Home ›› 29 Dec 2022 ›› Editorial
Experts believe that Bangladesh is facing the risk of the food crisis that the World Food Organization is talking about. However, no clear indication of a looming food crisis has yet been officially stated in the statistics of any government agency.
Rather, the agriculture minister says that the rice season has started. As a result, our fear is a little less. In order to increase the production of food, from next year, the initiative of agriculture supervision has been taken to divide the agricultural land across the country.
To deal with the situation, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina advised the people of the country to plant crops on every inch of land. She urged the people to be frugal saying that more difficult times may come ahead. In this crisis, the price of daily commodities should not be more unstable, that’s why the government is emphasizing maintaining the food stock.
There is really no alternative to increasing production to ensure food security. Necessary food can be imported. But the condition is that there should be money to import, and food should also be available.
When the world food crisis hit around 2008, food could not be bought even with increased prices. Bangladesh also has such experience. This time the situation is different. Now there is no money to import. Foreign exchange reserves have reached such a level that it will not be possible to meet even three months of import expenditure.
The lack of foreign exchange or dollar crisis is disrupting essential imports including food, which is very worrying. Opportunities to increase foreign exchange reserves are also decreasing. All sources of foreign exchange are in decline. Export earnings, expatriate earnings and development aid rebates have all declined.
In the context of the overall economic condition of the country, the production of food grains, fish, dairy products, vegetables and fruits should be increased. It should be remembered that food products do not mean only rice and wheat, many other things belong to food products. So, a tide of production must be created in agriculture.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food, Commerce etc. should sit together and formulate a master plan, determine the methods and means of implementing the plan and get down to work. Public awareness should be increased in this regard so that people can be motivated and participate in the production revolution.
At the same time mass-oriented programmes, production-oriented projects, and exchange activities should be adopted. If food supply on one side and work on the other can be arranged, it will be easy to prevent malnutrition or famine.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has directed the secretaries to ensure food security in the country. The country currently has 1.6 million tons of food stock. Necessary measures must be taken to ensure that food stocks do not decrease. According to the ‘Global Hunger Index-2022’ released last October, the level of hunger has reached the level of ‘severe’ or ‘terrible’ due to food shortages in 44 countries of the world.
Earlier, the heads of five international organizations - the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) mentioned in a joint warning that the Ukraine war, global unrest, food The global food crisis will intensify in the coming days due to various reasons including a reduction in production, disruption of the transportation system.
As a result, the number of food-insecure people will continue to increase. This will exacerbate the nutritional crisis among people, which will lead to epidemics in parts of the world. Bangladesh is not out of fear of a global food crisis. According to another FAO report, 45 countries in the world are now at the highest risk of severe food insecurity due to shortages.
Of these, 33 are located in the African continent, 9 in the Asian continent including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, two in the Caribbean region and one in the European continent. Therefore, the directive of the Prime Minister to the highest-level officials of the state to ensure food security in the country is timely.
As defined by the United Nations Committee on Global Food Security, food security exists when everyone has access to and access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food at all times for an active, healthy and productive life. The three determinants of food safety are - one. Availability of food, two. Searching power, three. Nutritional quality and safety of food.
Determining food availability assesses those factors that affect the availability and availability of food. These are abundance in the food supply, expenditure on agricultural research and development, agricultural infrastructure, uncertainty in food production, corruption and food wastage.
The six indicators used to measure affordability are the ratio of food expenditure to total expenditure per meal, the proportion of the population living below the poverty line, GDP per capita, tariff rates on agricultural imports, food security programmes and access to financial assistance for farmers. Indicators of food quality and safety are analyzed by food diversification, nutrient and micronutrient availability, protein quality and food safety.
As the food grains produced in the country cannot meet the demand, there is no other option but to import them. In the current financial year, the government and private sectors have taken the initiative to import 19 lakh tons of rice, but due to the increase in the price of rice in the international market, the excessive increase in global transportation costs and the severe dollar crisis in the country, the import of food grains has not picked up the pace.
Apart from food grains, the country is almost completely dependent on imports, with edible oil, sugar and pulses at the top. According to the information presented in the meeting on the ‘Action plan to reduce import dependence of edible oil’ in the Ministry of Agriculture last June, the annual demand for edible oil in the country is about 24 lakh tons. In contrast, the edible oil produced locally from mustard, sesame and sunflower crops is 3 lakh tons, which is 12 percent of the demand. This means, 88 percent of the country needs to import edible oil.
In the coming Boro season, the focus should be on getting the maximum yield. Three. Measures should be taken to increase the purchasing power of people, especially the lower class. Long-term activities include-a. Due to the scarcity of land, we need to focus on increasing the productivity of rice and other food crops. b. To increase the production of agricultural products including rice, shifting of agricultural land to the non-agricultural sector should be stopped as much as possible.
To increase the production of agricultural products including rice, investment in the agricultural sector should be increased at the public and private levels. 5000 crores recently allocated by Bangladesh Bank in refinancing funds is not enough compared to the needs of the agriculture sector.
The allocation should be increased. d. Attention should be paid to increasing the nutritional quality of food and stopping the supply of unsafe food in the market. e. All-out efforts should be made to implement the strategies recommended in the Eighth Five-Year Plan to address the challenges in the agricultural sector.
The writer is a columnist and researcher. He can be contacted at hiren@gmail.com
