Bangladesh eyes food sufficiency by 2013

With the world leaders converging at a three-day World Summit on Food Security in Rome today to give a new momentum to the fight against hunger, Bangladesh commits to eradicate domestic hunger by becoming food self-sufficient by 2013 and making food available to the vulnerable.
On the eve of the summit, first of its kind since 2002, food officials in Dhaka told The Daily Star the country's overall food output this year is adequate to meet up the domestic demand. Bangladesh is poised well with over a million tonnes of food stock in reserve now. But obviously there is a question of the ultra-poor's financial capability to access required food.
Food Minister Abdur Razzak, a member of the prime ministerial entourage to Rome, told this correspondent the government was moving ahead with the goals of attaining food autarky by 2013 and making food available to the vulnerable segment through widening the food-aided social safety-net programmes.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), host of the Rome summit, states in its annual flagship report "State of Food Insecurity (SOFI) 2009" that every fourth Bangladeshi is severely food-insecure.
The World Summit on Food Security is taking place at a time when food security challenge gets bigger with the number of hungry people hitting an all-time high of 1.02 billion since 1970, the earliest year for which comparative statistics are available.
Over a decade after the world nations pledging for halving the incidence of hunger by 2015, FAO estimates show, in real terms, the number of hungry people rose by over 150 million from less than 850 million during 1990-92 to over a billion this year.
As per FAO statistics for 2009, of the 1.02 billion hungry people, Asia and the Pacific is the home to the largest concentration of 642 million hungry people, followed by Sub-Saharan Africa with 265 million, Latin America and the Caribbean with 53 million, Near East and North Africa 42 million and developed countries sharing a little pie of 15 million only.
The Washington-based food policy think tank IFPRI, however, insists people to look at the hunger figure in a different way. Releasing "Millions Fed" -- a compilation of 20 proven successes in agricultural development -- ahead of this week's food summit, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) stated on November 12 that the proportion of the world's population that has remained hungry has declined dramatically.
"In the mid-1960s, when the global population was about 3.3 billion, only about 2 billion people were getting enough to eat. Today's population has burgeoned to more than 6 billion and some 5 billion people now have enough food to live a healthy and productive life," states IFPRI that picked up two out of its 20 most exciting success stories from Bangladesh.
To draw the world attention ahead of November 16-18 summit, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf on Wednesday called for a daylong worldwide hunger strike either on Saturday or Sunday showing solidarity with the one billion hungry people on this planet.
Response came almost immediately from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon expressing his intention to join a 24-hour fast over the weekend on the eve of the World Summit on Food Security in solidarity with the one billion people who do not have enough to eat, his spokesperson Marie Okabe told a news briefing on Friday.
According to a release issued by the UN News Centre, the UN secretary general will deliver a speech at the opening of the three-day summit in which he is expected to say that it is unacceptable that more than one billion go hungry when the world has more than enough food.
The FAO launched an online anti-hunger petition on www.1billionhungry.org where visitors are asked to sign the petition if they agree that one billion people living in chronic hunger is unacceptable.
According to FAO-chalked summit programme schedule, Pope Benedict XVI will deliver a keynote speech, while UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon and FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf will also address the Summit.
The Summit has been convened in a bid to marshal political will behind increased investment in agriculture and a reinvigorated international effort to combat hunger, says FAO. The participating countries are set to adopt a Summit Declaration on the very first day.
"We are alarmed that the number of people suffering from hunger and poverty now exceeds 1 billion. This is an unacceptable blight on the lives, livelihoods and dignity of one-sixth pf the world's population," reads a draft declaration posted on the FAO website.
"We will reinforce all our efforts to meet by 2015 the targets of Millennium Development Goal 1 and the World Food Summits. We commit to take action towards sustainably eradicating hunger at the earliest possible date," it further reads.
A press conference hosted by FAO DG with the participation of the UN secretary general and the heads of International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) is also tentatively scheduled for Monday.
The summit will have a roundtable on minimising the impact of the food, economic and financial crises on world food security on the opening day before adopting the summit declaration in the afternoon.
On November 17, two roundtables would be held on "Reform of global governance of food security" and "Climate change: challenges for agriculture and food security".
Prior to the closing press conference on November 18, there would be another roundtable discussion on "Measures to enhance global food security -- rural development, smallholder farmers and trade considerations".