On a recent visit to Pakistan, a delegation of the World Bank declared that food security was the greatest threat currently facing Pakistan, aside from the terrorist threat. During an inspection of the Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited (ZTBL), the country’s leading financial institution for the development of the agricultural sector, the World Bank experts highlighted the urgency of deploying all the available resources to invest in the country’s agriculture. According to the latter, the current investment deficit is estimated at about 3.7 billion euro (419 billion PKR).
Above and beyond the major investment policy problems raised by the World Bank1, it is particularly worrying that food security appears as a threat at local, regional and international level, particularly in countries with political instability. Food insecurity is indeed a veritable time bomb which may have devastating effects on world stability, as witnessed during the last food crisis, in 2008.
This is even more serious as food security and terrorism are unfortunately closely linked, in so far as the former nurtures instability and social frustration, which in turn fuels extremism. Thus we can only truly fight terrorism by putting in place long-term policies to strengthen food security throughout the world.
1 As the situation currently stands, Pakistan does not have a credit policy for small farmers, who make up the majority of the country’s active agricultural population, thus blocking the investment channels |