KARACHI: While efforts revolving around agriculture policy revisits, service delivery as well as production and market interventions have been made to address food insecurity in Pakistan, there has been no attention on the key missing links between agriculture and nutrition such as limited and unequal access to land, unequal gender relations and patriarchy that lead to anti-nutrition choices in consumption and care.

These views were expressed at a dialogue, Food Security Interventions: A Dialogue on the Missing Links, held at a hotel on Friday. The event was organised by the Pakistan Institute of Labour, Education and Research (Piler).

Representing Save the Children, Iqbal Detho gave a presentation on Pakistan’s nutrition status. He said that Pakistan lagged far behind in achieving its infant and maternal health targets while other regional countries were making progress. About 352,000 children between the age group of one and five died every year in Pakistan that ranked 146th in the human development index of 186 countries, he said. “About 35pc children die of malnutrition and 16.8pc are food insecure with severe hunger. Sindh is worst in terms of food security where 72pc people are food insecure,” he said, adding that only two health indicators relating to iodine deficiency in children and mother had improved in a decade.

He explained that nutrition, which was normally taken as a health subject, was an inter-sectoral issue. He highlighted the need to link Benazir Income Support Programme to immunisation.

Karamat Ali who heads Piler said that Pakistan was the only country where the number of ‘absentee landlords’ and landless people was on the rise. He was of the opinion that political parties might have differences over many other issues but they were all united on not having land reforms.

“The federal government has blatantly declared that the state has no responsibility towards its people,” he said while quoting a recent address of the prime minister in which he had stated that it’s not government job to run factories. “What he [the prime minister] forgot to say is that it’s also not government’s job to run a state like a factory but according to the constitution,” he remarked.

Criticising the government for accepting all conditions of the International Monetary Fund, he said the step, among other things, would lead to privatisation and cut in subsidies that would directly affect the less privileged class.

About labour rights, he said only two per cent of country’s workforce was united under the umbrella of a union. By discouraging legal means to express dissent and raise voice for rights, the state was forcing people to take up arms, he added. “It’s a common observation that militant groups find more recruitment from areas that are governed by big landlords and where most people are landless,” he remarked.

Senior researcher Haris Gazder briefed the audience about his study, Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia. The contribution of agriculture to the GDP, he said, had gone down from 26pc to 21pc from 1995-96 to 2010-11. The labour force, however, was almost the same and 45pc of the people were still employed in the agriculture sector, he said. The number of men associated with the agriculture sector had declined from 43pc to 34pc though women’s number had slightly increased from 73pc to 74pc from 1996 to 2010, he added.

“Thirty per cent of the agricultural land is owned by one per cent people while 52pc people in rural areas are landless,” he said, while emphasising the need for land reforms.

Dr Aly Ercelean of the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum also spoke.

Prof Praveen Jha of the Centre of Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, spoke via video link from India.