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.

Making value chains work for little children

by Samar Zuberi

Photo Credit: Wikipedia/Scanned from 1000 Fragen an die Natur, via The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1948.

In Pakistan, 44 per cent of children under the age of five are stunted while 15 per cent are wasted and 32 per cent are underweight (NNS, 2011). These statistics indicate that malnutrition is a serious problem in Pakistan - according to World Health Organisation classifications Pakistan falls in the ‘very high’ range for severity of malnutrition for all three figures. The occurrence of micronutrient deficiency is also alarmingly high with half of the population of children under 5 suffering from anaemia and vitamin A deficiency, while 39 per cent are deficient in zinc (NNS, 2011).

Despite the high proportion of the population that is involved in agriculture (45 per cent of the workforce) many rely on the market to purchase their food. Seventy-seven per cent of households are net buyers of wheat, the main food staple in the country. Good nutrition, however, is not just about having enough bread to fill your belly. It is about having a varied and nutritious diet with adequate levels of protein and micronutrients. And for nutritious foods the reliance on markets is even greater than it is for the main staples, in urban and rural areas alike. Understanding how markets can work better to deliver nutritious foods to the poor and undernourished, therefore, can help to improve diets and in turn nutrition.