The World Food Day will be observed in the country as elsewhere across the globe on Thursday.
The theme of this year day is ‘Family Farming: Feeding the world, caring for the earth’.
This theme has been chosen to raise the profile of family farming and smallholder farmers. It focuses world attention on the significant role of family farming in eradicating hunger and poverty, providing food security and nutrition, improving livelihoods, managing natural resources, protecting the environment, and achieving sustainable development, in particular in rural areas.
According to the State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014 report of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the total number of hungry people in the world is down by 37 million, to 805 million, and 63 countries have reached international hunger-reduction targets before 2015, proof of the progress possible when governments, humanitarian organisations and the private sector come together to make lasting change.
Recent studies have outlined the devastating effect that hunger and under-nutrition can have on the lives of individuals, communities and national economies. Data from a series of studies called the Cost of Hunger in Africa has shown that hunger is capable of reducing a nation’s workforce by 9.4 percent and national GDPs by up to 16.5 percent, severely limiting a developing country’s ability to make much needed investments and grow.
Different organisations have chalked out elaborate programmes to mark the day.
Meanwhile, President Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina have issued separate messages on the occasion.
In his message, the President said family farming plays an important role in boosting production maintaining the balance of the environment.
He urged all to come forward to set up family farms to meet the growing food demand and protect the natural environment.
The Prime Minister, in her message, urged the country’s people and persons concerned to work together alongside the government to ensure food security through agricultural production and encouraging family farming maintaining the environmental balance.
Source: The Daily Star