C2NARC: Sikandar Hayat Khan Bosan, Federal Minister for National Food Security and Research, said that a noteworthy progress is seen in food security over the last some decades.
“Ministry of Food Security and Research has taken a massive step to formulate a policy for national agriculture and food security”, he stated this while speaking at the National Food Security Policy Workshop here at National Agriculture and Research Council(NARC)
“Pakistan need to build resilience towards climate change risks in the agriculture sector. The climatic challenges can be accomplished through soil and water conservation technologies, use of high-efficiency irrigation systems, drought resistant varieties, and introducing climate smart agriculture”, said Bosan.
He further said that he is confident that suggestions from investors and provincial partners can help to finalize the policy food security and nutritional goals of the country. To overcome the challenges Pakistan, need to ensure food availability, increasing accessibility, improving use, and keeping stability to achieve food security.
Draft of food security policy is finalized with the collaboration of other provinces, national and international partners. Further technical groups will help to tune the policy document for fine forwarding to the cabinet for its approval said the Federal Minister. He added that current food production is more than the demand of food but unfortunately most of the food is lost during production and post-harvest stages.
NARC has record growth production Corn, Sugarcane, Potato, and Wheat. The institute has achieved 3.46 growth that is near to 3.5 target from 0.2 in 2015-16. The proposed food security policy will be a milestone. We hope this workshop will put the seal of approval for National Food Security Policy to be on priority on agenda of Federal Cabinet by Minister for Food Security and Research Sikandar Bosan expressed Chairman PARC, Dr. Yusuf Zafar on the occasion.
Dr. Azeem Khan, DG NARC, described food insecurity in relevance to arrangement and implementation. The policy will soon send to the federal cabinet for approval after final touch.
Secretary of National Food Security and Research Muhammad Abid Javed has hoped the implementation of the policy will promote the food production with the introduction of a new class of agricultural entrepreneurs.
He expressed gratitude to participants from Ministry of Planning, Development, and Reforms, Pakistan Agricultural Research Council, National Agricultural Research Centre, Agricultural Policy Institute; international organizations like FAO, ICIMOD, WFP and provincial governments for offering inputs for the preparation of policy document.