Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu on Friday urged policy planners at all levels and political leaders to focus their attention on planning and operationalising measures to ensure food and nutrition security to millions of people on urgent basis. “We need to do things differently and more quickly. We need urgent, focussed and concerted action at national, regional and global levels,” Naidu said.

He was delivering the inaugural address at ‘Science for Resilient Food, Nutrition and Livelihoods: Contemporary Challenges’, a global virtual conference organised by The MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF). The meet is being held from August 7 to August 10.

Naidu said that to ensure food and nutrition security to millions, there is an imminent need to take up agriculture in a more efficient, resilient, profitable and productive manner.

“Pre-harvesting and post-harvest losses have to be minimised, market infrastructure, national road and transportation network must be improved, farmers must be able to get their produce from the farm gate to the market at a reasonable cost,” he added.

Citing a report ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World Report 2020’, the Vice-President said, the number of people suffering from hunger in the world has been slowly increasing since 2014. The latest estimate suggests that 9.7 per cent of the world population or nearly 750 million people were exposed to severe levels of food insecurity in 2019.

Highlighting that India has made significant strides in reducing hunger, undernourishment, infant mortality, stunting and wasting among children in recent years, Naidu said the nutrition problem continues to remain due to huge growth in population.

Naidu also said the government of India has accorded the highest priority to combat health and nutrition problems in the country, which includes some of the recent initiatives like Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY) for maternity benefit, POSHAN Abhiyaan or National Nutrition Mission, and Rotavirus vaccination to prevent diarrhoea among young children.

“The recently announced New Education Policy 2020 (NEP) includes a provision to provide nutritious breakfast to school children; (this) is a welcome step,” Naidu said, adding, “But much more needs to be done in the context of the pandemic since hunger and undernourishment may become more acute due to loss of livelihood and economic slowdown.”

The Vice-President also touched upon the need for providing land rights to women farmers.

“In our system, land rights are given only to men but slowly changes are coming with regard to other property. Similarly, land rights, house patta, title or all other property titles should also be given to women members of the family,” Naidu added.

Earlier, while setting the agenda for the conference, Prof MS Swaminathan, Founder Chairman, MSSRF, said that both men and women farmers are equally important, and land rights, if possible, should be enforced to benefit women farmers as well. He also lauded the Prime Minister’s vision of doubling farmers’ income by 2022.