Dr. Abdur Razzak, the Bangladeshi Food and Disaster Management Minister, indicated on Tuesday, June 8, 2010 that his Government has set a goal to increase by 57 percent its capacity to stockpile food products, in order to reach 2.2 million tons from 1.4 million in the next three years. “The Government already approved four projects to build silos with a capacity of over 400,000 tons to reach the goal of increasing capacity by 800,000 tons in three years,” added the Minister. According to his Government’s forecast, three million tons of food reserves could, by themselves, fully guarantee the nation’s food security. Thus the Bangladeshi aspiration to reach that amount by 2021.

The World Bank pledged to financially assist Bangladesh in building these new silos. This symbolizes an encouraging sign and shows that the financial institution––which was somewhat standing aside until recently ––is again focusing on agricultural issues.

Reconstituting food reserves is in line with a strategy of returning to national public policies to confront the food crises that devastate many developing countries. In fact, these nations are now becoming aware that excessive deregulation in their economies was more detrimental than beneficial in terms of economic development and fighting poverty. Thus the concept of implementing adequate food reserve policies to cope with one of the structural characters of agriculture: The high volatility of agricultural commodity prices.

The problem is that today governments are setting up these new policies without any international cooperation or coordination. Consequently, are we not running the risk that these initiatives––although pertinent at the regional level––become ineffective at the global level if they are not harmonized?