LAHORE: The University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS) Lahore arranged a National Dialogue on ‘Sustainable Food Security in Pakistan’ here at City Campus Lahore.
UVAS Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Nasim Ahmad and Prof Dr Kauser Abdullah Malik co-chaired the discussion and sought recommendation/suggestions and technical input from stakeholders regarding the major challenges of food security, institutional arrangements to address these challenges for sustainable food security in Pakistan.
Vice-Chancellor University of Education Lahore Prof Dr Talat Naseer Pasha, Vice-Chancellor MNS University of Agriculture Multan Prof Dr Asif Ali, Cholistan University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences Bahawalpur Prof Dr Muhammad Sajjad Khan, Chairman Four Brothers Group Engr Javed Saleem Qureshi and a number of stakeholders from public and private sectors across the country including academicians, researchers and professionals from poultry & dairy industries participated in the dialogue.
Speaking on the occasion, Prof Dr Nasim Ahmad said that UVAS arranged this dialogue in connection with food security consortium constituted by the Chancellor/Governor Punjab to address food security issues in the country. He said that the objective of the national dialogue was to bring together stakeholders from various sectors to discuss and develop strategies to address food security challenges in our country.
He said dialogue aims to promote cooperation, exchange knowledge and identify actionable solutions to ensure food security for all citizens. He said that UVAS is playing the role of a think tank/troubleshooter to solve livestock, poultry and dairy industries issues.
Prof Dr Kauser Abdullah Malik said that agriculture sector is a backbone of our country and it is direly needed to make farmers friendly policies along with political support/administrative stability to boost agriculture sector. Earlier Chairman Department of Animal Nutrition Dr M Naveed-ul-Haque gave a detailed overview of the food security current status in Pakistan.
All the stakeholders put forward various recommendations related to seed, soil, fertilizer, genetics, raw material prices, human resource, storage, food safety, population growth, rangeland, dietary diversification, waste management, price capping of commodities, climate change, and governance in agriculture. They suggested starting work on crops diversification, data keeping about import and export items, actively working on agriculture neglected land & organic waste to compost.
They recommended preparing long term and short term seed security policies and creating awareness regarding quality seed along with promotion of maize & millet. They recommended actively working on agriculture marketing to address marketing issues and suggested building storage to prevent post harvesting losses.
They also suggested initiating work on climate change, prevention of polluted water, misuse of chemicals and urged all essential items should be tax free even after processing such as meat.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023