U-LEAD experts organised an info session on food security for municipalities of the Volyn, Ternopil, Rivne, Lviv, Zakarpattia and Ivano-Frankivsk regions. The event took place on the basis of the regional office of U-LEAD in the Volyn region.
“The national legislation defines the concept of food security as the protection of a person’s vital interests, which is expressed in the state’s guarantee of a person’s unhindered economic access to food in order to maintain their normal lifestyle. This is stated in the Law of Ukraine ‘On State Support to Agricultural Industry of Ukraine’ dated 24 June 2004,” said Andrii Pohorilyi, Adviser on Decentralisation and Local Self-Government at U-LEAD with Europe.
The expert emphasised that the current legislation offers no directly applicable regulations which would enable local self-government bodies to respond to wartime challenges of food security. In general, the Law “On Local Self-Government in Ukraine” includes various powers that can be attributed to food security.
Mykola Bykov, Food Security Expert at U-LEAD with Europe, stressed the need to develop municipal food security programmes. According to him, such programmes will allow local self-government bodies to work out specific steps to overcome challenges related to crisis situations.
“The food security program includes a number of issues to be responded to by local self-government bodies. This is primarily about the adequate level of food supply, the availability of drinking water and the safety of available food. All this should be considered in conjunction with specific steps that will allow us to achieve the set goals for the development of food security,” said Mykola Bykov.
Mr Bykov believes that municipalities should consider growing their own food on municipally-owned plots of land. The expert also cited examples when seeds, fertilisers, pesticides or livestock were purchased for local residents with the funds provided by the municipality, state programmes or international donors, which is an effective tool for preventing a food crisis.
Olena Tertyshna, Head of the Regional Office of U-LEAD with Europe in the Dnipropetrovsk region, presented to the participants of the event the best practices for facilitating food self-sufficiency of the population in place in the municipalities of Ukraine.
As noted by Anatolii Parkhomyuk, Head of the Regional Office of U-LEAD in the Volyn region, the topic of food security is new not only for municipalities, but also for Programme experts themselves. In a short period of time, we managed to develop high-quality recommendations, taking into account new challenges.
“Food security is an important component of the sustainability of municipalities. Local self-government bodies should know how to act when faced by new threats, and food safety is one of the priority directions for crisis response,” the expert added.