Hasina calls for fair food governance

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday urged the global leadership to create a fair and equitable food governance system both at national and international levels to make food available and accessible to the marginalised and vulnerable across the world.
Only production of food alone could not guarantee food security, she said.
Hasina also pledged before the world leaders that her government would follow the declaration on food security adopted in the summit to eradicate hunger and poverty and to attain food security in Bangladesh.
The 41-point declaration was adopted unanimously at the World Summit on Food Security held in the headquarters of Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome, Italy.
Addressing the plenary session of the summit, the PM urged the attending heads of state and government of more than 60 countries to abide by the Declaration to fight food crisis and hunger.
"It is now for us to abide by the declaration in a bid to save future generations from the scourge of hunger and poverty," Hasina said adding, "We, in our country, would indeed be guided by the declaration in our endeavour to attain food security."
The declaration include foster strategic coordination at national, regional and global level to improve governance, promote better allocation of resources, strive for a comprehensive twin-track approach to food security to immediately tackle hunger for the most vulnerable, long-term sustainable agricultural, food security, nutrition and rural development programmes to eliminate the root causes of hunger and poverty.
Referring to the summit declaration that provides scope for strengthening global governance on food security, including enhanced role of the Committee on Food Security (CFS), the prime minister suggested that better coordination amongst FAO, IFAD and WFP would "definitely contribute to their goal of attaining food security."
She, however, said substantial fund is essential for implementing the provisions of the declaration.
Hasina in her speech also depicted the disastrous link between the global climate change and food production in the globe.
She said, "Food security is directly related to climate change. Bangladesh stands out as a stark example where agricultural production has become hostage to frequent and erratic natural disasters, thereby, adversely affected in food production."
Significantly, shortage of fund has also severely restricted our research efforts in agriculture, particularly in food production, Hasina said giving importance to development of high yielding agro-based products for discovering their varieties resistant to salinity, drought and water submergence.
Hasina said the threat to food security now seems to be greater than ever against the backdrop of sudden scarcity of food and its price spiral in the recent worldwide financial meltdown, and the looming impacts of climate change.
"The picture we see now is a cruel one for the world where one-sixth of its population, or over a billion, are faced with the specter of hunger. The vast majority of these people reside in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) facing food shortage, negation of development gains, and erosion of Millennium Development Goals."
Indeed, the unprecedented increase in food price during the last two years aggravated further the predicament of the LDCs, already reeling under declined remittances, reduced export earnings, credit crunch, and unemployment at home and abroad, due to global recession, said Hasina adding that the increased costs of seed and fertiliser, paucity of water and energy have also added to the difficulties.
The prime minister said her new government on assumption of power confronted with all these challenges.
"We have, once again, resurrected agricultural research to find flood, drought, and salinity resistant food and cash crops, access of small farmers to sustainable agricultural technologies, social entrepreneurship, and financial credit."
"We have also revived diversification of crop varieties; building food grain storage capacities to ensure sustained supply of food round the year; putting in place social safety nets like cash and food transfers; and other poverty alleviation programs," she added.
With Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in the chair, the opening session was also addressed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, FAO Director General Jacques Diouf, and President of Italian Senate Renato Schifani and Mayor of Rome Giovanni Alemanno.
Earlier, the PM had a dinner with the 10 selected heads of state and government on joint invitation by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini at the summit building at about 9:00pm BST.
At the dinner, they talked over facing the challenges of the climate changes.