Over 130 nations will tomorrow commemorate World Food Day, an event which is held on 16 October every year. This comes at a time when Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has announced that Kenya is in a good position to become food secure by 2030 which is the global food security deadline.
Gabriel Rugalema, FAO Kenya Country Representative, said the current government interventions and strategies are capable of ensuring that Kenya becomes food secure by the time.
“The peaceful environment in this country and the devolved system of governance is good environments for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals on food security and poverty reduction since it is already making the country make economic growth,” said Rugalema in Nairobi last week.
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However, this will only come true if investments in water, irrigation and availability of news seeds are given priority.
“Lack of quality seeds, water and access to market are still issues that require concerted efforts to enable farmers earn their due benefits as they produce enough food for populations,” he said.
He called on all stakeholders to increase awareness on food consumption to enable populations eat the right food.
“Many people have food in plenty but due to lack of information they end up eating wrong foods that lead to obesity and stunting,” Rugalema noted.
He called on the government to help look at ways of solving permanently post-harvest food loss at production, transport and markets levels to enable populations access the foods in good time.
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Rugalema also said that the farmers require good agricultural practices such as Climate Smart Agriculture to enable them cope with the climate change.
FAO will tomorrow commemorate about 73 years since its founding in 1945. Among its list of events, FAO will launch the State of Food and Agriculture report 2018 which explores how migration is linked to food security, agriculture and rural development.
The report will be presented at a press conference with FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva and Assistant Director-General for Economic and Social Development Kostas Stamoulis.
The UN agricultural body will also open the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) which is the leading international platform for policy coherence and convergence on food security and nutrition.
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CFS sessions (15-19 October) include improving food systems and nutrition, and the Right to Food Guidelines.
The opening ceremony whose theme is “Our actions are our future” will include speeches by FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva and the CFS Chair Mario Arvelo.