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FIVIMS to help achieve food security for all

by Uditha Kumarasinghe

The Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute (HARTI) in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is to implement Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping Systems (FIVIMS) in Sri Lanka with the intention of reducing the number of undernourished persons and achieving food security for all.

At present information about food insecure and vulnerable people is lacking in many countries. An important objective of the FIVIMS is to remedy this gap, a HARTI spokesman told the Daily News yesterday.

"The World Food Summit was convened in Rome, Italy in 1996 organised by the FAO of the United States with the participation of 186 countries. The main target of the summit is to reduce the number of undernourished people by half by 2015 and achieving food security for all. It was agreed to formulate and implement policies and programmes to reach this target."

He said FIVIMS initiative is a country driven process and is implemented at national level through a linkage of information systems (agriculture, health, land and water, markets, vulnerability assessment and mapping system etc.) that gather and analyze data relevant for measuring and monitoring food security and vulnerability.

The HARTI of the Agriculture Ministry will function as the focal agency for FIVIMS initiative in Sri Lanka and receiving assistance from an international consultant based in the FAO Regional Office in Thailand. This international consultant coordinates FIVIMS activities in five countries including Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bangladesh, Cambodia and the Philippines with the assistance of Japan as a bilateral donor, he said. An agreement in relation to this program was signed between the HARTI and the FAO at the Agriculture Ministry on Friday. HARTI Director Prof.M.A.O. De Zoysa and FAO representative for Sri Lanka and the Maldives M.Mazlan Jusoh signed the agreement.

He said one important output of the program is the production of manual of operation including a plan of action for a sustainable national FIVIMS establishment.

" The idea behind FIVIMS is that improved information can be actively used to produce better results in efforts to reduce the number of undernourished and achieve food security for all."

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