Question of Pakistan's looming food insecurity

Like borders, food procurement can become an equally insecure practice if left unguarded.  As a country, we have been working tirelessly on national security without understanding its varying facets, because of which we had to bear with a lopsided defense budget.  Not that we do not require a strong army to defend borders, what we missed during the accumulation of defense muscles is the critical accusation of soft power — the postmodern variant of power over opinion, which is no less essential for political purposes than military and economic purposes and has always been closely associated with them.

The domain of soft power is public diplomacy — interacting from the strength of values and ideas. Efforts are afoot to reclaim this lost space — better late than never, however.

The recently concluded grand dialogue on national security held in Islamabad called the Islamabad Security Dialogue was an admission of our folly to have looked excessively inward and promoting hard power. We built tanks, rockets, and missiles, just like other countries in our region built them. However, unlike other countries, we failed to build a reliable economic framework powered by a mature and stable political order.

Development as a consequence remained a second and sometimes no option.

A dwarf development agenda leads nations to a health and education crisis. It happened precisely like that, and we have a jeopardized human resource

A significant portion of Pakistan's population, 70 percent of which is youth, comprises low achievers. The combination of a debt economy and a low-skilled workforce cannot define a country as secure within, even if we have every warehouse in the country full of missiles, bombs, and tanks.

Let us revisit the Planning Commission (PC) of Pakistan’s Vision 2030 statistics to determine our existing situation. The report says half of our population suffers from absolute to moderate malnutrition. This means that half of the population is not getting enough nutritious food. According to the Punjab Food Department definition, a country is food secure only if nutritionally adequate food in terms of quantity, quality, and variety is available to all persons.

Going by the PC’s statistics and the Punjab Food Authority’s definition, Pakistan is a food-insecure country. Therefore, we lag in one of the main national security facets.

To experts, we reached this state of the affair because of Pakistan’s inability to raise resources matching its population growth, which has been left unattended over the years. Every additional mouth to feed requires a corresponding growth in resources to meet the challenges of undernourishment, malnutrition, and stunted human development. That reminds one of the 40.02 percent stunting rate in children in Pakistan, which is already highest in South Asia and nearly twice as much as the global prevalence.

We reached this state of the affair because of Pakistan’s inability to raise resources matching its population growth, which has been left unattended over the years. Every additional mouth to feed requires a corresponding growth in resources to meet the challenges of undernourishment, malnutrition, and stunted human development.

Durdana Najam

The government has taken up various policy initiatives and strategic measures, ranging from implementing poverty reduction strategies to providing social safety nets, such as being done under the Ehsaas program or Benazir Income Support Program (BISP).

Giving monetary assistance to the poor does make a difference but for a short period. Many countries have conditioned monetary assistance to tangible results such as vaccination of children, their enrolment in school and attendance. The real progress will come when resources in terms of innovative technology, modern agricultural practices, and international linkages shall be developed. Everything else is temporary.

Paul Krugman, a noted economist, said: “Productivity is not everything, but, in the long run, it is almost everything.”

Pakistan is the lowest per acre yield country in the region. Over the years, we have been unable to produce enough agricultural produce, especially wheat and cotton. According to the Global Agricultural Information Network report from the US Department of Agriculture, wheat production decreased to 25.2 million tons in Pakistan in 2020-2021. There was a steep decline in cotton production as well.

We produced merely 12 million cotton bales of standard size, the lowest yield in 30 years. The annual industrial consumption is above 14 million bales.  As a result, Pakistan imported $3.9 billion of imports of agriculture from July to December 2020.

Sadly, the entire agricultural supply chain from production, procession, storage, and distribution uses outdated and obsolete processes.

Pakistan has four options to work on: One, to increase yield per acre to multiply agricultural produce. Two, to fortify the existing agriculture product storage structure to prevent food wastage. Three to emulate a foreign model on food security such as the one used by Saudi Arabia called Saudi Agriculture and Livestock Company (SALIC) to create international linkages. And four, to develop Pakistan Mercantile Exchange to increase Pakistan’s reliability as a country concerned with food security.

As for raising funds to procure resources, the Islamic financial instrument sukuk can be capitalized on.

These options cannot be used as isolated measures, something being done so far. Together, these options can ensure a successful trajectory towards food security, leading to human development and poverty alleviation.

- Durdana Najam is an oped writer based in Lahore. She writes on security and policy issues. She can be reached at [email protected]