Diversify agriculture to ensure food security: WFP

Bangladesh needs to diversify agriculture, empower women and adopt a human rights-based approach to overcome the challenges confronting food security and nutrition as millions of people still face hunger and malnutrition, according to a new report.

“It also makes economic sense to pay attention to food security and nutrition,” said the Strategic Review of Food Security and Nutrition in Bangladesh by the World Food Programme (WFP).

“No country can expect to build a thriving economy on the backs of hungry and undernourished people.”

SR Osmani, a professor of development economics at Ulster University in the UK, along with a group of economists prepared the report. Prof Osmani shared the report at a programme at the National Economic Council in Dhaka yesterday.

Undernutrition already costs Bangladesh more than $1 billion in lost productivity every year, and even more in health costs, according to a joint study of the government of Bangladesh and the United States Agency for International Development.

“Thus, if Bangladesh aspires to be a developed country by 2041, it must commit to investing heavily and effectively in food security and nutrition,” the WFP report said.

The WFP said Bangladesh has come a long way from being a chronically food deficit country in the 1970s. Population has more than doubled in the last three decades, and food production has also kept pace with population growth.

Bangladesh has attained self-sufficiency in food at least in terms of calorie availability -- per capita calorie intake in 2010 was 2,318 kilocalories per day, up from the minimum requirement of 2,122 kilocalories per day.

Alongside, people's access to food has also improved and Bangladesh has achieved a great deal by way of improving the state of nutrition.

A recent cross-country study has concluded that from 1997 to 2007 Bangladesh achieved one of the fastest prolonged reductions in child undernutrition in recorded history. The rate of stunting among children under five, which reflects the state of chronic undernutrition, has decreased from 55 percent in 1996-97 to 36 percent in 2014.

An alarmingly large number of people still remain food insecure and hungry: one-quarter of the population was food insecure in 2014, which amounts to 40 million people.

Among them, some 11 million people were found to suffer from acute hunger. Even larger numbers remain vulnerable to food insecurity in the face of periodic shocks.

A further concern arises from recent slowdown in agricultural growth: in the past five years, agriculture has only grown at half the rate of the preceding five years.

There are still important shortfalls in the production of certain non-cereal crops as well as some non-crop foods relative to demand.

Among the general population, very little improvement has occurred in the quality and diversity of diet. Cereals still occupy a preeminent place in the diet, with its contribution to total energy supply standing at 77 percent in 2009-11, from 79.6 percent in 1995-96.

Stunting still afflicts more than one-third of children and acute malnutrition has remained worryingly stubborn over a long period.

At the current rate of progress, Bangladesh will fail to meet several of its own targets, the report said. For example, stunting will need to decline by 5.3 percent per year, from about 2.5 percent in recent past, if the government's target for 2021 is to be achieved.

According to the 2014 Global Nutrition Report, Bangladesh is not on course for meeting any of the 2025 targets agreed upon at the World Health Assembly in 2012.

Besides, the increasing pace of urbanisation and the ongoing process of climate change have some worrying implications for the future trend of food security and nutrition.

It has been estimated that, as a result of climate change, crop production might be reduced by 30 percent by the end of the century. In addition, rising carbon dioxide emission is going to make Bangladesh's staple food crops less nutritious. The WFP report recommended making the agriculture sector more diversified, resilient and nutrition-sensitive.    

The report called for empowering women, as researches show when women are empowered farming households are more likely to opt for greater diversity of production. Farmers who produce diversified products will also consume a diversified diet instead of selling the micronutrient-rich products for the sake of higher income.

Social protection and safety net programmes are potentially an important vehicle for promoting food security and nutrition.

One aspect that deserves special attention is the persistently high prevalence of low birth weight since it is well-established that low birth weight babies tend to be more susceptible to stunting in later life.

The persistently high rate of teenage pregnancy is also a matter of concern as child bearing by the 15 to 19-year-old women has fallen only marginally in the past two decades -- from 33 percent in 1993-94 to 30.8 percent in 2014, said the report. The report said since food security and nutrition are interlinked, the respective governance should also ideally occur through an integrated framework.

It called for strong and effective coordination among government interventions in order to avoid unnecessary overlaps and to extract possible synergies between various types of interventions.

A human-rights based approach is important to deal with food security and nutrition, the report said.

“By explicitly recognising people's right to food and adequate nutrition, the government accepts that citizens can hold their government accountable and culpable in the event of avoidable failures.” Speaking at the event, Finance Minister AMA Muhith agreed that the country will have to do a lot to ensure food security.

Muhith said he is particularly bothered by the teenage marriage. “This is causing us pains and the burden has to be borne by the future generations. We have to do something about it.” The minister said he would make budgetary allocation in the next fiscal year so society and village-based movement could be launched against teenage marriage.

Muhith also said agriculture has to be diversified and special attention has to be given to the first 1,000 days of a child. 

James Harvey, chief of staff of the WFP, said countries as well as development partners have to do things differently to achieve the sustainable development goals.

Md Shah Kamal, secretary of the disaster management ministry, Christa Räder, country director of WFP Bangladesh, and M Monirul Islam, deputy chief of the General Economics Division, also spoke.