Improving the nutritional status of the Banglalee population does not merely involve increasing production through harvesting of more food per unit area in less time with minimum expenditure. It calls for perfecting a production machanism that gives opportunity to the producers to consume the food they produce and educating them on methods that would avoid losses at all levels of production, processing, and consumption. Such an approach demands integration of hitherto separate policies of food production distribution, and consumption. Landless families constitute the bulk of the nutritionally disadvantaged. Only a policy of drastic land redistribution might promote both production and equity.
Considerable scope exists for increasing the production of all food commodities.
Food scientists have yet to address themselves to the rural problems of Bangladesh. Infection, parasites, and poor sanitation add to rural malnutrition. Lack of education on the food value of local fruits and vegetables is unfortunate. In Bangladesh a production mechanism needs to be perfected that gives opportunity to the producers to consume the food they produce and that will educate them on methods to prevent losses at all levels of production, processing, and consumption. Such an approach calls for integration of hitherto separate policies of food production, distribution, and consumption.