ISLAMABAD, Feb 20: The draft of National Food and Nutrition Security Policy (NF&NSP), intending to counter food insecurity in the country and with the objective to reduce the current food insecurity situation by 50 per cent by 2030, has been finalised.

With this policy, the Ministry of National Food Security and Research (NFS&R) aims at bringing down poverty and food insecurity to zero level by 2050. The ministry has sent the final draft to all provinces and other stake holders for comments which would be incorporated as appropriate.

The objectives of the policy includes establishing the vision and institutional structures which would allow NFS&R to facilitate a process involving federal and provincial authorities including ministries, departments, development partners, civil society and private sector through the establishment of a Food and Nutrition Security Council (FNSC) at national, provincial and district level.

The main role of FNSC would be to ensure coordination of federal and provincial ministries and government agencies in the fight against hunger and malnutrition, and to ensure dialogue between government and civil society to devise some specific objective and strategies aimed at achieving a comprehensive food and nutritional security by increasing food supplies.

The ministry of food security has envisaged the long term goals in the policy to ensure that all Pakistanis have physical and economic access to enough nutritious foods on sustainable basis for an active, healthy life and the ways in which food is produced and distributed shall be environment friendly and sustainable.

“Both the production and consumption of food should be governed by social values that are just and equitable as well as moral, ethical and uphold human dignity,” the policy draft notes. “To reduce the current food insecurity proportion with a focus on halving malnutrition by 2030 and to bring poverty, food insecurity proportion to zero level by 2050,” it further reads.

Four main policy features of the Policy are Sustainable Food Availability, Food Accessibility, Food Utilisation and Nutrition and Stability in Food Supplies.

Food availability refers to food that is sufficient in appropriate quantities and qualities supplied through domestic production or imports.

According to the proposed policy, in the wake of growing population of Pakistan, the food demands of the country shall naturally increase. However, future food demands would be different from today because of different factors like increase in proportion of older people due to age longevity, greater urbanisation and emergence of cities, changes in family composition and structure, changes in food consumption and patterns and habits.