Pakistan has an agrarian economy, having more than 67% of its population living in rural areas, 46 % of the labor force employed in the agricultural sector and more than 23% of the GDP coming from agriculture sector. In addition, poverty is almost 40% in the rural areas.

Therefore national/international policy on agriculture has direct impact on the livelihoods of a large number of people at the micro level and on the overall economy at macro level. A society is considered food-secure when each of its members has a regular access to an acceptable, affordable and nutritional food. In other words, food insecurity makes a large section of poor people and communities more vulnerable by creating hunger. On the national level, it can destabilize a country in economic and political terms. Thus for an agricultural society, issues related to food insecurity can be regarded as crucial factors in its socio-economic sustainability.

World Food Summits have declared that every human being has a right of access to food. But to ensure this right may not be easy for a country as the system of food production and distribution is a complex phenomenon.

Policies of agricultural production and trade at the national and international level determine the situation of food security or insecurity in a country. In simple words, food security depends on the food production systems, based on structure of land-ownership, status of farmers, technologies, cropping patterns, quality of seeds, soil and water, irrigation system, government's regulation of prices of agricultural inputs and products, etc. etc. , and international agreements in relation to trade, patenting of genetic resources, opening of markets to multinational corporations and so on.

Therefore working on food rights means promoting sustainable agriculture, justice in food distribution and just laws for international trade while protecting the rights of poor farmers.

Larger ActionAid (now ActionAid International'AAI) started an International Food Rights Campaign (IFRC) in 1997 and AAPk became an active part of it from the beginning. Now this has been transformed into Food and Hunger Program (FHP). Through this work, during the last five years, AAPk built its capacity in all the related issues through analyses and researches for example on WTO agreements, Plant Breeders Right Act (PBR), GMOs, Bio-safety guidelines, trade liberalization in agriculture sector and Bt-Cotton situation in Pakistan.

                 Read more