Food and Nutrition Security Policy.

The Food and Nutrition Security Policy is a multi-sectoral policy adopted by the Government of Saint Kitts and Nevis that seeks to provide clear guidance with respect to the actions to be undertaken in order to improve the food and nutrition security status of the population. The Policy is organized under the four pillars of food and nutrition security: 1) food availability, 2) food access, 3) food utilization, and 4) stability of food supply.
The long-term goal of the Policy is to achieve sustainable food and nutrition security and to eliminate all forms of malnutrition in order to have a well-nourished and healthy population that can fulfill its aspirations to good health and economic well-being and effectively contribute to national economic development. In particular, the Policy will ensure that all individuals have access to adequate resources to acquire appropriate foods for a nutritious diet; and that all people have access to adequate, safe and nutritious foods at all times, are not at risk of losing access to it due to shocks, and consume and utilize foods that reflect physiological needs.
The Policy aims to ensure that a sufficient quantity of nutritious food of appropriate quality is available to all people, through increased domestic production and a sustainable level of imports, with special emphasis on a structured food import replacement programme. In particular, the Policy seeks to promote the sustainable production of safe, affordable, nutritious, good quality of local food commodities and products. The Policy seeks to enact a Food Security Law; facilitate the improvement of the production and productivity of the identified crops, livestock and fish commodities and products; put in place Quality Management Systems and Measures; and formulate and implement management systems for sustainable land and water use taking into consideration variations in climate.
The instrument aims to improve access to affordable nutritional foods to low socio-economical groups (elderly, single parents and adults who live at or below the poverty level, school children). In particular, it encourages participation in mechanisms to reduce poverty levels and provide increased opportunities for women and youth to become more involved in the food and agricultural sectors; implement improved mechanisms for measuring and monitoring food insecurity and poverty; ensure that economic opportunities for sustainable livelihoods are enhanced, created or expanded; and ensure access of the population to minimum basic food items providing recommended dietary allowance.
Further the Policy promotes cost efficiency of value added production for locally produced and imported semi-processed foods and livestock products. Particularly, it will facilitate the creation of production clusters and value chains to satisfy increasing sophistication of consumer demand; strengthen producers’ organizations and support capacity building of rural producers to facilitate collaborative production planning, supply to intermediaries and marketing of foods to meet consumer demand; construct and operate critical infrastructure such as post-harvest facilities, abattoirs, cold storage, packing houses through strategic public and private sector partnerships; and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the food marketing and distribution system.
The Policy provides for the creation of an effective disaster preparedness and management system that can efficiently deal with the immediate and short-to-medium term food and nutrition security consequences of economic and financial shocks and natural disasters (hurricanes, drought, flooding, earthquakes) while at the same time strengthen the resilience to those consequences among the most vulnerable population groups.
The Saint Kitts and Nevis Food and Nutrition Coordinating and Advisory Committee (FNCAC) will coordinate implementation of the Policy with Ministries and Departments of Government such as Health, Education, Agriculture, Trade, Finance, Planning, the Private Sector and NGOs, regional and international agencies to ensure implementation of proposed activities in a manner that is cost effective and optimizes on benefits from programme implementation; maximizes efficiency and effectiveness; and avoids duplication of efforts.