wfp: UN body and Sadhguru’s Isha Foundation join hands on food and nutritional security | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has joined hands with Isha Foundation of Sadhguru for creating awareness and outreach on sustainable food and nutritional security in India.
Both the organisations had on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that will leverage the technical and global expertise of WFP on addressing hunger and Isha Outreach’s large public engagement discourses led by spiritual guru and founder of the Foundation, Sadhguru.
“Every responsible scientist in the world and the UN agencies are clearly saying we have 80-100 harvests left, that means approximately 45-50 years of agricultural soil left on the planet. By 2045, we will be producing 40% less food than what we are producing right now, and our population will be 9.3 billion people,” said Sadhguru while emphasising on sustainability in agriculture.
“The food shortages that could manifest in the next 25 years are unimaginable. Civil wars will unfold across the world once there is food shortage. This is not the world we want to leave behind for our children,”said Sadhguru, who was in Delhi during February 19-21. He on the occasion of signing the MoU held a detailed conversation with the WFP’s representatives and other stakeholders on ‘One People. One Planet. One Solution – Need of the Hour’.
During his visit to the Capital, Sadhguru also had meetings with agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar and NITI Aayog’s member Ramesh Chand over the issue of sustainable agriculture practices and saving soils.
The MoU on sustainable food and nutritional security in India was signed between WFP representative and country director Bishow Parajuli and director Isha Outreach, Moumita Sen Sarma. “We are very excited about the collaboration with Isha Outreach as we are aligned on the need to create sustainable practices and approaches to addressing hunger, malnutrition, and creating long-term food security,” said Parajuli.
The United Nations WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. The UN body was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2020 for its work on addressing hunger and contributing to world peace.
“Through this partnership, the two organizations will also collaborate on the ‘Conscious Planet Movement’ specifically in India to help address the alarming degradation of food-producing agricultural soil in this country. This degradation of the soil has widespread ramifications spanning long term food and nutritional security of the country, climate change, water, biodiversity loss and the impoverished state of livelihood of the rural poor,” said Sarma.
In this context, Sadhguru will next month unveil the global ‘Conscious Planet Movement’ to save soil. “The Save Soil Movement will advocate for urgent policy-driven action by the nations of the world to regenerate the soil in their country,” said the Isha Foundation in a statement.
The movement will be held in the backdrop of an assessment by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) that underlined that over 90% of the earth’s soil could become degraded by 2050 leading to catastrophic crises worldwide including food and water shortages.