“Food Security, Nutrition Are Important Development”

-FAO Representative

By T. Saye Goinleh

United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative in Liberia, Madam Mariatou Njie, says food security and nutrition are recognized as important for the overall development of a Country and have been highlighted among the long-term fundamental issues in national economic development.

Speaking through a proxy Jesse Yuan who is a staff of the FAO program support, Madam Njie made the statement Tuesday, August, 7, 2018 at program marking the 2018 Comprehensive Food Security and Nutrition Survey (CFSNS) validation and response option workshop held at a local Hotel in Monrovia.

According to the FAO representative to Liberia, fighting hunger in a changing world demands that staying vigilant together in the efforts to collect, analyze and disseminate information that is so very critical for designing and implementing hunger solutions which can save lives in emergencies, well as putting the hungry poor on the path to food security.

She lamented that understanding food security and vulnerability has always been challenging, noting that yet; the emergence of relatively new phenomena such as the high food and fuel prices, terrorism, the global financial crisis, and climate change, all highlight the need to better understand the livelihood of vulnerable populations so effective policies and actions can be implemented to address the root causes of hunger.

Madam Njie asserted that to tackle hunger, institutions first need to understand three key factors, how food can be made available to people, how they can economically and physically access food and how they utilize it.

‘’Understanding the constraints underlying each of these factors is a necessary condition for the designing and implementation of appropriate and effective hunger reduction strategies’’, Madam Njie reminded the audience.

She however told the gathering that the CFSNS options are unique tools designed to understand these factors, adding that it describes the profile of the food, insecure and vulnerable households, identifies the root causes of hunger, and analyses risks and emerging vulnerabilities among populations.

The FAO head of Liberia office also further averred that despite the efforts, poverty in Liberia remains pervasive, especially within a significant portion of the population whose economic activities move around agriculture, fishing and natural resources.

Madam Njie stressed that the potentials of the agriculture sector remain largely untapped with less than half of the arable lands under cultivation, yields well below global average and persistent vulnerable to low levels of technology and mechanization.