Hriday: South Asia Struggles with High Food Prices and Chronic Hunger

Hriday: South Asia Struggles with High Food Prices and Chronic Hunger: "South Asia is home to 26% of the global population. Ensuring that the region’s vast population has sustainable access to food is a vital challenge of this generation.

Representatives from 20 Asian countries, international organizations (as well as the United States, and Japan) are presently attending a two-day FAO conference in Bangkok. One solution identified in combatting the region’s hunger is to create emergency reserves of staple food-grains such as rice. Trade-related solutions have also been proposed. In addition, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation has plans to open a seed bank.

Food security is certainly not a new challenge. Academics and policy-makers have been concerned with issues of food production, distribution, prices and population for centuries.  Today, as the world population is expected to hit 7 billion and 925 million people do not have enough food to eat, food security remains one of the most critical health issues of our day.

At present, malnutrition is a major obstacle to the good health of children in particular. About 50% of all underweight children in the world live in South Asia"