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Food security is a condition that "exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life", according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).[1] Household food security exists when all members, at all times, have access to enough food for an active, healthy life.[2] Individuals who are food secure do not live in hunger or fear of starvation.[3] Food insecurity, on the other hand, is a situation of "limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways", according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).[4] Food security incorporates a measure of resilience to future disruption or unavailability of critical food supply due to various risk factors including droughts, shipping disruptions, fuel shortages, economic instability, and wars. In the years 2011-2013, an estimated 842 million people were suffering from chronic hunger.[5] The FAO identified the four pillars of food security as availability, access, utilization, and stability.[6] The United Nations (UN) recognized the Right to food in the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948,[3] and has since noted that it is vital for the enjoyment of all other rights.[7]

According to the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, failed agriculture market regulation and the lack of anti-dumping mechanisms engenders much of the world's food scarcity and malnutrition. As of late 2007, export restrictions and panic buying, US Dollar Depreciation,[8] increased farming for use in biofuels,[9] world oil prices at more than $100 a barrel,[10] global population growth,[11] climate change,[12] loss of agricultural land to residential and industrial development,[13][14] and growing consumer demand in China and India[15] are claimed to have pushed up the price of grain.[16][17] However, the role of some of these factors is under debate. Some argue the role of biofuel has been overplayed[18] as grain prices have come down to the levels of 2006. Nonetheless, food riots have recently taken place in many countries across the world.[19][20] Food security is a complex topic, standing at the intersection of many disciplines.


Measurement[edit]

Food security indicators and measures are derived from country level household income and expenditure surveys to estimate per capita caloric availability.[21][22] In general the objective of food security indicators and measures is to capture some or all of the main components of food security in terms of food availability, access and utilization or adequacy. While availability (production and supply) and utilization/adequacy (nutritional status/anthropometric measures) seemed much easier to estimate, thus more popular, access (ability to acquire sufficient quantity and quality) remain largely elusive.[23] The factors influencing household food access are often context specific. Thus the financial and technical demands of collecting and analyzing data on all aspects of household’s experience of food access and the development of valid and clear measures remain a huge challenge.[24] Nevertheless several measures have been developed that aim to capture the access component of food security, with some notable examples developed by the USAID-funded Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA) project, collaborating with Cornell and Tufts University and Africare and World Vision.[24][25][26][27] These include:

  • Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) - continuous measure of the degree of food insecurity (access) in the household in the previous month
  • Household Dietary Diversity Scale (HDDS) - measures the number of different food groups consumed over a specific reference period (24hrs/48hrs/7days).
  • Household Hunger Scale (HHS)- measures the experience of household food deprivation based on a set of predictable reactions, captured through a survey and summarized in a scale.
  • Coping Strategies Index (CSI) - assesses household behaviours and rates them based on a set of varied established behaviours on how households cope with food shortages. The methodology for this research is base on collecting data on a single question “What do you do when you do not have enough food, and do not have enough money to buy food?”[28][29][30]

Food insecurity is measured in the United States by questions in the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey. The questions asked are about anxiety that the household budget is inadequate to buy enough food, inadequacy in the quantity or quality of food eaten by adults and children in the household, and instances of reduced food intake or consequences of reduced food intake for adults and for children.[31] A National Academy of Sciences study commissioned by the USDA criticized this measurement and the relationship of "food security" to hunger, adding "it is not clear whether hunger is appropriately identified as the extreme end of the food security scale."[32]

The FAO, World Food Programme (WFP), and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) collaborate to produce The State of Food Insecurity in the World. The 2012 edition described improvements made by the FAO to the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) indicator that is used to measure rates of food insecurity. New features include revised minimum dietary energy requirements for individual countries, updates to the world population data, and estimates of food losses in retail distribution for each country. Measurements that factor into the indicator include dietary energy supply, food production, food prices, food expenditures, and volatility of the food system.[33] The stages of food insecurity range from food secure situations to full-scale famine.[34] A new peer-reviewed journal of Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food began publishing in 2009.[35]

Rates[edit]

Number of people affected by undernourishment, 2010–12 (by region, in millions). Data source: FAO.[36]

