Ensure food, nutrition security of growing Asian population

Agriculture Minister MK Anwar made the call when he was delivering his speech at a two-day continental workshop on agriculture development that began in Beijing on Saturday, according to a message received here yesterday.

He said food production needs to be doubled in the next 20-25 years to maintain even its present level of food consumption in the region. "concerted and coordinated efforts of all the stakeholders could only face the great challenge."

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Chaired by Chinese Agriculture Minister Du Qinglin, the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) workshop, first of its kind, was also addressed by the relevant ministers from the Asian countries.

Appreciating Thailand for initiating the concept of ACD and shaping its formation, Anwar said, "Unless there be effective steps taken for reducing hunger, the developing countries would be overcrowded, which by itself might be a great threat to world peace."

He said formation of the ACD and close cooperation among the member countries could avert such threats and help achieve the millennium development goals.

He proposed a number of areas for Asian cooperation. The areas are zoning of land resources of the country for optimum land use, use of geographical information system and remote sensing, weather forecasting and early warning systems for natural calamity, phytosanitary and animal and plant quarantine, bio-technology and genetic engineering, mechanisation of agriculture and human resource development.

Meanwhile, the host China has proposed to establish a platform to promote effective cooperation among the ACD countries to enhance shared development in agriculture, upgrade knowledge and technological levels, intensify exchanges in agricultural high-tech for gradual raising of productivity, strengthen agriculture-related information and agricultural institution and enterprise- level cooperation.

Extending support to China's proposal Anwar said it would bring positive changes in the agriculture sector of the region.

"Sharing of experiences among the member countries would help improve their national agriculture research and development systems as a whole," he told the ministerial meet on Asia's agriculture.

Urging united efforts to face external challenges also, he noted that the developed countries protected their agriculture heavily by providing huge support to the growers, maintaining subsidy to export and imposing high import tariff walls. "In spite of their agreement to cut down the support, subsidy and tariffs, they are maintaining the support bypassing the rules," he said.

Highlighting the progress made by Bangladesh in food production and availability in the last three decades, he said Bangladesh increased rice producing from 9.5 million tons in 1971-72 to over 25 million tons in 2002-03 cultivating almost same area of land.

Wheat production increased to 1.5 million tons from 0.06 million tons during the period, he apprised the meet.

He said Bangladesh, through various developments and transformation from local to modern varieties, improved management and several policy reforms helped achieve self-sufficiency in cereal production.

Anwar said that Asia, particularly, South Asian region, including Bangladesh, is facing pressure of population that has serious impact on land and natural resources.

He mentioned that per-capita arable land in this region declined from 0.23 hectare in 1980 to 0.18 in 1995 and is projected to be only 0.11 hectare in 2025.