Govt to increase agro-products to address food insecurity

Kathmandu, Nov. 4

Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Ishwar Pokharel said on Monday that the government was executing policies and programmes to increase agricultural productivity and halt the use of agricultural land for other purposes in order to address the food insecurity in the country.

"The investment in irrigation has been increased over the years and the country is gradually entering to the vegetable sufficiency situation," he said while addressing the 2019 Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement's Global Gathering here today.

DPM Pokharel said that the undernourishment had serious impact on the mental development of the children.

Nepal has 28.6 per cent multi-dimensional poverty which primarily is the result of the malnutrition and children not getting opportunity to enrol in the school.

Stating that the remote areas in the country were facing food security crisis, DPM Pokharel vowed to support the people there with better programmes.

"Population growth combined with the adverse impact of climate change has adversely impacted the food production," he said, mentioning that the food sovereignty and protection from hunger were enshrined in the Constitution.

He said that Nepal had made improvements in nutrition with the reduction of stunting of children under 5 years with the aim of bringing  it down to 14 per cent by 2030 from 41 per cent in 2011.

Executive Director of UNICEF Henrietta H. Fore said that still 820 million people across the global are undergoing through hunger around the world. However, she said that the situation was gradually improving in many countries with the interventions from the governments and international partners.

On the occasion, Vice-President of the Cote d'Ivoire Daniel K. Duncan handed over the nutrition baton to DPM Pokharel.

The organisers said that the conference would provide a platform for mobilising transformative commitments that nourish people and the planet in tandem leading up to the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit in December 2020, said the SUN Movement.

The four-day conference is being organised with the theme 'Nourishing People and Planet Together'.

Nepal has co-hosted the event with the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement.

The event is attended by the representatives from more than 60 countries, including heads of state and government, and leaders from UN agencies, regional organisations, civil society, donors and the private sector.

published in The Rising Nepal daily on 5 November 2019.