‘Nutrition-sensitive agriculture, conscious eating reshape the importance of food’
World Food Day celebrated on October 16 is an initiative by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations.
This year, the emphasis is on celebrating individuals who have contributed to building a sustainable world where no one has to go hungry. The idea is that we all can be food heroes and contribute to building a hunger-free world. Shiny Christy, UNESCO TAGe Fellow-India, says that food defines culture, tradition, nourishment not just for the body but for the larger realm of the planet itself. “Once we understand how to grow food it is like printing your own money. The path to the future heavily depends on localisation, indigenous knowledge and conscious choice of production and consumption of food. This is the time to reconstruct the food system. The food system is a matrix where every individual contributes to a larger system. Personal choices become community choices and community choice becomes a cultural choice. Every individual is a potential human who needs to question the choice and production of food. If you live in harmony with nature you will live in harmony with yourself. Understanding the natural environment will enable you to grow your food thereby creating a hunger-free world,” says Shiny.
Hunger is man-made. Food is not and should be not. “Nature has created a system where every individual who knows the land and its features can learn how to grow food.”
Former cancer researcher Senthil Kumar Balu opines, “Nutrition-sensitive agriculture and conscious eating greatly reshapes the importance of food besides the grossly misunderstood gastronomical satisfaction and equally uplifts the local economy through sustainable farming. World Food Day celebration invariably focuses on global hunger and how small sustainable changes by every individual on a daily basis can greatly impact livelihood for a marginalised population, creating a healthy future generation and managing poverty. We need a better understanding of what we buy, where we source our ingredients and a religious understanding of the overloading supply to waste ratio. And most importantly, ‘back to roots’ isn’t a cliche or vogue but a bare necessity for future agrarian crisis and climate change.”
