New Delhi, Aug 7 (UNI) Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu on Friday called for reorienting agricultural priorities towards more nutrition-sensitive food.
He also highlighted the need to constantly review the country's food, agriculture and trade policies
according to the times.
Inaugurating the virtual consultation 'Science for Resilient Food, Nutrition and Livelihoods' organised by the M S Swaminathan Foundation (MSSRF), the Vice-President maintained that India has made significant strides in reducing hunger, undernourishment, infant mortality and expressed satisfaction that the Union Government has accorded the highest priority to combating health and nutrition problems in the country.
However, admitting the impact of Covid pandemic on the lives and livelihood, Mr Naidu said the problem of hunger and undernourishment may become more acute with the Corona induced global economic slowdown.
The Vice-President lauded Indian farmers for record food grain production despite so many challenges and limitations during the lockdown period.
He wanted the policy makers to promote investment in irrigation infrastructure and focus on R&D to raise productivity of nutritious foods and help reduce their cost.
Highlighting the importance of anticipatory research, he said that anticipatory warning benefitted the farmers during recent locust attacks.
He called for similar anticipatory warnings to be made for natural hazards such as floods.
Listing a number of initiatives taken by the government for doubling the farmers’ income, the Vice-President hoped that the conference will help make the national policies more robust by providing the necessary impetus to the process of policy implementation.
Dr M S Swaminathan, Prof K Vijayaraghavan and scientists and researchers from India and abroad joined in the online consultation.
Calling for seamless technology transfer and farmer education, Mr Naidu said our laboratories must be firmly linked to farms and fields.
Drawing attention towards impacts associated with poor diet quality and said "both undernutrition and obesity are significant risk factors for Non-Communicable Diseases".
"We must step up investments in improved storage, processing and preservation to retain the nutritional value of food products, rather than investing in highly processed foods," he opined.
Citing a UN report which states the number of people suffering from hunger in the world has been slowly increasing in recent years, Mr Naidu said that nearly 750 million people were exposed to severe levels of food insecurity in the world in 2019.
"We need urgent, focussed and concerted action at national, regional and global levels," he said to address this issue.
Lauding Prof M S Swaminathan as a visionary scientist and the architect of India’s Green Revolution, the Vice president commended MSSRF for its pro-poor, pro-women and pro-nature approach.
Expressing gratitude to Dr Swaminathan for helping farmers through technology, the Vice-President said he closely follows Dr Swaminathan’s suggestions and would pursue them at all levels, including Parliament.
Mr Naidu also endorsed Dr Swaminathan’s suggestion to provide land rights to the women. "Land rights, pattas and all other property should be jointly in the name of both man and woman," he said.
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