Food security or safe food security?

Photo: Quddus Alam/ Drik News

The World Food Summit (1996) defined food security as: "Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life." This definition covers three major areassufficient, safe and nutritious food for all. But in recent times, emphasis is given mainly on having sufficient food for all and accordingly on producing more and more food. This overshadows two other major aspects of food security: safehow safe it isand nutritionhow nutritious it is. We have to keep in mind that market availability alone cannot guarantee food security
Production of more food is determined by use of GMO seeds or hybrid seeds, excessive use of chemical fertilisers and chemical pesticides, use of chemicals in food preservation, etc. The necessity of getting more food is putting the other two factors of food security under threat. Food becomes unsafe because of the chemicals, and unsafe food cannot be nutritious. The major reason for food insecurity in Bangladesh is poverty, which is both the cause and outcome of food insecurity.
In Bangladesh, 31.5% of the population lives in poverty. They lack the means to acquire sufficient and nutritious food and are likely to be food insecure, and may have to sell or consume their productive assets for satisfying their immediate food needs. This undermines their longer-term income potential and pushes them below the poverty line.
Another reason is the impact of climate change. Every year, floods, cyclones, erosion, and droughts cause extensive damage to crops, houses, livestock, and household and community assets. Disasters hamper physical access to food, destroy crops, and make markets temporarily dysfunctional, which can lead to an increase in the price of essential foods. Natural disasters directly affect household food security status by undermining their asset base and, indirectly, through loss of employment opportunities, increase in health care expenditure and in necessary food expenditure. The most important issue is the change in agricultural methods and preservation. The excessive use of chemicals in cultivation and preservation makes food unsafe.
We need to increase rice production from 32.257 million tons (2009-10) to 49.07 million tons in 2050 to meet the demand of 194.353 million people. The attempt to increase food production has resulted in the use of GMO or hybrid seeds and loses of many of our local variety seeds. At the same time, some multinational companies are luring farmers into using specific brands of seeds, which call for excessive use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. They are responsible for destroying micro-organisms in the soil, resulting in loss of the soil's natural fertility. At the end of the day, the farmers produce unsafe food at a very high cost.
Excessive use of chemical fertiliser can also have a debilitating impact on public health through the consumption of chemical substances and toxins as the foods become contaminated by microbial pathogens. The effect on children can be very significantranging from physiological to developmental. We eat food to stay alive, but risk our lives by eating food which is highly contaminated with chemicals. Chemical fertilisers not only harm public health but also destroy the ecological balance. They prevent environment friendly insects and birds from coming and sitting in the crops fields, thus hampering the natural process of pollination.
The definition of food security gives equal emphasis on all three components. But, in reality, the practice in Bangladesh does not guarantee that food security will guarantee safe food. If we secure our food by putting our lives under threat then the increased production of food will be meaningless. More productive and resilient agriculture needs better management of natural resourcessuch as land, water, soil and genetic resourcesthrough conservation agriculture, integrated pest management and agro forestry. We need sufficient food, we need safe food, we need nutritious food, but we must make sure that we are not left with huge food stock but a sick and disabled future generation. Let's save our agriculture and also save our next generation.

The writers work at the Food Security Cell of Eminence.