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| WORLD FOOD DAY | | | Dr. Parveen Kumar, Dr. Anil Kumar | 10/15/2016 11:20:22 PM |
| Today is a universal event. October 16 every year is celebrated all over the globe as World Food Day. It is also honouring the date of founding of the World Food Body, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in 1945 on October 16, in Quebec, Canada. The World Food Day was first celebrated in 1979 and since then it has been celebrated by millions of people in different countries. At the FAO's member countries 20th General Conference in November 1979, Dr. Pal Romany, the then Agriculture minister of Hungary leading his country's delegation played a proactive role at the twentieth session of the FAO Conference and suggested the idea of celebrating the event worldwide. It is basically a commitment by the countries to come together to eradicate hunger because when it comes to hunger, the only acceptable number in the world is zero. It has since been observed every year in more than 150 countries, raising awareness of the issues behind poverty and hunger. Since its inception, different themes are being adopted every year.
Year Theme
2010 United against hunger
2011 Food Prices: from crisis to stability
2012 Agriculture cooperatives: Key to feeding the world
2013 Sustainable food system for food security and nutrition
2014 Family farming: Feeding the world, caring for earth
2015 Social protection and Agriculture: Breaking the cycle of rural poverty
2016 Climate is changing: Food and Agriculture must too
Today hunger is the greatest challenge before the world and greatest threat to mankind. Different reports speak in volume about the existing state of hunger and poverty all over the world. It is very unfortunate that in a world with abundance of natural resources, nearly 805 million peoples i.e. one in nine live with chronic hunger. The cost of hunger and malnutrition fall heavily on the most vulnerable. This is reflected by sixty percent of the hungry being women in the world. Things do not stop here. What is shocking is that almost five million children under the age of five die of malnutrition-related causes every year. In the poor countries situation is still worse. Four out of every ten children in poor countries have poor growth of bodies because of malnutrition. Every human being has a fundamental right to be free from hunger and the right to adequate food. The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child has the physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement.
We have to care about hunger because the right to food is a basic human right and countries like India have enacted the Right to Food which ensures food security for all. The Government is now duty bound to provide safe and healthy food to its citizens.
Eradicating hunger is now utmost priority. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGS) set up in 2000 by world leaders at United Nations signed a commitment to achieve eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The MDGs are a set of eight related different goals concerning the well being of mankind. Millennium Development Goal MDG 1 relates to poverty. It targets to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger and since then a lot of progress has been made in this direction. Forty countries have already achieved the first target, to halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by 2015. In addition, over the past 20 years, the likelihood of a child dying before age five has been nearly cut in half, which means about 17,000 children are saved every day. Extreme poverty rates have also been cut in half since 1990. The challenge is significant, but these results show us that when we focus our attention, we can make big strides.
The menace of hunger is not confined to poor or undeveloped countries. Even in countries like United States one in seven accounting for 14.3 percent of total population does not have enough to eat. The cost of neglecting this threat is too high. Hungry people have learning difficulties, are less productive at work, are sick more often and live shorter lives. The cost to the global economy because of malnutrition is the equivalent of US$3.5 trillion a year. Hunger leads to increased levels of global insecurity and environmental degradation. Ending hunger is not just a moral imperative, but also a good investment for society.
Now when the population is growing steadily and is expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050 and farm production being beset with many constraints and threats like the global warming this year's theme 'Climate is changing: Food and Agriculture must too' should not have come at an time more appropriate than this. To meet such a high demand agriculture and food systems will need to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change and become more resilient, productive and sustainable. This is the only way that we can ensure the wellbeing of ecosystems and rural populations and reduce emissions.
World Food Day is all about zero hunger. It is proven fact that Zero hunger could save the lives of 3.1 million children a year. well-nourished mothers have healthier babies with stronger immune systems, ending child under nutrition could increase a developing country's GDP by 16.5 percent, a dollar invested in hunger prevention could return between $15 and $139 in benefits, proper nutrition early in life could mean 46 percent more in lifetime earnings, eliminating iron deficiency in a population could boost workplace productivity by 20 percent ending nutrition-related child mortality could increase a workforce by 9.4 percent, zero hunger can help build a safer, more prosperous world for everyone. Considering all this year's event should be an inspiration for all of us to come together to renew our efforts, pursue our goals more vigorously and focus specifically on the different threats the agricultural sector is exposed to so as to ensure food security for all.
The writers are from Advanced Centre for Rain fed Agriculture (ACRA) SKUAST-Jammu. |
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