What policy should your government apply in an epidemic period in terms of food security?
Food security refers to the economic, social, and physical ability of people to easily access safe food for their consumption. During the time of an epidemic, most of the sectors are affected, including the transport and the food sector. The food sector is affected mainly due to the transport as the food is mainly transported from rural areas where there is sufficient space for agriculture to the urban areas. This means that if the transport sector is affected, then people will not be in a position to readily access food hence food insecurity.
During a pandemic like the COVID 19 pandemic, some policies were implemented to prevent and control the rapid spread of the virus. One of the policies that were implemented in most places is the restriction of movement. This means that even the people in rural areas would not be in a position to transport food to urban areas. Most of the areas where there was restricted movement are the urban areas where there was a high number of virus cases. In such a situation, then the people in the urban areas would have food insecurity since they wouldn’t readily access food. In order to ensure there is food security even for people in the urban areas, the policies implemented allowed the movement of food and food products from one place to another but restricted the unnecessary movement of people as well as other products that are not food (Rosegrant & Cline, 2020). This ensured that people that were in the restricted areas would still easily access food. The other policy that was implemented during the COVID 19 period was the closure of places where there was congestion. For instance, the closure of market places, churches, malls, and the restriction of ceremonies to a particular number. It is, however, important to note that in as much as there was this closure, people in the market places were allowed to operate as long as they restrict the number of people in the actual market place and to ensure that there was social distancing in the market places. This would prevent or even control the spread of the virus while still maintaining food security.
Reference
Rosegrant, M. W., & Cline, S. A. (2020). Global food security: challenges and policies during COVID 19 period. Science, 302(5652), 1917-1919.