DHAKA: SAARC Agriculture Center (SAC) envisages five projects for building separate food bank for respective member-countries under an agreed recipe to ensure food security.

The member-states will share technologies and cooperate with one another in tackling climate-change impacts through the projects, as climatic calamities created hunger havoc in the past across the world.    

“We are formulating five projects which will start next year,” Dr Rafiqul Islam Mondal, director of the SAC, said about the South Asian cooperation forum’s interaction in one of the core areas.
 
Addressing a workshop organized by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the SAC on ‘SAARC Initiatives on Regional Food Security’ Wednesday in the capital, Dr Mondal said the projects would bring in real cooperation in agriculture and food security among the member-countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.

Once the projects are finalized, funding will be sought from the development partners, including the ADB, he added.  

The focuses of the projects include increasing food production in the regions prone to floods and salinity, droughts, helping marginal farmers, promoting balanced use of fertilizers and chemicals, increasing efficiency to prevent post-harvest losses, upgrading food standards and preventing trans-boundary diseases.

Addressing the inaugural session of the workshop, Agriculture Minister Matia Chowdhury said that it was not enough to develop technologies for increasing food production. “We must know how to tackle natural disasters, which take away our crops.”

ADB Acting Country Director in Bangladesh Hans Carlsson and Director of SAARC Secretariat in Nepal Riaz Hamidullah also spoke at the inaugural session.

BDST: 1815, May 19, 2010
AKR/FA/MUA