Nutrition and food security policy in the Islamic Republic of Iran: situation analysis and roadmap towards 2021

Abstract

All government policies and programmes for food and nutrition security should include providing healthy food, as well as providing economic and social availability for all people. This study aimed to analyse the current situation of Iranian food and nutrition security and establish a road map towards 2021. The applied methods were situation analysis and a mixed qualitative-quantitative method. The conceptual method used for developing this national document encompassed three areas: sustainable food supply, food safety and nutrition. The outcomes of the Iranian food and nutrition security system in the past three decades include development of management infrastructure and improvement in food and nutrition security status. However, analysis of current programmes showed that there were some overlapping, intertwining and parallel works in the responsibilities of related organizations in the field of supervision of food safety (from production to supply). The national document produced as the outcome of this paper was communicated by the Iranian Ministry of Health in 2012 and has been running for 2 years. Selected ministries are responsible for implementation of 20 national programmes by the end of the 5th Economic, Social and Cultural Development Programme (2016-2011). The consensus of stakeholders by the end of the 6th Development Programme (2021) is to put all of the provinces in a safe or very safe situation in terms of food and nutrition security. The most important challenge in establishing national documents is to make them operational. This aim was achieved by an intersectoral nutrition and food security working group, which produced a general memorandum of understanding with the main organizations, the media, universities and private sector.