Dr
Abid Qaiyum Suleri, an expert on food security, gives an insight on the
different dimensions of the prevailing crisis
Dr Suleri
is the Executive Director, Social Development Policy Institute (SDPI), social
policy analyst and development practitioner. He is currently working on a
comparative analysis of Pakistan’s districts in terms of the state of food
insecurity.
What
are the main reasons of food insecurity in Pakistan?
Food
insecurity is multidimensional, affecting at the national, provincial, district
and household levels. It has various categories, such as chronic, acute and
transit. The causes behind this alarming phenomenon vary for each case. There
are three prerequisites that determine whether food insecurity exists:
(physical) availability of food (through production, import, aid,
inter-district transfer, etc.), (socioeconomic) access to food, and food
assimilation (i.e., when food is absorbed and digested by the body).
Physical
availability at both the macro and micro levels gets negatively affected due to
a lack of local production; natural and man-made disasters, weak
infrastructure, insufficient storage capacities, hoarding, law and order
situation, etc. Socioeconomic access to food, however, gets adversely affected
due to poverty; lack of resources, loss of livelihood opportunities due to
rising militancy, energy crisis and political instability; lack of a consistent
supply of subsidised food items due to a reduced fiscal cushion, low literacy
rate, lack of awareness about the benefits of maintaining a balanced diet and
social norms such as gender discrimination when it come to distribution of
resources within the family.
The
factors that hamper food assimilation, on the other hand, include lack of clean
drinking water, health, hygiene and sanitation facilities, low literacy rate,
lack of fiscal cushion for government to spend on public sector development
programmes, which would help ensure basic service delivery. Various other overlapping
factors also contribute to the burgeoning food crisis in Pakistan.
While
inaugurating your Food insecurity in Pakistan report last year, the then
federal minister of food and agriculture contradicted your findings, which
dubbed 48.6 per cent of the population as food insecure. What is your stance on
it?
Unfortunately
for most policymakers in Pakistan, the term ‘food security’ means availability
of wheat. Hence, a bumper crop of wheat is wrongly considered as a sign of food
security. There are quite a few sources of carbohydrates and wheat is one of
them.
However,
to be on top of the Daily Recommended Intake (DRI) of carbohydrates, a person
would require a total DRI of proteins, fats, vitamins and other micronutrients
to be completely food secure.
Even in
the case of wheat, a bumper crop in the few districts of Pakistan does not
guarantee that the rest of the country would have physical availability of, or
any access to, the crop. That is why the price of the wheat flour varies in the
Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. In our study, we also found
that in 2009-10 there was a 10 per cent reduction in the consumption of wheat,
mainly due to food inflation. I am not trying to undermine the importance of
wheat, but would, however, like to suggest the government think about the other
aspects of food security besides increasing the wheat production.
A
country which cannot produce the needed food or afford to import food from the
international market is not a ‘food sovereign state’. Thus, being a fundamental
component of national security, why is the food crisis still not taken
seriously enough?
Food sovereignty is a slightly different concept. It is food security, plus the
situation which implies that a country should be self-sufficient in fulfilling
its food requirements and should not be dependent on any external factors for
its food security. In its strictest sense, even procuring food from the
international market may disqualify the state from being food sovereign, as
there may be trade sanctions blocking the supply of food.
Likewise, a hike in the commodity prices may erode the purchasing capacity of
the buying country.
We may not
be a food sovereign state in the near to mid-term future (in any case, we would
have to import edible oil because our domestic production cannot meet the
requirement). However, we should aim to be a food secure state. Unfortunately,
none of the governments has taken food crisis seriously. The huge influence of
the armed forces in public policy has ensured that Pakistan’s national security
is emphasised over individual security, and public spending is deeply skewed
against social development programmes. Public sector development expenditures
always face the brunt of fiscal constraints, because policymakers refuse to reduce
spending on defence, debt repayment or public sector administration.
Resultantly, food crisis is never taken seriously and there are no integrated
plans for ensuring food security.
What
steps—on individual and national levels—do you think should be taken to
overcome the food problem?
We have to have a national food security strategy—a strategy that should
address all the three aspects of food security. It is a good thing that the
ministry of food and agriculture has got devolved to the provinces under the
18th Amendment. However, there must be a division or ministry of food security
at the federal level as well. This ministry should be responsible for
implementing the food security strategy by ensuring that it becomes an
important priority of all other national policies. Thus, social safety net
measures like ‘Food for work’ programmes should be initiated at the national
level. Like in some South Asian countries, the government should administer
free lunches for children in schools, ensuring that our youngsters get a
balanced diet. Also, the prices of the inputs of food crops should be strictly
monitored to reduce the cost of food production.
Finally, the government should spend more in the social sector development to
ensure availability of the basic conditions for food assimilation.
At an
individual level, we need to change our food consumption behaviours. We have
already talked about the need for creating equality when it comes to food
distribution (and access to food opportunities) at the household level.
Moreover, it should be kept in mind that a healthy and balanced diet does not
have to be an expensive one. We should also avoid panic-buying when the supply
of food commodities gets restricted, for it only results in further hoarding by
the profiteers, who hope to benefit from the demand-supply equation.
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