Agriculture Minister MK Anwar made the call speaking on the 'State of Food and Agriculture in the Developing and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) with Special Reference to Bangladesh' at the 32nd session of FAO in Rome yesterday.

Ministers from the FAO member countries are attending the biennial conference that began on November 29 and will continue till December 10.

"Hunger now is more a cross-national problem, particularly in the LDCs and developing countries," said Anwar. "Nations need to develop a policy framework on a consensus basis to create a political environment for allocation of resources, and flow of information and technology for the implementation of the programs and projects."

According to a message received here, the minister expressed concern over the increase of undernourished population despite the last World Food Summit's target to reduce to half the number of hungry people by 2015.

He said the number of undernourished population has increased by 18 million to 842 million over the last five years, mainly in the LDCs and weaker developing countries. South Asia has been hosting the highest number of undernourished people, which has increased from 289 million in 1992 to 303 million in 1999.

The minister said the current food security in the weaker economies is being intensified by high population growth, lack of financial resources, constraints in access to irrigation water and natural and manmade disasters.

He also mentioned poor physical and social infrastructure, reduction of agricultural land, barriers to access of agro-products to international market, widening gap between the potential and actual growth in agricultural production and technical constraints to crop diversification as other factors that aggravate the situation.

"We need political will to overcome these constraints and should embark on a common platform for the alleviation of poverty and hunger," he said.

Anwar urged the EU, USA, Canada, Japan and other developed countries to reduce their huge domestic support and export subsidies in agriculture sector to create a level playing field globally.

He said many of the products, especially agricultural products of the LDCs and developing countries having comparative advantages have been facing tariff and non-tariff barriers in the world market even after the formation of WTO in 1995.

He mentioned that the percentage of agriculture export in total merchandise export of developing countries came down to 7 percent in 2001 from about 50 percent in 1960.

The Bangladesh Agriculture Minister called upon the developed and stronger developing economies to provide duty free and quota free market access for all products, including agriculture produces of the LDCs, giving them effective support to level up.

He also urged the FAO to provide technical assistance to improve market processing cycles of agricultural products.

Elaborating the state of agriculture in Bangladesh, Anwar said agriculture is the mainstay of the country's economy. The contribution of this sector in GDP is about 25 percent while 62.93 percent of the total manpower are engaged in agriculture and 70 percent of the rural female population are involved with the sector.