With its prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) indicator, the FAO reported that almost 870 million people were chronically undernourished in the years 2010-2012. This represents 12.5% of the global population, or 1 in 8 people. Higher rates occur in developing countries, where 852 million people (about 15% of the population) are chronically undernourished. The report noted that Asia and Latin America have achieved reductions in rates of undernourishment that put these regions on track for achieving the Millennium Development Goal of halving the prevalence of undernourishment by 2015.[33] The UN noted that about 2 billion people do not consume a sufficient amount of vitamins and minerals.[37] In India, the second-most populous country in the world, 30 million people have been added to the ranks of the hungry since the mid-1990s and 46% of children are underweight.[38]


Pillars of food security[edit]

The WHO states that there are three pillars that determine food security: food availability, food access, and food use.[39] The FAO adds a fourth pillar: the stability of the first three dimensions of food security over time.[3] In 2009, the World Summit on Food Security stated that the “four pillars of food security are availability, access, utilization, and stability”.[6]

Availability[edit]

Food availability relates to the supply of food through production, distribution, and exchange.[40] Food production is determined by a variety of factors including land ownership and use; soil management; crop selection, breeding, and management; livestock breeding and management; and harvesting.[41] Crop production can be impacted by changes in rainfall and temperatures.[40] The use of land, water, and energy to grow food often competes compete with other uses, which can effect food production.[42] Land used for agriculture can be used for urbanization or lost to desertification, salinization, and soil erosion due to unsustainable agricultural practices.[42] Crop production is not required for a country to achieve food security. Nations don’t have to have the natural resources required to produce crops in order to achieve food security, as seen in the examples of Japan[43] and Singapore.[44]

Because food consumers outnumber producers in every country,[44] food must be distributed to different regions or nations. Food distribution involves the storage, processing, transport, packaging, and marketing of food.[41] Food-chain infrastructure and storage technologies on farms can also impact the amount of food wasted in the distribution process.[42] Poor transport infrastructure can increase the price of supplying water and fertilizer as well as the price of moving food to national and global markets.[42] Around the world, few individuals or households are continuously self-reliant for food. This creates the need for a bartering, exchange, or cash economy to acquire food.[40] The exchange of food requires efficient trading systems and market institutions, which can have an impact on food security.[45] Per capita world food supplies are more than adequate to provide food security to all, and thus food accessibility is a greater barrier to achieving food security.[44]

Access[edit]

Goats are an important part of the solution to global food security because they are fairly low maintenance and easy to raise and farm

Food access refers to the affordability and allocation of food, as well as the preferences of individuals and households.[40] The UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights noted that the causes of hunger and malnutrition are often not a scarcity of food but an inability to access available food, usually due to poverty.[7] Poverty can limit access to food, and can also increase how vulnerable an individual or household is to food price spikes.[45] Access depends on whether the household has enough income to purchase food at prevailing prices or has sufficient land and other resources to grow its own food.[46] Households with enough resources can overcome unstable harvests and local food shortages and maintain their access to food.[44]

There are two distinct types of access to food: direct access, in which a household produces food using human and material resources, and economic access, in which a household purchases food produced elsewhere.[41] Location can affect access to food and which type of access a family will rely on.[46] The assets of a household, including income, land, products of labor, inheritances, and gifts can determine a household’s access to food.[41] However, the ability to access to sufficient food may not lead to the purchase of food over other materials and services.[45] Demographics and education levels of members of the household as well as the gender of the household head determine the preferences of the household, which influences the type of food that are purchased.[46] A household’s access to enough and nutritious food may not assure adequate food intake of all household members, as intrahousehold food allocation may not sufficiently meet the requirements of each member of the household.[45] The USDA adds that access to food must be available in socially acceptable ways, without, for example, resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies.[2]

Utilization[edit]

