LAHORE - The Forman Christian College University has introduced a six-month postgraduate professional diploma in food security management.  According to Dr Kausar Malik, Dean, Postgraduate Studies, FCCU, the diploma has been offered by School of Life Sciences in collaboration with Centre for Public Policy and Governance, School of Management and Departments of Economics and Sociology. Twenty people will be given admission to the course for one session. Students in excess of the number of seats will be able to get admission in the next session. For the convenience of the enrolled students only one lecture will be given per week.  According to Dr Malik, food security has to ensure food availability, affordability and accessibility. These are quite diverse components and need and interdisciplinary approach to tackle them.

Each session will have 20 students

Thus there is a dire need to train specialists who are well versed not only in the area of food availability but have to become proficient regarding various technologies, marketing strategies, supply chain and different regulatory procedures and protocols governing food affordability and accessibility in the realm of sustainable agriculture.  Explaining the salient features of the programme, he said they include: food security related to sustainable development goals, public policy for food security, overview of agriculture, livestock and irrigation systems in Pakistan, malnutrition and various interventions including scaling up nutrition (SUN), food security, water and energy nexus’ supply chain management; farm to fork, regulatory laws for food, agriculture and livestock, climate change and its impact on agriculture and sanity and phytosanitary system (SPS).