Food security

Photo: Shafiqul Islam Kajol / driknews

Ensuring adequate nutrition for all is as important as ensuring the country's defence. The state shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition, and the improvement of public health, as among its primary duties. Food security depends mainly on domestic production of grain. We do not lack natural resources. Our potential is at least twice as much as we are currently producing. What we lack is political will. None of our politicians has ever set the target of achieving the full potential of our agriculture. Their thinking is still feudal. Agriculture and agriculturists are not their main concern. Management of the food economy should have two objectives; first, to increase grain production; and, second, to ensure its proper distribution. We have seen how our system has failed - both in the long run and the short term - to achieve higher productivity and production of grain. To sum up, the management of our food economy is in a mess. It is likely to worsen after the removal of quantitative restrictions on the import of farm products. To improve the situation, the government should take prompt and radical reform measures.
These, in turn, adversely affect the efforts of raising production and productivity. Therefore, all restrictions on movement, stocking, trading, credit by financial institutions, monopoly buying, processing and exports have to be removed to enable the farmers to take advantage of free market. It is not only illogical, but also immoral on the part of the government to plead, on the one hand, for globalisation of trade and, on the other, fail to create one unified national market for farm products within the country.