Two Pandemics

Context: By working together, learning and contributing together, we can overcome both pandemics viz. COVID-19 and Food Insecurity.

Trends in Global Hunger

• Particular vulnerability of Southern Asia:
  • The number of chronically-underfed people projected to rise by almost a third to 330 million by 2030
  • More than half the children from the poorest fifth of society are stunted in Southern Asia.
• Pacific island states have the world’s highest child wasting rates, and East Asia has the world’s highest absolute costs for a healthy diet.
• Asia and the Pacific are regions where obesity and being overweight, among children and adults, is growing faster than anywhere else.
• Impact of COVID: Beyond its health toll, is crushing livelihoods, and hunger,
  • Impacting the pledge to eradicate by the end of this decade — the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2.

Way Forward

• Increase resilience across food systems by identifying new marketing channels
  • Increase efficiency to reduce losses
  • Improve the quality of products available and storage facilities.
  • For, E.g. Comprehensive COVID-19 response and recovery programme of Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) aimed at ensuring access to nutritious food by mobilising all forms of resources.
• Ensure inclusive access to finance to strengthen and expand rural food supply chains.
• Enable farmers to be more dynamic, entrepreneurial and competitive through continual innovation.
  • From Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific to China, India, Japan, South Korea and Singapore innovators are providing new technologies and science. For E.g.
    • Deploying drones to monitor flood and pest risks,
    • Smartphone apps that can identify plant diseases,
    • Advanced genetics that builds on crop and livestock breeding,
    • Precision agriculture and aquaculture systems that conserve natural resources such as water and indoor farming.
    • Consumer tools for nutrition monitoring and smart purchasing.
  • All stakeholders need to be working in unison to overcome pandemics and transform the agri-food system for E.g.
    • Hand-in-Hand initiative of FAO to tackle collective challenges.
    • FAO’s Regional Conference for Asia and the Pacific will provide a perfect opportunity to forge ways to expedite action and leverage resources.

Conclusion: Tackling food security and pandemic will require new ideas and a more robust political will.

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