FAO Bangladesh held a technical symposium to explore the opportunities and challenges facing national, regional, and global, urban food systems.

Participants – including government officials, civil society, and private sector representatives – shared innovations and experiences for driving sustainable food systems, including lessons learned from the coronavirus pandemic. They discussed how to make Bangladesh’s food system more inclusive, sustainable, resilient, and nutrition-sensitive.

The event, part of a series leading up to World Food Day, was organised by the Food Planning and Monitoring Unit (FPMU), the Ministry of Food, and FAO through its projects Meeting the Undernutrition Challenge (MUCH) and Support for Modelling, Planning and Improving Dhaka’s Food System, with the financial support of the European Union (EU), and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (EKN).

Chief Guest, Dr Mosammat Nazmanara Khanum, Honourable Secretary, Ministry of Food spoke of the need to adapt a food systems approach. She said: "Bangladesh’s food policies have evolved to respond to the challenges facing both rural and urban residents. These policies advocate for adopting a food-systems approach beginning at the farm-level to the consumer’s plate to ensure access to safe, affordable, and nutritious food for all people. The recently approved ‘National Food and Nutrition Security Policy (NFNSP) 2020’ formulated with technical support by MUCH is a step towards this end.”

Naoki Minamiguchi, MUCH Chief Technical Advisor, who was the moderator of the first session, emphasised that enhancing food systems is one of the strongest opportunities to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals on time. Md Hajiqul Islam, Research Director, FPMU, remarked that the symposium was very timely as FPMU is leading the formulation of the Plan of Action of the recently approved NFNSP of Bangladesh 2020, and this urban dimension has to be taken into consideration.

While moving to cities generally brings people more opportunities to access employment, education, and health services, these improvements do not necessarily mean people eat any better. In slum areas of Dhaka, it has been reported that 40 percent of children aged under-five were stunted and 11.6 percent were wasted. A lack of food is not the only problem affecting city dwellers: micronutrient malnutrition of various forms affects between a third to half of the population across all age groups. Concurrently, obesity among adult women is also on the rise, with 36 percent overweight or obese. With this double burden of malnutrition emerging, the implications for non-communicable diseases are of concern.

“Urban food systems are closely related to many other urban challenges and policies, therefore it is essential to adopt an approach that is interdisciplinary and  inter-institutional,” said the symposium's Guest of Honour, Koen Everaert, Team Leader of Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Development Section, Delegation of the EU to Bangladesh.

Delivering the keynote presentation, Kostas G. Stamoulis, Senior Advisor on Food Security and Nutrition and Urban Food Systems, FAO, emphasised that the food systems approach to food security and nutrition (FSN) is a necessity. Sridhar Dharmapuri, Senior Food Safety and Nutrition Officer, FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, stressed the importance of improving urban food systems. Rudaba Khondker, Country Director, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, Bangladesh drew the attention of the participants to the state of nutrition in urban areas of Bangladesh, while Inge Brouwer of Wageningen University presented the role of food systems in healthier diets.

“Urbanization continues to have a significant impact on the environment around us, including access to one of our most basic needs – food, as well as food consumption and diet pattern. City governments are pressed to think of new policies and services to ensure that people living in cities, especially the poor, are always able to buy safe, affordable, and nutritious food”, said John Taylor, CTA of the Dhaka Food System project. This was echoed by the Guest of Honour, Folkert de Jager, First Secretary, Water Management and Food Security, EKN and Tariq Bin Yousuf, Chief Town Planner and Superintendent Engineer from the Dhaka North City Corporation.

Mohammed Yousuf, Director General, Department of Agricultural Marketing, presented the ‘Food for Nation’ initiative which is the first government digital market platform that links farmers, agri-businesses and consumers, and which has now more than 2.5 lakh individuals and entities registered. Other panellists from the private sector and social enterprises, SHWAPNO, APON Wellbeing, Prakriti Farming and the SIG Combibloc Bangladesh also shared their initiatives that contribute to improving food and nutrition status in urban areas. During the panel discussion, multi sectoral collaboration and the need for data to track ‘farm to fork’ (rural and urban linkages) were highlighted.

Participants also called for sustained and stronger collaboration, including leveraging technologies and innovations, to end hunger, fight obesity and malnutrition, minimize food loss and waste, and tackle the impact of COVID-19 on the urban population.

This technical symposium is the fourth in a series. Previous symposia focused on nutrition-sensitive agriculture (2016), nutrition-sensitive social protection (2017) and nutrition-sensitive water, sanitation and hygiene (2018). Key findings and recommendations from Bangladesh's innovative actions, delivered in this symposium, will support the preparation of the NFNSP Plan of Action, on-going reforms of the social protection system and the achievement of SDGs as well as be submitted to the UN Food Systems Summit Scientific Group.

The symposium can be viewed at: https://bit.ly/3iVhPww and https://bitly.is/36UYYzw