World Food Day observed at PMAS-AAUR

Rawalpindi
The Pir Mehr Ali Shah-Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi (PMAS-AAUR) observed World Food Day here on Thursday with an aim to raise public awareness about hunger challenges and ensure food security.
This year, the theme of the World Food Day is 'Social Protection and Agriculture: Breaking the Cycle of Rural Poverty,' which aims to sensitise people about eradicating rural poverty and ensuring food protection for all. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) celebrates World Food Day on October 16, the day on which the Organisation was founded in 1945.
The day was marked by daylong activities including debate, poster, essay writing and food cooking competitions, organized by PMAS-AAUR in collaboration with GROW and Indus Consortium. PMAS-AAUR Vice Chancellor Professor Dr. Rai Niaz Ahmad was the chief guest on the occasion.
Speaking on the occasion, the PMAS-AAUR vice-chancellor stressed the need for focusing on value addition of agricultural produce and said that there is dire need to enhance the efforts in this regard to ensure the food security and alleviate the hunger. He said that a lot of work has been done in production side but it is a need of time to address other co-related issues like crop management and post-harvest losses. He stressed the need for improving the per acre crop out-put by utilizing innovative technologies as well as addressing the farm management issues.
While talking about World Food Day, he said that main purpose to celebrate World Food Day is to make efforts for a healthy and energetic society. He further said that this day also provided an opportunity for academia and industry to come together and find sustainable solutions to the situation of food insecurity, safety, hunger and malnutrition. He urged the scientists of the university to play their role to create awareness in farming community about the latest techniques in the agriculture to make Pakistan a food sufficient country.
While visiting different stalls of food cooking competition, he lauded the performance of the students and highlighted the importance of pure and nutritious food. He called upon the students to adopt agri-sector as career for making the country a food safe and secure country and rapid economic development for the country.
In Poster Contest; Ambreen won the first position; Mehwish Jaben second while Saiqa Umer got third position. In food cooking contest, group of MSc Food Technology got first position, BSC (hons 7th semester) group got second position while, BSC (hons 5th semester) group got third position. In Essay Writing Competition; Irum Jamil, Arslan Anjum and Amna Rehman got first, second and third positions, respectively. In Debate Competition; Muhammad Usman secured first, while Ameer Maovia and Muhammad Waleed stood second and third, respectively.
At the end Vice-Chancellor Prof. Dr. Rai Niaz Ahmad gave away certificates among the winners of competitions.