Food Security Importance
News Kashmir Exclusive In the back drop of ragging pandemic Coronavirus since past three years and a recent devastating wars between Ukraine and Russia have brought to fore the importance of Food Security. The inflation of food items is proving the need to take the issue of food security seriously. Food security is the measure of the availability of food and individuals’ ability to access it. According to the United Nations’ Committee on World Food Security, food security is defined as meaning that all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life.The availability of food irrespective of class, gender or region is another one. There is evidence of food security being a concern many thousands of years ago, with central authorities in ancient China and ancient Egypt being known to release food from storage in times of famine. At the 1974 World Food Conference, the term “food security” was defined with an emphasis on supply; food security is defined as the “availability at all times of adequate, nourishing, diverse, balanced and moderate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices”.On the other hand, According to UN-India, there are nearly 195 million undernourished people in India, which is a quarter of the world’s hunger burden. Also, roughly 43% of children in India are chronically undernourished. India ranks 71 out of 113 major countries in terms of food security index 2020.In an important development, India has expressed concern over global food insecurity and underlined need for collective work to alleviate suffering of most affected. Addressing a high-level ministerial meeting on Global Food Security Call to action in New York, Minister of state for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said that Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing conflict between Russia-Ukraine have impacted the developing countries, with spiraling energy and commodity prices and disruption in global logistical supply chains.Mr. Muraleedharan pointed out the Global Report on Food Crises and said according to the 2022 report, 139 million people had suffered across the world from conflict-induced acute food insecurity.The need of the hour is that we in Jammu and Kashmir preserve the agricultural land and don’t let its further havoc to tackle the food security fears in coming times .
