Hungry but nuclear

One wonders how to react to the news that Pakistan would be the third largest nuclear country in a decade or so considering the fact that we are a developing nation and hardly able to meet the food requirements of a large segment of the population. It is a widely held-belief that nuclear arms have been, and still are, a deterrent to any foreign aggression but the point is: for those who are living below the poverty line and barely surviving, are these arms enough to fill their empty stomachs?
At our existing rate of population growth we will leapfrog to the fourth (or probably the third) position by 2050. Unfortunately, our agricultural productivity has not been able to keep pace with a growing population. We need drastic, short- and long-term measures to improve our agriculture yield. For this the government needs to provide more cultivable land to farmers and improve water storage facilities in the country. But these require money as well as time – both these luxuries are not available to us now. In the short-term, we can conserve food and avoid wasting it. But we are not familiar with the concept of conservation. So, is a hungry population but a nuclear power a better option or a nation with food security?
Rida Hussain
Karachi