FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2002
Community Food Banks
M S SWAMINATHAN
Recently there have been reports in the media of the sale of children in parts of Afghanistan in exchange for wheat. Moving photographs of Sher and Baz (aged 10 and five), sons of Akhtar Mohammed of Kangori, a remote hamlet in the mountains of northern Afghanistan have appeared in the press.
When confronted by a media representative, the father simply said, ''I miss my sons, but there was nothing to eat''. Unforgettable human tragedies of this nature are taking place at a time when the markets of both industrialised and developing nations are flooded with grains.
Obviously, such desperate acts happen at remote locations, devoid of proper communication facilities. Nevertheless, mass media are helping to give meaning and content to the concept of a global village by drawing the attention of people everywhere to the truth behind the statement of the Roman philosopher Seneca, that ''a hungry person listens neither to reason nor cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayers''.
At the same time, experience tells us that every calamity provides an opportunity for initiating steps which will help to render such tragedies problems of the past.
In August-September this year, a UN summit on sustainable development is due to be held at Johannesburg, a city which epitomises the sad irony of our time - the extensive co- existence of unsustainable lifestyles and unacceptable poverty. There are wealthy persons operating diamond mines in the vicinity of Johannesburg, while at the same time there are thousands of unemployed young men and women in that city who do not know when and from where their next meal will come from.
The Johannesburg summit would have served its purpose, if on the one hand, it can bring cheer to the unemployed by helping to initiate a strategy for job-led economic growth, and on the other, make choices of the kind faced by Akhtar Mohammed, who had to sell his sons in exchange for wheat, unnecessary and unacceptable.
In my address to the international congress of nutrition held in Vienna in August 2001, I proposed the establishment of a global grid of Community Food Banks (CFB), to begin with in the ''hunger hot-spots'' of the world such as Afghanistan, North Korea and the Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput region of Orissa, just to avoid tragic situations like that faced by Akhtar Mohammed.
Ideally, a CFB initiated either with national resources or with the support of the international community through the world food programme, could store in appropriately designed bins the needed quantities of the staple grain to meet the energy needs of the local population for a year.
A village/hamlet with a population of 800 individuals should have a CFB with a storage capacity of 200 tonnes of grain, since one tonne of grain will be needed to support four individuals in a year. The CFB is best operated by women's self-help groups.
The structure of the storage bin could be based on the ecology and climate of the area as well as the kinds of staples to be stored. Once established, the CFB could be self-sustaining, based on the purchase of local grains and tubers, which serve as life-saving crops in the region. This will help to minimise both transportation and transaction costs and at the same time widen the composition of the food basket.
Ideally, the CFB could become the conduit for transferring to the local population their entitlements such as subsidised grains for the poor and grains for school feeding and for pregnant and nursing mothers. The CFB could also be the agency for supplying food grains for food for eco-development programmes, like prevention of soil and gene erosion, rehabilitation of hydrologic and biodiversity hot-spots, harvesting of rainwater, watershed management and waste recycling. In addition, the CFB could help to manage natural calamities by stepping in to eliminate transient hunger.
Thus, I see in the evolution of a CFB multiple roles such as fulfilling entitlements, supplying food grains for eco- development, and mitigating the adverse impact of natural calamities as well as ethnic conflicts on local level food security. By initiating a global grid of CFBs, a beginning can be made at Johannesburg for promoting sustainable community food security systems, rooted in the principles of ethics, gender and social equity and economics.
Today, social realities, like peace and security influence sustainability, more than ecological or economic factors. Let the international coalition against terrorism sponsor at Johannesburg an international food bank for community food security, possibly under the auspices of the World Food Programme, so that no one in our planet will hereafter have to sell their children to avoid the pain of hunger. This is also the most effective and economical method of addressing concurrently the major forms of hunger, namely chronic hunger resulting from poverty induced protein-energy under-nutrition, hidden hunger caused by micronutrient deficiencies, and transient hunger experienced during calamities and conflicts.
India, which 35 years ago used to be a chronically food deficient country, will soon have nearly 80 million tonnes of wheat and rice in government godowns. Thus, seemingly impossible tasks can be achieved if there is synergy between technology and public policy. India has offered Afghanistan, through WFP, one million tonnes of wheat.
Many other countries in the world have large surplus stocks of basic staples. This presents an uncommon opportunity for developing and spreading a self-sustaining and self-replicating local level food security system. The time is, therefore, opportune to launch at Johannesburg a CFB movement. It would be appropriate to get such an initiative inaugurated by Sher and Baz, children of Akhtar Mohammed, so that our common shame becomes an event for common pride.
The Johannesburg summit will then have some credibility and meaning, since where hunger rules, peace cannot prevail. Human security is the foundation for sustainable development, and the starting point is the security of the well-being of children.
The governments of India and Afghanistan can take the lead in initiating this ''children for happiness and not sale'' initiative at the UN summit.
To facilitate the implementation of this programme, which could involve the establishment of 1,000 CFBs in different parts of Afghanistan, it will be useful if a food security consortium of India could be formed by organisations like the Indian Merchants' Chamber, Mumbai, CII and FICCI jointly with appropriate agricultural universities and ICAR and CSIR institutes.
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