Given the growing trend of worldwide food shortages, it is fitting that Jamaica should ensure its own food security by producing enough to feed its people.
Many financial experts endorse this as a strategy for national development, yet at the same time they bemoan the great waste occasioned from frequent gluts of produce on the market that cannot be sold (The Sunday Gleaner, October 12).
Data on hunger and poverty in the Caribbean region indicate that enough food is already available for all, but the main problem is having adequate access to this food. Jamaican data show that since the 1970s, supply has exceeded population goals for energy and protein and that accessibility is more of a problem than the actual availability. Accessibility is defined as the ability of persons to actually obtain the available food and resources.
Inequitable distribution of food is present at all levels of society from the national to household level and results in dispro-portionate access to food whereby some persons get too much and consequently suffer from obesity while others receive too little.
Hungry children
In developing countries, such as Jamaica, obesity and the chronic disorders occur side by side with the lingering problem of underweight in schoolchildren. Food deprivation, hunger and undernourishment have been on the decline in Jamaica, but are still too high in some groups.
Many of the hungry in Jamaica are schoolchildren. Baseline data of a project in 1999 indicated that 40 per cent of students in project schools experienced daily short-term hunger from inadequate breakfast, and this consequently affected school performance.
In July 2003, the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger proposed that school-feeding programmes should start linking school feeding with agricultural development through the purchase of locally/domestically produced food, school gardens and incorporating agriculture into the school curricula. The Ministry of Agriculture is currently strengthening school gardens, but this is not linked to school feeding.
Role of Nutrition
By factoring nutritional needs into the equation, we can ensure that surplus food production reaches the most vulnerable while at the same time minimising waste.
Nutritionists are able to calculate scientifically the nutritional needs of the target population such as schoolchildren and advise agricultural planners how much of specific foods will be needed according to the school menus and population to be served. Farmers can be better advised which foods and how much should be produced to meet the needs of their local communities.
Glut on market
The school population offers a large and captive consumer market for the development of local/community agriculture. Instead of dumping healthful food products in glut, these should enter the school-feeding programme.
A stable and reliable system is needed to facilitate the movement of food from farm to schools. Farmers need to know what to produce, when to produce it and how much is needed by the local schools. Structures and systems for coordination, monitoring and control must be in place so that produce from the farms can be delivered to 'food banks' for disbursement to schools in the required quantities.
By recognising hungry schoolchildren as a potential market for the produce of small country farmers, school feeding will provide a synergistic approach to tackle three interrelated challenges simultaneously, namely improved nutrition, educational attainment and rural agricultural development.
School feeding should be recognised, supported and used as an essential resource for eliminating hunger and advancing the health and education of children.
I am, etc.,
PATRICIA THOMPSON
patriciat@cwjamaica.com
Registered nutritionist
Nutrition and Diet Services