Rising population gets food job challenging

Bangladesh observes World Food Day today with its public stock of food grains at a record high in two decades -- more than 1.5 million tonnes.
But on the question of a sustained agricultural growth to feed an ever increasing population with the farmland dwindling, Food and Disaster Management Minister Abdur Razzaque finds the job "increasingly challenging."
In the wake of declining international support for agriculture and increasing volatility of global food prices, Bangladesh still walks a tightrope, the minister as well as experts think.
The country's cereal output was more than 30 million tonnes both in fiscal 2009-10 and 2010-11. The output was sufficient to meet the annual food requirement of 150 million people provided they consume the standard per capita 182.5 kg of rice, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.
However, there is a persisting debate over the real size of the population.
In 2010-11, import of rice and wheat stood at 5.3 million tonnes.
In a release issued ahead of the World Food Day, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) noted that in the 30 years from 1980, the share of official development assistance which developed economies earmarked for agriculture dropped 43 percent. FAO reckoned continued under-funding of agriculture as the single main cause behind the food price-related problems the world faces today.
Talking to The Daily Star yesterday, Razzaque said, "We've now got the highest public stock of food grains in two decades, and we're trying our best to reach the staples to the hard-to-reach poor through various safety nets. But keeping the present food security situation sustained appears to me as a big challenge."
The main roadblock is the enormous size of the country's population along with the diminishing farmlands due to housing, urbanisation and industrialisation, he noted .
Brac Executive Director Mahabub Hossain told this correspondent yesterday, "In a world of food price volatility, we need to go for further investment in the farm sector so that we cut down our dependency for food on international market."
Mahabub, who closely watches global food market, said, "World grain market is very volatile now. We need more home-grown action researches in farm sector and boost our food output further."
Releasing their flagship annual publication "State of Food Insecurity (SOFI 2011) " ahead of the food day, the three Rome-based UN bodies -- FAO, WFP and IFAD-- feared that increased use of biofuel and continued population growth will further push up food prices that already witnessed a historic rise in 2007-08.
The UN organisations said, "Prices are generally expected to rise because continued population and economic growth will put upward pressure on demand, as will the anticipated increased use of biofuel."
Quoting the OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2011-2020 released in June this year, the SOFI 2011 said, "World prices for rice, wheat, maize and oilseeds in the five years from 2015/16 to 2019/20 will be higher in real terms by 40, 27, 48 and 36 percent, respectively, than in the five years from 1998/99 to 2002/03."
FAO said, "Between 2005 and 2008, the world's staple food prices soared to their highest levels in 30 years. During the last 8 months of that period, maize price increased by 74 percent while that of rice almost tripled, climbing a whole 166 percent."
Food riots broke out in more than 20 countries, noted FAO. After peaking in June 2008, prices slumped again -- falling 33 percent in six months -- largely as a vast financial and banking crisis threw the global economy into recession.
"The downturn was short-lived, however. In 2010, grain prices shot up 50 percent and continued to soar into 2011 before starting to dip somewhat in the second quarter of 2011," said FAO which usually publishes SOFI each year along with WFP. This time it also tagged IFAD along making SOFI 2011 a joint publication of all the three global food security institutions headquartered in Rome.
FAO said, "At the level of net food importing countries, price spikes can hurt poor countries by making it much more expensive for them to import food for their people. In 2010, the world's Low Income Food Deficit Countries (LIFDCs) spent a record $164 billion on food imports, representing a rise of 20 percent on the year before."
Mentionable, Bangladesh, a food deficit country, imported a record 5.3 million tonnes of food grains in the last fiscal year despite rise in domestic food output. It's getting increasingly difficult for Bangladesh to make its grain output growth keep pace with population increase, experts and policy planners noted.
The SOFI report said poor consumers in countries like Bangladesh, Malawi and Vietnam experienced a decline in real income by nine percent in 2008 due to rise in food prices. The poorest 20 percent of population has to spend up to 70 percent of their incomes on food purchase.
It noted that Bangladesh has set an example of making good progress in reducing under-nourishment while maintaining general openness to trade and increasing productivity.
"The government allows private traders to import rice at a generally low tariff, and domestic rice prices have been roughly similar to those in neighbouring countries, including major exporters such as India and Thailand, for the past 20 years," SOFI said.
At the same time, rice yields have grown rapidly over the past 20 years through investment on improved seeds and irrigation. "Domestic prices for rice increased during 200708, but prices fell rapidly from the middle of 2008 because of a rapid increase in domestic production," it added.