World Food Day 2020

 

Happy World Food Day 2020 to all! #WorldFoodDay

We have come a long way, from our ancestors realizing that cooking raw meat leads to fast digestion, to designing plant-based meats & combating the pandemic due to Covid-19. Our evolution and long journey as Homo sapiens has been strongly influenced by food, its processing & preservation. Man & Woman were hunter & gatherers, with their primal instinct being to eat as much food as possible in one go (because of the uncertainty arising from hunting animals and roaming in open spaces). Now we are just one click away from tasty, MSG & acrylamide infused food. But we are still as under-confident as our ancestors, even after the surplus of food supply, as we over-eat even when our body’s nutritional demand has already been met. But this blog shall not discuss our naivety as denizens of this planet, but our triumphs and callousness. 

This year's theme for World Food Day is "Grow, Nourish, Sustain. Together. Our Actions are our Future.” - Let us briefly travel through India’s present scenario.

“Grow” - Farmers are not happy (an understatement). Farmers are this nation’s food providers, but their income, living conditions, suicide rates and the exploitation they face daily is somehow still not enough for us to change our distribution systems. To the farmers’ plight add climate change, minimal application of novel technologies in agriculture, erratic rainfall, lack of awareness and knowledge and farmers growing only a handful known food crops. All these factors are acting as barriers and affecting our nation's growth.

“Nourish” - Food insecurity is so prevalent in India that one in three children is considered as malnourished in India. High rates of poverty, massive migration of rural population into urban areas, climate change leading to uneven weather patterns like droughts, floods, etc., combined with the fact that nearly half living in India suffer from hidden hunger (even with adequate calories, there is a lack of adequate/ particular micronutrient).

“Sustain”, “Together” – With the ever-widening socio-economic gap among us, are we moving forward towards a sustainable future together?  Are we even considering climate change as a real-life issue? Why do the atrocities and discrimination on the grounds of gender, religion, caste, and age go unnoticed? My questions don’t end here.

Sustainability is achieved through togetherness & we are miles apart from each other.

So then how is the “World Food Day 2020” happy? Because there is hope and time for action. The Nobel Peace Prize for 2020 has been awarded to the World Food Programme (WFP) for its efforts to combat hunger and food insecurity. The vicious cycle of wars, human-sacrifice & hunger needs to be broken and only then “peace” can be achieved. (Refer - https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2020/press-release/)

The many technological advancements arising in the food and agriculture industry like edible food packaging, using drones for precision agriculture, 3-D food printers, GMOs, CRISPR Cas which allows precise genetic manipulation for creating crops with beneficial traits, hydroponics, soilless agriculture, etc., have the potential to steer us through world food problems. Joining hands and standing in solidarity to solve public health problems, food insecurity, poverty is the need of the hour. 

Making Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” my mantra, what can I do at the individual level? Well, I’ll try to minimize my share of food wastage.

So let me know in the comments below how you will transform our shared future by simple, yet significant actions and make this world a better place.