Sustainable Farming Systems for Food and Nutrition Security

By Alan Dangour

Female agricultural workers picking vegetables in Mirpurkhas
Photo credit: Waseem Gazdar

The 2015 Sustainable Development Goals and the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition call on all countries to end hunger and prevent malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. This is quite a challenge, and it is a challenge with sustainable agriculture and food systems at its very heart.

Busting the myth of a 'hatta katta' Pakistan

by The Collective’s Research to Action team

George Segal, Depression Bread Line sculpture, 1991
Photo credit: Wikipedia/Public domain pictures

No one in Pakistan sleeps on an empty stomach. Myth. There is plenty for everyone. Also a myth. Half of Pakistani households experienced hunger in the last year. Over 40 per cent of Pakistani children under five are malnourished. So why do we never hear about this? And what can we do to bring this to light in policy making and political processes? Haris Gazdar raised this at a panel discussion ‘Does Climate Change Worsen Hunger?’ at Habib University last month. The panel featured a keynote speech by Professor Hilal Elver, UN Special Rapporteur on Right to Food and reactions by Professor Richard Falk, director of Climate Change, Human Security and Democracy Project at the Orfalea Center, University of California Santa Barbara and Mr. Gazdar. The panel was moderated by Dr. Muhammad Haris, Assistant Professor, Social Development and Policy, at Habib University.

Challenges of a different kind - the role of food prices in the lives of the poorest in Pakistan

by Mysbah Balagamwala and Haris Gazdar

The mother of one of our respondents in Karachi cooks roti (flat bread). Roti made from wheat flour is the staple food in our research sites
Photo Credit: Naila Mahmood/Collective for Social Science Research 

Countries like Pakistan always appear at the global stage to be battling big challenges such as political crises, conflicts and disasters.  But the picture remains incomplete without seeing challenges of a different kind that ordinary people, particularly the poorest, face on a daily basis.  Research conducted in Pakistan, alongside nine other developing countries, for the Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility project provides just such a perspective.  Qualitative research was carried out by the Collective for Social Science Research in 2012 and 2013 in a cluster of villages in Dadu district and in an urban working-class neighbourhood in Karachi to explore how rising food prices were affecting the poor.  Three important themes emerged from our research in Pakistan which helps understand ways in which food inflation impacts the poor and the vulnerable.

Strikes and fuel shortages – life of a daily wage earner in Karachi

by Mysbah Balagamwala 

Photo Credit: Collective for Social Science Research - Naila Mahmood

For the Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility project, we visited a low-income neighborhood in Karachi to document the impact of food prices on residents and asked them about their food consumption, livelihoods and hardships faced. We found that the main source of vulnerability for households in Karachi was not a rise in prices but rather strikes in the city and fuel shortages.