Pakistan 97 out of a list of 125 countries and on a par with India regarding the availability, quality and affordability of food and the quality of diet. Pakistan thus rates at the lower end of the scale. Alongside a poverty of food, there is a poverty of good health as well, and all the countries at the bottom of the list are characterised by a failure to invest in infrastructure, have poor security and suffer greatest damage to their economies as a result of climate change. The dreadful irony is that, taken as a whole, the world produces enough food for all the people that live on it, but unequal systems of distribution and geopolitics ensure that the ‘have-nots’ stay at the bottom of the pile, with few ever able to climb out of the poverty trap.

The Oxfam report is a snapshot and short on detail, but the corroborative evidence is at hand. The National Nutrition Survey at the end of 2013 found that 60 per cent of Pakistan’s total population is facing food insecurity, and that within households that were food insecure, 50 per cent of women and children were malnourished. Children were found to be stunted in height and below their target weights for age. Malnutrition is linked to 35 per cent of deaths of children under five years of age. Of note is that the World Health Organisation classifies a national average of 15 per cent as an ‘emergency’ — not an emergency that appears in our headlines or unduly troubles the government, apparently. Of particular concern is the deteriorating situation in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, which only produces 11 per cent of its food requirements, yet has large tracts of arable land lying fallow. The province is prone to natural disasters. It will only fulfil its own food needs when the government devises a food security strategy — and that is a distant dream.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 18^th, 2014.

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