Hunger pains: Pakistan's food insecurity

The morning panel examined macro-level challenges of Pakistan’s food security, Sohail Jehangir Malik, of Innovative Development Strategies, spoke about agricultural production, with an emphasis on wheat. He argued that Pakistan’s food security is tied to the production and availability of this staple, which accounts for more than 55 percent of the country’s total caloric consumption. In Pakistan, the availability of, and access to, wheat is a story of regional disparities. For example, the volatile Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) suffers from “huge shortfalls” in wheat, while the fertile Punjab enjoys a surplus. Malik contended that wheat millers benefit disproportionately from Federal subsidies and advocated for a middle ground between protecting consumers and subsidizing producers.
Saadia Toor, of the College of Staten Island, declared that Pakistan’s food insecurity is not just the result of poor agricultural production, but also a byproduct of structural factors such as unequal land distribution. Land, she asserted, is Pakistan’s “single-most important asset”-yet millions of Pakistanis are landless. “Broad-based”-and not simply “cosmetic”-land reform is essential for strengthening food security and reducing poverty, because improved land access reduces food prices for families. She advocated for empowering people - particularly peasants’ - movements.
Roshan Malik of Iowa State University addressed the linkages between governance and food security in Pakistan. Article 38 of Pakistan’s constitution stipulates that the state shall provide basic necessities such as food. A big part of the problem has been the country’s worsening violence. His review indicated that all seven agencies of the unstable Federally Administered Tribal Areas were found to be “extremely food insecure,” while the districts in the NWFP and Balochistan deemed food insecure had “alarming” amounts of violence. Malik concluded that because of the country’s violent environment, Pakistanis at times must literally harvest crops “under the gun.”
The afternoon panel looked at the human side of food security in Pakistan. The University of Toronto’s Kenneth Iain MacDonald focused on subsistence agricultural systems in Pakistan’s Northern Areas, amidst the harsh terrain and demanding climate of some of the highest mountains in the world.
The World Food Programme’s Allan Jury recounted his organisation’s experiences in combating hunger vulnerability in Pakistan. Hunger is “the curse that keeps on giving,” Jury posited; hungry people stop investing in education and health care, which adversely impacts their economic situation and leads to yet more hunger. Food security must be handled through a “lifecycle approach,” emphasizing bottom-up rather than top-down solutions. The World Food Programme, for instance, has had considerable success in providing food at schools and offering take-home rations, in some cases only for girls. This serves to encourage low-income families to send their female children to school. Food insecurity and poor governance are inextricably linked, Jury insisted. Pakistan will never be food secure until it provides its citizenry with good governance.
Food security must be distinguished from nutrition security, stated Gautam Hazarika of the University of Texas at Brownsville. Hazarika looked at various explanations for what he termed the South Asian “enigma”-the fact that 41 percent of South Asian children under the age of five are malnourished, whereas the comparable figure for sub-Saharan Africa is 27 percent, even though South Asia is at least as economically developed as sub-Saharan Africa. Hazarika concluded that a main factor in the high incidence of child malnutrition in South Asia is the low status of South Asian women. Broaden women’s bargaining power within the family and within society generally, Hazarika argued, and one will begin to combat child malnutrition.