Seminar on Food Security

Reported By Jabin Tahmina Haque

An in-house seminar has been organized at Unnayan Onneshan’s conference room on November 07, 2009 focusing mainly on food insecurity linked with urban poverty and landlessness in rural Bangladesh. Tahera Akhter, research associate of the organisation, presented paper linking urban poverty to the food security which will be used as a background paper for Unnayan Onneshan’s upcoming national seminar on food security. The underlying assumption is that climate induced displaced people in urban slums will increase urban poverty and poverty threatens food security. She has tried to develop a relation between food security and living conditions of urban poor. The participants shared their opinions after presentation, where questions were raised on non food items relating to food security of slum dwellers. 

Next to Tahera, Mehruna Islam Chowdhury presented her research work on ‘Impact of Landlessness on ‘Access to Food’: Experience of Small and Marginal Farmers in Rural Bangladesh' in the seminar. The paper aims to analyze the impact of landlessness on food security through in-depth interviews of small and marginal farmers in the rural areas. The discussion centered on accepting a common definition of ‘landlessness’ that is applicable to all physiographic units, accepted by existing institutions. Finally the participants agreed to use the definition of FAO, where landlessness is defined as a situation of having less than 0 .2 acre or no land.