Kathmandu, November 18:

Nepal will contribute 4,000 tonnes of food to the SAARC Food Bank that will have a total capacity of 43,000 metric tonnes, said secretary at Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives Tek Bahadur Thapa addressing National Forum on Food Security, Farmers’ Rights and Climate Change organised by South Asia Watch for Trade, Economics and Environment (SAWTEE) here today.

Recently, there was an extraordinary meeting of regional Agriculture Ministers in New Delhi to discuss regional policy and institutional priorities and challenges. The meeting was serious on solving food crisis. “If food crisis continues, it will hurt the MDGs and SDGs also,” chairperson of SAWTEE Nepal Dr Posh Raj Pandey said, adding that government should introduce policy on food security and reduce risk by increasing people’s purchasing power during such crisis.

Dr Pratap Shrestha, executive director at Local Initiative for Bio-diversity, Research and Development said that poor infrastructure like irrigation and road is hindering growth of agriculture that is major livelihood of 52 per cent people in this region.

The forum also discussed operationalising food security policies and institutional mechanism in regional and national context, farmers’ rig-hts to seeds and food security.