Two consultants from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) are currently on island on what they describe as a “fact finding” mission as Dominica sets eye on launching a Food Security Early Warning System.
Food and Nutrition Consultant of the FAO, Dr Ballayram said that the system is currently in the design phase and the FAO is currently establishing this type of system in all the CARICOM countries in the region.
“Specifically to Dominica, this early warning system has to do with food security which is defined as when everyone has physical and economic access to safe and nutritious food and they are not at risk of losing that access,” he said.
Ballayram pointed out that food security has to deal with four main components.
“First food must be available, people must have access to that food, people must use that food and consume it in a way that would help their nutrition and finally there should be stability to the three components aforementioned,” he said.
He stated that a Food Security Early Warning System would be providing alerts to policy makers of any impending crisis to the four pillars of food security.
“Long before an impending crisis policy makers will have an insight as to those crises and will be able to take corrective and mitigative action so that food security is not compromised,” Dr. Ballayram stated.
Dr Ballayram also indicated that his tasks include pointing out groups vulnerable to food security.
“When we think of food security we know that everyone should be food secure but because of inequality in society access to food security varies,” he stated. “So whenever there is a crisis these vulnerable groups will be affected by those crisis and because those people livelihoods are vulnerable, it is my tasks to identify them and assess what is causing that vulnerability and what can be done to address it.”
He stated further that energy supply per person, per day for fats and sweetness are in excess of the dietary requirements of the household and that poses a problem for obesity. On the other hand the production of fruits and vegetables is not meeting the recommended dietary allowances
Dr Stephen Louis, Management Information Systems Consultant, noted that his role is to conduct a situation analysis of available systems within the countries that support information on food and nutrition security.
Not before bloody time, things are so behind times people are eating anything knot knowing what the hell they are eating, just because they think it’s good.