Centre to organize conference on food, nutrition security on Wednesday
New Delhi: The Centre will organize a national conference on Wednesday aimed at strengthening India's food and nutritional security. The conference will serve as a platform to reflect upon the challenges and opportunities for achieving the transformation of food and nutrition security ecosystem in the country and lay down the roadmap for 2023-24.
Among other things, the conference will deliberate on procurement of coarse grain and millets in the 2023-24 Kharif marketing season, grading of procurement centres, effective implementation of Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), implementation of SMART – PDS (public distribution system), the launch of sugar-ethanol portal and the nine-year achievement booklet of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, rice fortification, supply chain optimization, and transformation of fair price shops. Union Food and Consumer Affairs minister Piyush Goyal will launch the sugar-ethanol portal during the conference, to be held in New Delhi.
In the last nine years, the Department of Food and Public Distribution has undertaken various initiatives aimed at ensuring targeted and timely delivery of food grains to the poor and vulnerable. The implementation of the flagship PMGKAY from January 1 this year, has enabled the provision of free food grains to nearly 80 crore beneficiaries.
Through these significant measures, the targeted public distribution system (TPDS) has been strengthened and its efficiency enhanced. To further sustain the progress and improvement in the system, the department is planning to introduce new initiatives to enhance the efficiency of the system and bolster the focus on food and nutritional security.
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