Experts stress on reviewing National Food Security Policy with focus on malnutrition, women in agriculture


ISLAMABAD, May 30 (APP): The experts at a stakeholder dialogue on Thursday demanded that the National Food Security Policy review was a must with the focus on addressing malnutrition and empowerment of women in agriculture to achieve climate resilience.

The consultative discussion titled “Reviewing Pakistan’s Food Security Policy Amidst Climate Change and Nutrition Situation” was organized by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) and Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) to stir discourse on shortcomings in the existing policy and way forward for enhanced food security and climate resilience.

In his opening remarks, Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri, Executive Director, SDPI said that the Ministry of National Food Security and Research had undergone a phase of transformation with an ambitious goal to transform it into a holistic and powerful forum which was never materialized.

He mentioned that the world was grappling with different complexities shifting policy focus from food security to sustainable production, consumption, and less carbon intensive food supply chains and the climate change casting drastic impacts on the food production, consumption and storage patterns.

He added that since the climate change had challenged all prerequisites of food security then it was imperative to make a review of the existing food security policy.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were the second most important component of addressing food security and malnutrition as over 190 million masses of the country were facing security and hunger crises, he said.

Qasim Ali Shah, Deputy Executive Director, SDPI said that the global food security context should not be overlooked as the growing climate crisis, conflicts, economic slowdowns and lack of global action for achieving SDG 2 by 2030 had become increasingly infeasible. He said that under the National Food Security Policy 2016, there were various targets that were achieved while some of them were missed.

However, it had provided a proper framework to ensure food security in Pakistan and mechanism to co-ordinate between different actors and tiers of the government and institutionalize the SDGs and Zero hunger programme, he said and added that roughly 18 percent population was undernourished in 2016, whereas at present, 19 percent population is undernourished and 42 percent of the population is moderately or severely food insecure.

He underlined that the inclusion of hi-tech equipment in the agriculture sector was still facing hurdles, whereas the seminar would help to kick-start discourse on stocktaking of national food security policy and discuss prospects for the review of the policy.

Dr Aamer Irshad, Head of Program FAO said that the country population since partition in 1947 witnessed a visible boom from 35 million masses to 250 million by 2024. He said that almost 3-4 percent food items were imported while the remaining 95 percent were managed from local production, whereas the supplies of the local produce were also satisfactory.

Dr Irshad noted that agriculture was stull an important component of the economy as 63 percent of the country’s population lived in rural areas and the majority of them was associated with agriculture.

However, due to increased cost of healthy diet on average one person required a dollar to buy healthy diet and 74 percent of the population could not afford it as it makes it Rs 55,000 per month while the basic wage was Rs 32,000.

“Agriculture sector share to GDP was 60 percent in 1947 that has currently dropped to 22 percent. The overall arable land is 22 million hectares (ha) out of available 80 ha and out of this 80 percent is irrigated which is one the largest in the world and also a positive opportunity,” Dr Irshad said.

The FAO’s head of program mentioned that full fledge roll our of 4G services with climate smart agriculture technologies ensuring climate mitigation, adaptation and improved yield for the farmers was key to achieve agriculture resilience.

Farrah Naz, Country Director GAIN said Pakistan’s food security context has transformed massively amid global happenings. Pakistan, she said has adopted many strategies like scaling up of nutrition movement and its adoption in the country that showed its sincerity towards the issue.

“We need to take food system holistically and consider all stages apart from agriculture in totality. Poor food security is the outcome of an inappropriate food system. The current policy when developed was progressive at that time as it’s nomenclature and role was changed but the mechanisation of agriculture changed the role of women and their share in agriculture,” the GAIN’s Country Director said.

She suggested that it was necessary to provide more opportunities to small farmers and focus indigenous crops addressing malnutrition that would help strengthen women’s role in food nutrition. Moreover, the role of private sector needed to be strengthened with the revision of National Food Security policy, she added.

In his concluding remarks, Dr Saleem Mohsan, agronomist, Ministry of Food Security and Research said that after the 18th Constitutional Amendment and devolution of powers the coordination between the federation and the provinces was not strong as per the spirit of that legislation. Despite the fact, he said that provinces were independent to formulate their policies but the federation could provide them national guidelines for a unified legislation that would include series of consultative meetings before any policy endeavor.

Saleem Mohsan suggested that the reviewed national food security policy should be province specific keeping in view their landscape and ecological zones with policy recommendations and implementation strategies clearly mentioned in the document. After that, the focus should be made on quantum of food for first three years to increase availability and then quality along with integrated nutrients addition to improve soil health, he added.