Report presented at seminar in Dubai 59 % families in SL unable to meet food requirement

Fifty-nine (59) percent of families of the total population in Sri Lanka have not been able to meet the required level of food due to the declining food production and inflation in 2022, it was revealed at an international seminar, held in Dubai recently.    “28 percent or 6.3 million people were facing a serious scarcity of food in Sri Lanka,” it was revealed.   The need to boost the agricultural productivity, to reduce the crop devastation caused by blights and pests to the barest minimum, preventing the post-harvest crop devastation, and introducing innovative methods to the agricultural sector, and increasing the viability of obtaining food were highlighted as alternatives during the event.   

The US Soya Bean Export Council (USSEC) has organized this seminar on how the world community should adopt sustainable development. Experts and seniors in different fields from several countries participated and they discussed on requirements for sustainable development.   

How the population increase, climatic changes, declining productivity, poor income levels, poverty, and socio-economic issues could be addressed within the scope of sustainable development were taken up at length.   

Regional Agricultural Attaché, US Department of Agriculture, and Regional Director of South Asia and Sub Sahara of African USSEC, Sri Lanka’s representative, Professor of Agricultural Science and Food Technology of Peradeniya University, Iresha Mendis and several scholars addressed the seminar.   

They stressed on the use of unrenewable assets more efficiently, and streamlining the control of agricultural resources. They paid particular attention on the need of environmental protection in industrialization and expanding ways and means for it all over the world. The seminar stressed on promoting the requirements of food while securing the quality the environment and intensifying the natural assets. Food security in the South Asian countries with the highest ratio of population below the poverty line, and the nutritional issues affecting them were taken up at the seminar.