Imposition of nutrition emergency stressed

Islamabad: Faiz Rasool, Senior Policy Advisor, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), has said that Pakistan is a country where nutrition emergency should be imposed as 42 per cent of its child population is malnourished and 82.8% Pakistanis are unable to have a healthy diet.

Mr Rasool was speaking at a seminar on “Using digital platforms for sustaining food systems” was organised here by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in collaboration with GAIN.

Mr Rasool mentioned that the government of Pakistan has acknowledged GAIN’s priority areas and added them to its plan of action.

Understanding of the food systems needs to be recognised while refining public policies, and formulation of tools needs to be done for improving food systems, he said.

The GAIN senior advisor noted that there are data constraints in the realm of food and agriculture systems, whereas the understanding of food systems is a world-over problem.

Dr Ghulam Sadiq Afridi, Member, Social Sciences, Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC), said that the establishment of Pakistan’s Subnational Food Systems Dashboard by Ministry of National Food Security and Research in partnership with the GAIN and housed in PARC is a problem-solving advanced solution for the policymakers and academia working in the field of agriculture and food security.

Dr Afridi lamented that though the country possesses the world’s one of the most diverse and beautiful agricultural landscape, it is ranked eighth globally in farm production. “We are going to initiate specific interventions for food system transformation and sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Five action tracks committed by Pakistan to the UN have been completed and all these are interconnected to SDGs,” he said.

Dr Afridi noted that the food system dashboard is necessary to consult and guide different kinds of reports on nutrition and health, whereas some 226 indicators were covered by the Global Food System Dashboard that encompasses key indicators like drivers of the agriculture sector, crosscutting issues, food supply chains, environmental impacts and the individual factors.

Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri, SDPI Executive Director, said the dashboard will carry subnational data across a range of key food system indicators to support national and sub-national level stakeholders with better planning.

Nadeem Iqbal, CEO, The Network for Consumer Protection, said the dashboard needs to provide data pertaining to the origin of the commodity, its seasons and availability.