المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

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    • Following the rising health consciousness among urban population and increased necessity of creating awareness about balanced nutrition among large proportion of rural population of world, there exists great necessity of including nutrition related topics into curricula of not only agricultural education institutions but also into other basic sciences curricula. On the present day the issue of global food security has recently emerged as an important societal concern.  Factors such as the prospect of necessity to feed an additional two billion people in the next two or three decades, the presence today of nearly 870 million people who are chronically hungry and malnourished, and the recent social unrest associated with food price increases; all have contributed to awakening of interest in the issues like sustainable agriculture, nutrition security and reduction of postharvest losses.

      In several countries already nutrition is part of curriculum in agriculture and allied branches. In India some of the courses such as home science, food science and nutrition extensively deal with almost all possible related topics of nutrition in detail, while other allied courses have basic topics of nutrition in the curriculum. With the rising concern for postharvest losses alleviation there is need to add topics related to “reduction of postharvest nutrient losses and food processing” into curricula.

      Including these topics in curricula would ensure considerable difference with work capacity of agricultural workers in enhancing nutritional security by enlightening farmers, rural population and others, towards ways to fulfill essential nutrient requirements of their families from the available food resources. Already several International organizations are working towards the cause to educate about nutritional security and ways to achieve it. Hence we can hope that maximum institutions would find it relevant to include these topics into the curriculum.

      I would like to quote my personal experience while working as extension worker. During graduation (B.Sc. Horticulture) we were briefly taught with some of the topics related to food security, source of nutrients, nutrition requirements of average person, malnutrition disorders, role of horticulture in ensuring food and nutrition security. When I started working as Horticulture Extension Officer I had a chance to implement the topics learnt, and encouraged villagers growing kitchen gardens with different vegetables and some fruit plants which could contribute to compensate the nutrition requirement of family and also ensure food safety...

      Hence I feel integrating nutrition related topics, also including concepts related to reduction of postharvest nutrient losses and food processing into curricula of agriculture and allied courses would show a considerable impact on work ability of agricultural workers (extension workers) to promote nutrition-sensitive agriculture and also to achieve food and nutrition security.

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      Vijay Yadav Tokala

      PhD (Fruit Science) Scholar (Punjab Agricultural University, India)

      The Postharvest Education Foundation, USA (Trained as Postharvest Specialist)

      e-mail: [email protected]

       

    • Trade Liberalization and Food Security:

      The present trade agreements are mostly commercial driven and 4 dimensions of the food security is scarcely reached. Most of the trade agreements are between self sufficient nations leaving behind the needy nations with scarce resources. International Policies should concentrate all the nations and ensure appropriate distribution of the produce.

      As mentioned in the references cited, agriculture constitute very less percent of the nation’s export and very few portion of agriculture produce cross borders in the world. Trade Liberalization would help in ensuring food security in all the parts of globe yet several factors need to be considered while liberalization. Liberalization of Trade policies and ensuring Food Security involves several issues interlinked with them. Some of them are:

      Moral Imperative: Very complicated one to achieve, but every nation should develop a moral imperative to distribute the excess agricultural produce to the nations with grave need for it.

      Food Safety: Food safety standards vary with nation to nation. Hence liberalization should be made after designing common food safety standards for nations in the world. This activity would ensure hassle free food trade among different world nations.

      Crop Diversity: There exists danger of loss of crop diversity by simplifying international trade policies, as the farmers would tend to grow only the crops which possess international demand in order to gain profits. Hence trade policy liberalization should be concentrated on different crops.

      Subsidies: Allowing agricultural subsidies would encourage even small scale farmers, belonging to areas favorable for agriculture, for production of quality produce, which can be further traded after keeping suitable buffer in the nation.

      Food Loss/Food Wastage: Ensuring reduction in food loss and food wastage globally, would in turn increase availability of food and the excess of produce may be exported to needy.

      Needy Countries: Liberalization policies should be designed in such a way to facilitate needy countries and not in way to profit developed countries. There should be phase wise liberalization involving needy countries first then the other nations.

