October 16 was the World Food Day. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) was established on this day in 1945.
The day is being celebrated since 1979 to commemorate the organization’s founding anniversary.
The theme of this year’s World Food Day is ‘Hand in Hand, Towards Better Food and a Better Future’.
The main objective of the day is to inspire everyone to eliminate hunger, malnutrition and poverty globally and ensure food security.
Problems such as hunger, malnutrition, and food waste still exist in different parts of the world.
The disparity between food abundance on one side and scarcity on the other is the biggest crisis in the current food system.
According to FAO, approximately 673 million people currently suffer from chronic hunger. Millions more do not have access to nutritious food.
Climate change, war, economic crises, rising food prices, and shrinking agricultural land have all threatened global food security. In such a reality, ensuring food security has become a global challenge.
Despite significant progress in agricultural production in the past few decades, climate change, declining agricultural land, weak supply chains, import dependence, and inflation pose risks to Bangladesh’s food security.
Recent reports by the private research institute Power and Participation Research Center (PPRC) and the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) say that the poverty rate in the country has increased. The rate of extreme poverty has also increased.
High inflation has made it difficult for low-income people to buy healthy food. They are struggling to meet even basic needs. In addition, food waste and food adulteration are increasing.
According to the ‘Global Report on Food Crises 2025’ published by the United Nations FAO, IFAD, WFP, WHO and UNICEF, Bangladesh ranks fourth among the top five countries in the world facing acute food insecurity.
A separate report titled ‘Global Report on Food Crises’ issued by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) said that Bangladesh is the fourth among the 10 countries in the world facing severe food crises.
As per the two reports, Bangladesh lags behind not only in terms of food security but also in terms of consuming a healthy or balanced diet.
Despite significant progress in this regard in the past seven years, 77.1 million people in the country still do not have access to healthy food.
The staggering annual wastage of food grains in the country must be stopped to ensure food safety.
