The Agriculture Secretary has called upon multilateral agencies
to suitably amend their aid disbursement practices to facilitate
more active participation of newly emerging aid providing countries
like India. Shri R.C.A Jain was speaking at a function here today
on the occasion of the 28th World Food Day. He said
that many of the multilateral agencies have protocols and over-heads
which countries like India can ill-afford. The Agriculture Secretary
said that India clearly foresees a steadily increasing role for
itself in providing assistance for multi- pronged and multifarious
strategies of providing adequate food. The country has agreements
on co-operation in the field of agriculture with a number of countries
from the African Continent. These agreements provide for technical
and material assistance for development of agriculture in such
countries . In countries like Senegal and Somalia, such interventions
have contributed significantly to boosting agricultural production
and endowing the local farming communities with the requisite
self-confidence to feed their countrymen. India is also actively
involved in FAO’s Programme of South-South Cooperation for food
security and India’s Missions are in active service in countries
like Eritrea and Mozambique under the aegis of the FAO for development
of local agriculture.
The Agriculture Secretary also stressed the need
to enlarge the scope of food security and hunger alleviation .
Pointing out that improvement in the per capita availability of
food has not resulted in commensurate improvement in the quality
of life, he called for large scale interventions to put in place
an efficient and equitable public distribution system and address
the problem of water scarcity for human and cattle consumption.
Shri R.C.A.Jain also called for putting more emphasis on some
long term remedial measures as integral components of the fight
against hunger . These include accelerated development of agriculture,
evolution of location specific strategies of sustainable development
particularly water management, over-all rural development and
putting in place viable food safety nets.
Earlier, the Agriculture Secretary distributed
awards and certificates to the winners of essay and elocution
competitions held on the occasion of the World Food Day. Children
from various Delhi Schools took part in these competitions. The
Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Department of Agricultural
Research and Education, Department of Food and Public Distribution
and the Food and Nutrition Board brought out special issues of
their magazines on the occasion. An exhibition was also organized
to highlight various aspects relating to the World Food Day.
The function was organized by the Department
of Agriculture and Cooperation, Food and Agriculture Organisaion
and Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti. The theme of this year’s
World Food Day is "International Alliance Against Hunger".
The World Food Day is observed on the foundation day of the FAO.
It seeks to focus attention on global food and nutritional security.
According to the estimates of the FAO , out of more than 800 million
under-nourished people in the world, 294 million are in South
Asia. More than 51 per cent of the under nourished in the below
5 year age group belongs to this region.