      ………………………………………

      Vijay Yadav. T

      INDIA

    • The direct link between street food vendors and local urban farmers prove to be advantageous, as consumers will be having easy access to fresh produce. Encouraging urban agriculture according to demand is necessary to keep up and increase this kind of link.  When compared to Super markets or commercial vendors the wastage of produce, in case of street vendors is very low. Usually super markets prefer to keep only very good quality produce discarding even slightly damaged, though it is in edible condition. Street vendors make grade the produce according to quality and fix prices according to quality, making the produce available to all economic sections and minimising wastage. There are some government subsidies being given to establish kitchen gardens and also to encourage urban agriculture, but the pace of urban agriculture is slow and rather decreasing because of high commercial demand for lands in urban area for constructing buildings or other high investment infrastructures to accommodate increasing urban population.

      The direct link between street food vendors and local urban farmers may also have a risk of health hazard to consumers as most of the street vendors directly bring their produce form farms, with no knowledge about ‘waiting period’ of chemicals used. They sell the produce, especially vegetables, immediately harvested a day after spray of chemicals. Hence there exists risk of residual chemicals in foods directly brought from these farms. Establishing a Government policy and its strict implementation to have a basic check of vegetables before entering into market to prevent presence of residual chemicals in them could make the vendor and farmer link safe and strong. Imparting free basic trainings to street vendors and farmers regarding chemical usage, waiting period, residual chemicals etc... and issuing licence to vendors who undergo the training and follow the standards would show good results. Providing incentives to such licence holders to sell near schools, hospitals, transportation hubs would encourage the vendors to follow standards while selling their produce.

      Vijay Yadav Tokala, Postharvest Education Foundation (Trainee), India

    • A. Issues to be addressed by the Committee in the biennium 2016-2017:

      Prevent food wastage/food loss at all levels starting from Field level to Consumer level..

      B. Explanation:

      Many factors at different levels are responsible for Food Loss/ Food Wastage:

      i.        Field Level:

      ·         Over Production: Improper production strategy of farmers would result in over production which ultimately leads to wastage and also very low returns to the farmer.

      ·         Mono-cropping in large areas: Growing single crop in large areas at a stretch may lead to production more than needed leading to wastage.

      ·         Improper cultivation practices: Lack of proper knowledge about cultivation, harvesting and package, lot of food grains, fruits and vegetables are lost.

      Remedy:

      ·         Crop Diversification: Growing different type of crops in an area.

      ·         Enlighten farmers about advances in cultivation practices of different crops along with care to be taken while harvesting and also after harvest.

      ·         There should be a government policy to plan production strategy for farmers, to decide crop area based upon demand in the nation.

      ii.      Post Harvest:

      ·         Judging proper maturity indices, based upon market availability would prevent food loss to great extent.

      ·         Enlightening farmers about proper post harvest, packing, storage techniques depending upon on crop, climate and demand would play a very important role in reducing food loss during storage and transport.

      ·         Conducting campaigns and courses to increase processing of over produced fruits, vegetables and grains into ready to eat products.

      ·         Grading of produce depending upon quality and market them based upon demand.

      iii.    Market Level:

      ·         Encouraging market facility to diversified crops.

      ·         Strong policies are needed to prevent illegal storage of grains (which is common situation in developing countries).

      ·         Policy to decide price based upon grading, which would allow producer to get good price for his quality produce and also population of different economic status to get good food.

      iv.    Consumer Level:

      ·         Educate people to prevent domestic food wastage by conducting campaigns in communities, schools, colleges and other public places.

      ·         Make a strong policy to prevent food wastage by levying extra tax on people wasting food in the restaurants.

      ·         A rule must be passed to make it compulsory to provide sample food before taking order in restaurants so that it is not wasted after being ordered.

      ·         Linking up restaurants with needy orphanages, juvenile homes etc… so that extra food can be transferred and not wasted.

      All the countries in the world should come up onto single platform not only to prevent food wastage but also to maintain balance in food availability in different parts of world. International policies must in such a way to prevent wastage of excess of food in few countries and supply the excess to needy malnutrition and hungry nations.

      C. Activities:

      CFS team dealing with food loss/ food wastage  prevention can present it in better way highlighting the comparision between food wastage in world and present population statistics suffering/ dying from hunger.