Food insecurity in Pakistan  

In Pakistan physical and economic access as well as poor health is major constraints to overcome food insecurity. This worst state of affairs can be attributed the population explosion during the past few decades and the conversion of agriculture land into residential and commercial places.

 The rate of growth of population in Pakistan is much higher than other developed or even developing countries, which has resulted in immense increase in population of the country.

It has led to increased demand for residential places as well as commercial enterprises, therefore agriculture lands were converted into residential and commercial places.

The shrinking of agriculture lands coupled with lack of innovative processes to increase yield of crops has resulted in decreased food supply from agriculture sector.

Similar is the case with livestock sector, where the lack of proper breeding policy and vigorous slaughtering of valuable animals for meat purpose has led to decreased animal population and low supply of meat.

 Still most of the other countries are better than Pakistan on Food Security Risk Index. There are several reasons for this state of affairs but lack of proper planning and misplaced priorities of the rulers seems the most obvious ones.

The experts are of the opinion that Food insecurity may lead to a threat to law and order in the world and the vice versa.

Food insecurity has been recognized as one of the causes of militancy in the world and Pakistan being one of the lowest ranking countries on the Food Security Risk Index is vulnerable to this threat.

The extremist forces can appeal to the emotions of under privileged and food insecure people and they may motivate them to commit crimes.

Moreover food insecurity can lead to class conflict in a society which can be seen in Pakistan in its rudimentary state. According to some estimates half of the population of Pakistan is food insecure.


July 2015

By Shabbir Ahmad
Source: Pakistan Observer