Dr. Rajiv Shah, USAID Administrator, speaks at the Bangladesh Food Security Investment Forum in Dhaka on May 26, 2010
I’m in Bangladesh today to participate in the Food Security Investment Forum. What a crowd! The Prime Minister, Her Excellency Sheikh Hasina, who has shown a strong commitment to food security, spoke this morning, as well as luminaries such as Dr. David Nabarro, Dr. Shenggen Fan, and Dr. John Mellor.
We’ve all come together in Bangladesh because this country represents a situation that we need to address now. The rising population, decreasing availability of land for agricultural production, and the growing adverse consequences due to climate change means we need to think dramatically differently about what it takes to feed the future generations in this country.
And it’s not just the quantity of food that matters, it’s the quality. Rice constitutes more than 70% of the caloric intake of an average Bangladeshi suggesting a real need to push for a more diversified diet that includes vegetables and animal protein if we are to address the significant under-nutrition problem that plagues the country.
In his inaugural address, President Barack Obama pledged that the United States would work alongside people in developing nations to help their farms flourish. He followed up that pledge with a promise to commit at least $3.5 billion to food security assistance. With new funding and commitment from the highest levels of our government, we are now better equipped to help countries like Bangladesh in promoting new technologies and better practices for greater production of food, supporting value chains in order to connect farmers to markets, and making the important connection between producing food and eating well.
This forum marks the technical review of several papers and draft investment plan that together will form the basis of a national strategy and detailed investment plan for food security in Bangladesh. The government has been working with the NGO community, donors, private sector and rural communities to develop these priorities and the hard work shows. What’s exciting is to see how the government can lead this effort so that donors like USAID can align our programs against their priorities. There’s been a lot of talk about donor harmonization and alignment in the past, but this is real proof of that happening and an example of the new way USAID is doing business.
Still, we have a long way to go. Bangladesh and other countries have to develop actionable agriculture plans; the governments have to make real commitment to food security, which includes increasing domestic funding but also making tough policy decisions; and donors have to be willing to work together in a new way that we haven’t often done before. But when those things happen, I believe our collective efforts can lead to finding solutions to pressing problems like food insecurity.
This year marks the first time in human history where over 1 billion people on the planet suffer from chronic hunger. This is an urgent issue that Bangladesh is taking very seriously. I hope the global community and other nations will do so too.
Dear Dr. Shah,
Closely linked to food security is the issue of land (and the landless) and access to water for irrigation, not to mention cooking, washing etc.
However, approximately 70% of the rural Bangladeshi population are landless–so this severely impacts their ability to grow crops and/or profit from them. Then, despite the abundance of rivers and lakes in Bangladesh, water for irrigation is carried by humans with tin cans.
The structural problems are immense, but there are some high functioning domestic orgs. which work in the rural areas and in the Hill Tracts with the extreme poor (like the Integrated Development Foundation http://www.idfbd.org/ founded by Zahirul Alam) and I would urge you to work with the NGO’s vs. the govt. of Bangladesh which by the way is allowing illegal logging and land grabbing. I have only praise for IDF and nothing nice to say about the GOB.
All the best to you and congratulations on your new post!
Jami Hubbard Solli
USAID has invested heavily in agricultural development, water resource management, and farming systems in Bangladesh for decades. And past donor collaboration in agriculture was better than in many other developing countries. I don’t see what’s all that new about the current Food Security Initiative, other than it signals a return by USAID to an important activity that it had largely abandoned with the dismantling of its food and agricultural programs in the mid-nineties. So the Obama Administration’s latest focus on food security is a welcome development, but hardly a new field of endeavor for USAID.
Also, it’s worth remembering that population growth rates are still high in Bangladesh and pose long-term challenges to any food security strategy. The country’s fertility rates have fallen from 7 births per woman in the mid-seventies to around 3 at the present time (thanks in part to USAID’s strong support for the country’s family planning program in earlier decades), but so have infant and child mortality rates, which has kept population growth rates elevated. We shouldn’t lose sight of this demographic imperative in all the enthusiastic talk about new short-run technological fixes for enhancing food production and nutritional intake (which continues to be shockingly inadequate for the majority of the country’s children).
Water resources management (WRM) is a work in progress and at times has advanced; however, unstable investment and political climates, strong weather phenomenon, poverty, lack of adequate capacity, and deficient infrastructures have and will continue to challenge developments to water resource management. The State of Honduras is working on a new General Water Law to replace the 1927 Law on Using National Waters and designed to regulate water use and management. The new water law will also create a Water Authority, and the National Council of Water Resources which will serve as an advising and consultative body.
Dear Reverend Sir,
We are NGO.Working in narail area which is south west part of Bangladesh.We are working in Human development since 21 years.We think Food secruty & population control is the main demand of this moment.We honour you all for doing the same.We want to do some thing togather to your Goal..
We hope and pray for yours good health & long bright future
Masud hassan
http://www.chittra.org
23-02-2012
Dear Sir,
I am the student of Jagannath University, Dhaka, Department of Geography & Environment, M.Sc 1st semester. I have chosen a subject by titled “Population growth & food security of Bangladesh : An analysis” for my Project Report. So, I count upon your help. Please do best wish for my project report & my future life.