Detail

`October 16, 1981 is the first World Food Day. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has designated October 16, an anniversary day of the establishment of FAO, as World Food Day. FAO, which makes programs and stages world-wide functions, all designed to help liberate the human race from starvation and malnutrition, marked out the day in order to attract special attention of people all over the world to the problem of food. Today, food is a problem that is being rendered ever more serious by a combination of factors : population increase, abnormality of weather, reduction of farm land owing to industrialization, tendency for food-producing countries to use food as a weapon, uneven geographical distribution of fertile land, etc. The imbalance of demand and supply is such that while some 500 million people in developing countries of Africa and Asia are perennially suffering from hunger, many millions in other developed countries are fighting diseaded caused by hypernutrition. Worse still, even the long-term prospect for the future can hardly be said to be bright unless some unforeseen epoch-making change occurs. It is urgent that we find ourselves a way out of this serious problem of food by developing an improving food-production technology on the one hand and by finding new food sources and economizing on the existing food on the other. The Ministry of Communications issues this commemorative stamp with a view to causing on this occasion of the first World Food Day the nation`s awakening on the food situation that we cannot afford to ignore.`