Food insecurity in low-income households must be removed
About 1.19 crore people in Bangladesh experienced high levels of acute food insecurity from May to September this year despite record cereal harvests in 2022 and 2023.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in a report recently stated that acute food insecurity is a situation when a person’s inability to consume adequate food puts their lives or livelihoods in immediate danger.
The higher food insecurity came although cereal production in the country stood at a four-year average of 6.09 crore tonnes in 2022 and 2023.
Bangladesh produced 6.34 crore tonnes of cereal, including the staple rice, last year. It is forecast to produce 6.42 crore tonnes of grains in 2023, registering a 1.2 per cent increase over the previous year.
Paddy production is forecast to rise to 5.85 crore tonnes, a record, in 2023. The amount of production would be 1.2 per cent higher year-on-year.
The FAO report said, higher yields have improved food availability but “concerns about access to food remain” due to persistent high food inflation that diminished the purchasing power of vulnerable households.
Food inflation has gradually strengthened since August 2022. It eased in September before surging to 12.56 per cent in October, the highest since 2012-13, data from the Bangladesh Bank and the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics showed.
In June, the average retail price of coarse rice, the benchmark, stood at Tk 50 a kilogram in Dhaka, the highest on record.
The high food inflation rate is attributed to the high costs of production and transport that make domestically grown cereals expensive.
Reduced cereal imports, especially of wheat, a key staple in the country, coupled with the significant depreciation of the local currency resulted in strong price increases, contributing to the inflationary pressure.
Between January 2022 and September 2023, the taka lost its value by about 30 per cent against the US dollar.
The report said, cereal imports were constrained by the country’s low import capacity due to the dwindling foreign currency reserves and the significant depreciation of the taka.
The food crisis for three out of five people from low-income and fixed income groups have been suffering for many years.
The middle class to the extreme poor has to cut food consumption for higher food inflation due to syndicated networks affiliated with the ruling regime.
A famine is ongoing for the have-nots though high government officials, corrupt businesses, and media persons fail to acknowledge the ongoing famine like 1974.
