Food and Agriculture Policies

Food and agriculture policies and programmes have a major role to play in improving a country’s nutritional outcomes. There is a great need for increased awareness of the multi-sectoral nature of nutrition and political will to address the problems of under nutrition and overweight and obesity. Nutrition as a standalone policy priority was recognized in 2002 by the Government of Pakistan with the establishment of a Nutrition Wing within the Ministry of Health. The National Nutrition Programme failed to evolve into an effective or comprehensive intervention, and its activities were limited to supplementing the existing LHW programme and public-private initiatives for food fortification. Engesveen et al. (2009) use government drafted Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP), United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) documents and the Nutrition Governance score (an index developed by the World Health Organisation tracking nutrition policies and programmes in a country) to assess the commitment to reduction of malnutrition. A review of documents for Pakistan shows a relatively weak response from public sector evident by PRSP and Nutrition Governance indicators. A high priority has been given to nutrition in the documents of UN agencies15. The National Integrated Nutrition Strategy, proposed in 2011, has little correspondence with the earlier National Nutrition Programme. National nutrition as well as agriculture policies have incorporated nutrition objectives and indicators to measure progress, targeted at vulnerable and women and focused on a diversified food production. However, some policies did not emphasize interventions to improve processing, storage, marketing and utilization of food. Very few have assessed impact of their policies on nutrition outcomes. Developing increased nutrition-focused human resources capacity is a critical component of implementing multi-sectoral approaches to achieving food and nutrition security. Robust monitoring and evaluation and innovative monitoring tools are essential to understand the impact and effectiveness of nutrition-focused policies and programmes. The rising levels of overweight and obesity, which often exist alongside under-nutrition, are a challenge that must be addressed moving forward.

The Government of Pakistan (GoP) adopted a long-term development strategy in 2014 aiming at transforming Pakistan into an upper middle-income country by 2025 and a top ten economy by 2047. The vision focuses on macro-economic stability through the promotion of inclusive growth, and visualizes a hunger-free Pakistan through innovative and cost-effective strategies. Most of the goals of Vision 2025 are being implemented through the Federal Public Sector Development Programme (FPSDP) 2014. The government developed the 11th Five Year Plan (2013–2018) for the implementation of Vision 2025. Its main objective is to achieve a stable growth rate to ensure national food security, reduce rural poverty, and support the overall growth of the country including agriculture and related sectors (water, power, industry).

In 2013, the Agriculture and Food Security Policy (2013) was drafted, with an objective of halving malnutrition by 2030 and bringing food insecurity down to zero by 2050. An essential part of this policy is to achieve food security and to raise overall rates of economic growth for the benefit of all social classes of society. In 2015, the Ministry of Food Security and Research (MNFSR) drafted the National Agriculture and Food Security Action Plan (2015), which will be a part of the comprehensive National Agriculture and Food Security policy. Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces have developed

agriculture policies that are pending for approval. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is in the process of formulating an Agriculture Policy/FATA Agriculture Action Plan, with technical support from FAO. The Government of Sindh has formulated a Draft Food Security Policy, which is now in the process of multi-stakeholder consultations. Further, in 2013 the government designed an Inter-sectoral Nutritional Strategy, which is currently in its implementation stage.

The Prime Minister of Pakistan launched National Zero Hunger Action Plan (2012–2017), to alleviate food insecurity, in 2013. The strategy is based on granting access to food, and aims at strengthening family farming. Some of the major interventions include: providing support to food-insecure households through cash or food distribution of nutritious and fortified commodities in disaster-hit areas; expanding farm outputs and market access; implementing targeted social safety nets such as school feeding programmes; rationalizing market prices of food commodities; and increasing diet diversification.

Key Policy Trends 2007-2016

Agriculture has a direct impact on household food security through drivers such as food availability and income distribution. The agricultural sector plays an important role in the availability of diverse and nutrition-dense foods. For agricultural households, the connection between agriculture and nutrition goes a step further with agriculture being a source of income which directly affects nutrition through both food consumption and food absorption.

 The link between agriculture and nutrition runs both ways since good nutrition (and health) has an impact on the ability to carry out agricultural labour. Time spent on agricultural labour by a woman also impacts nutrition since it reduces time for childcare (one of the underlying causes of a child’s nutritional status) and affects nutritional requirements of a woman.

Producer Oriented Policy Decisions

The agricultural sector is pivotal in sustaining food security; hence, the government has made it a priority for the economy.

Enhancing access of small and marginalized farmers to formal credit Credit

Facilities have been identified by the government as an integral part of the process of commercialization of the country’s rural economy, including the agriculture sector. The State Bank has decided to enhance overall credit to 32% for the year 2015/16, and a 20% increase in 2016/17. An NGO set up namely National Rural Support Programme (NRSP) was established in 1991 to improve the credit access to small

and marginalized farmers. This worked at a limited scale for the farmers who had no access to other formal credit facilities such as state owned banks and micro-finance institutions in the private sector recognized by the government. NRSP offers training, institutional support, microcredit, infrastructure development and natural resource management. In 2015, the government announced the Credit Guarantee Scheme for Small and Marginalized Farmers, which became operational in 2016. The objective is to encourage banks to finance small-scale farmers having no access to banking facilities. In the same year Prime Minister’s Agriculture Package was announced through which farmers will be given subsidies, grants and loan advances worth PKR 341 billion (US$3 billion) by the government for introducing progressive agriculture on scientific lines, reducing the production cost of crops, and making small-scale farmers prosperous.

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