President Mamnoon Hussain has stated that as the recent research in agriculture has opened up new vistas of progress, Pakistan’s agriculture has the strength to sustain its fast growing population.
“Pakistan’s scientists should learn from these scientific breakthroughs and improvise them to introduce innovation and knowledge best suited to our circumstances,” he said in his message on the occasion of World Food Day being observed on Wednesday (October 16). He, however, pointed out that for agrarian economies like Pakistan, the need for giving greater attention towards the issue of food security had increased manifold as “we are faced with resource and technology constraints to boost agricultural productivity for meeting the food requirements of a growing population.”
The President said, “The observance of World Food Day each year on 16th October serves to highlight the challenge that the world is facing towards ensuring food security for a rapidly growing population in the backdrop of some serious concerns such as uneven distribution of resources, volatility of food prices, water scarcity, erratic climatic changes and the fast changing socio-economic patterns of societies.”
“The theme for this year’s World Food Day, “Sustainable Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition” highlights the critical role of sustainable food systems towards ensuring food security,” he added. The President expressed his confidence that this call would reinforce the need for necessary policy interventions, action plans and promotion of international co-operation to strengthen and facilitate all the processes and infrastructure that are involved in ensuring sustainable food systems and would provide momentum to the efforts aimed at addressing social, political, economic and environmental issues that have direct impact on food security and nutrition.
