Food Grain Status in Member Countries

Assuring food security for its people is an important goal for all the member countries of SAARC and the timely availability of adequate food on affordable terms is an important indicator of the progress made in this regard. Significant progress achieved by the SAARC countries in this context needs sustained efforts. It also calls for regularly monitoring various key indicators relating to agriculture production, and continuously adjusting our development programmes to pragmatically address our various concerns regarding food production, their supply and marketing.

Within the SAARC framework, Technical Committees on Agriculture and Rural Development have been focusing on these issues to implement concrete regional programmes of cooperation. SAARC has also established a Food Security Reserve to extend assistance to member countries in times of emergencies. Several other initiatives are also at different phases of implementation to supplement collaborative efforts in this key area. One such area identified was the necessity to regularly update the foodgrain status of SAARC member countries on a continuous basis to facilitate policy formulation and implementation of appropriate programmes in the area of agriculture, especially food production.

To fill up a very important knowledge-gap in this area, the Governing Board of SAARC Food Security Reserve suggested during its Fifth meeting that SAARC Secretariat should regularly bring out a bulletin entitled “Foodgrain status in SAARC member states”. The first compilation of the information received from Member States is published in this issue of SPECTRUM. It is hoped that policy makers and development administrators would find the figures not only revealing but also useful in their work.


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