The government is moving ahead prepared to maintain food security into the foreseeable future, Agriculture Minister Dr Abdur Razzaque said Tuesday.
To make food security sustainable by facing various challenges including increasing population growth, loss of agricultural land, climate change, agriculture and food systems have to be transformed and updated. The Government of Bangladesh is working towards that goal, he said.
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The minister was speaking as a panelist at the plenary session on transforming agro-food systems at the ongoing UN Food Systems Summit at the Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters of the United Nations in Rome on Tuesday morning.
The minister said, “The government is giving a huge subsidy to agriculture for food security. Such huge subsidies are rare all over the world. We are giving more subsidies than other countries in the world. The Government of Bangladesh will continue this subsidy in the future.”
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He said the government has taken a massive integrated programme to transform the agro-food system. “The implementation of partner projects worth Tk 7,200 crore have started to further increase agricultural production, modernize the marketing system, develop climate resilient agriculture and process agricultural products. Cooperation is also being sought from FAO.”
“With the implementation of the election promises of the present government under the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the bottomless country is now in the queue of the developed world. The world considers us role models. And agriculture has a huge role to play in this,” he added.
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The minister said it was necessary to implement the five-point proposal presented by Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to ensure food security for every person through the transformation of the world's agro-food system.
The session was informed that in 2021, 700-880 million people worldwide were affected by hunger and suffering from hunger. By 2030, 670 million people will have to deal with hunger. In such a situation, agro-food system transformation will act as a key determinant in achieving the 17 SDGs by 2030.