ABSTRACT
This chapter problematizes the challenges of food security in the context of Bangladesh, with special reference to the issue of food availability and accessibility. It seeks to address three interrelated issues: first, the central discourse of food security in Bangladesh; second, the problems and key mechanisms that are used to generate food availability and the empirical evidence relating to food availability; and third, the problems and key mechanisms that are used to generate food accessibility and the empirical evidence relating to food accessibility. The chapter begins with discussion of consumption patterns of food in Bangladesh and then discusses the domestic production of food grains as a source of food availability, its uncertainty, and future challenges. Food availability in the context of the national level is the outcome of state policy. Thus, food availability or ‘food supply is a matter of factual investigation’ which demands critical review of the political nature, elite behaviour and the public policy of a nation state.
