Access

Food access depends on the ability of households to obtain food from purchases, gathering, current production, or stocks or through food transfers from relatives, members of the community, the government, or donors.

Food security situation in Bhutan is an issue of access to resources and economic opportunities. For the rural households who make up about 69 percent of the population, it is particularly a matter of stable access to land and water as the basic resources from which to produce their own food. For the urban and non-farming rural population and the landless households, it is about economic opportunities to earn a living through productive employment.

Ensuring access to food at the household and family levels means that there are adequate amounts of nutritious and locally appropriate food accessible to all regardless of gender, age or family status. Ensuring access at the national levels requires policy reforms along with significant financial and institutional support to rural infrastructure improvement, local capacity building and empowerment of rural communities aimed at enhancing local food security. In order to address this, the Royal Government over the Tenth Plan will adopt a dual poverty reduction strategy that employs both the universal and targeted approach. This will be effectively implemented by integrating relevant and focused interventions for target locations or groups that suffer from high income poverty and food poverty or other vulnerabilities and disadvantages. The focused targeting would thus involve delivering development benefits directly to the poor, enhancing their human capabilities and addressing root causes of their impoverishment.