The final pillar of food security is food utilization, which refers to the metabolism of food by individuals.[44] Once food is obtained by a household, a variety of factors impact the quantity and quality of food that reaches members of the household. In order to achieve food security, the food ingested must be safe and must be enough to meet the physiological requirements of each individual.[45] Food safety impacts food utilization,[40] and can by impacted by the preparation, processing, and cooking of food in the community and household.[41] Nutritional values[40] of the household determine food choice.[41] Access to healthcare is another determinant of food utilization, since the health of individuals controls how the food is metabolized.[41] For example, intestinal parasites can take nutrients from the body and decrease food utilization.[44] Sanitation can also decrease the occurrence and spread of diseases that can affect food utilization.[41] Education about nutrition and food preparation can impact food utilization and improve this pillar of food security.[44]

Stability[edit]

Food stability refers to the ability to obtain food over time. Food security can be transitory, seasonal, or chronic.[41] In transitory food insecurity, food may be unavailable during certain periods of time.[45] At the food production level, natural disasters[45] and drought[41] result in crop failure and decreased food availability. Civil conflicts can also decrease access to food.[45] Instability in markets resulting in food-price spikes can cause transitory food insecurity. Other factors that can temporarily cause food insecurity are loss of employment or productivity, which can be caused by illness. Seasonal food insecurity can result from the regular pattern of growing seasons in food production.[41]

Chronic (or permanent) food insecurity is defined as the long-term, persistent lack of adequate food.[45] In this case, households are constantly at risk of being unable to acquire food to meet the needs of all members. Chronic and transitory food insecurity are linked, since the reoccurrence of transitory food security can make households more vulnerable to chronic food insecurity.[41]

Approaches[edit]

A liquid manure spreader, equipment that is used to increase agricultural productivity.

By the United Nations[edit]

The UN Millennium Development Goals are one of the initiatives aimed at achieving food security in the world. The first Millennium Development Goal states that the UN "is to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty" by 2015.[47] Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, advocates for a multidimensional approach to food security challenges. This approach emphasizes the physical availability of food; the social,economic and physical access people have to food; and the nutrition, safety and cultural appropriateness or adequacy of food.[48]

By the Food and Agriculture Organization[edit]

The Food and Agriculture Association of the United Nations stated in The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2003 that countries that have reduced hunger often had rapid economic growth, specifically in their agricultural sectors. These countries were also characterized as having slower population growth, lower HIV rates, and higher rankings in the Human Development Index.[49] At that time, the FAO considered addressing agriculture and population growth vital to achieving food security. In The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012, the FAO restated its focus on economic growth and agricultural growth to achieve food security and added a focus on the poor and on "nutrition-sensitive" growth. For example, economic growth should be used by governments to provide public services to benefit poor and hungry populations. The FAO also cited smallholders, including women, as groups that should be involved in agricultural growth to generate employment for the poor. For economic and agricultural growth to be "nutrition-sensitive", resources should be utilized to improve access to diverse diets for the poor as well as access to a safe water supply and to healthcare.[33]

The FAO has proposed a "twin track" approach to fight food insecurity that combines sustainable development and short-term hunger relief. Development approaches include investing in rural markets and rural infrastructure.[3] In general, the FAO proposes the use of public policies and programs that promote long-term economic growth that will benefit the poor. To obtain short-term food security, vouchers for seeds, fertilizer, or access to services could promote agricultural production. The use of conditional or unconditional food or cash transfers was another approach the FAO noted. Conditional transfers could include school feeding programs, while unconditional transfers could include general food distribution, emergency food aid or cash transfers. A third approach is the use of subsidies as safety nets to increase the purchasing power of households. The FAO stated that "approaches should be human rights-based, target the poor, promote gender equality, enhance long-term resilience and allow sustainable graduation out of poverty."[33]

The FAO noted that some countries have been successful in fighting food insecurity and decreasing the number of people suffering from undernourishment. Bangladesh is an example of a country that has met the Milleniumm Development Goal hunger target. The FAO credited growth in agricultural productivity and macroeconomic stability for the rapid economic growth in the 1990s that resulted in an increase in food security. Irrigation systems were established through infrastructure development programs. Two programs, HarvestPlus and the Golden Rice Project, provided biofortified crops in order to decrease micronutrient deficiencess.[5]

World Food Day was established on October 13, in honor of the date that the FAO was founded. On this day, the FAO hosts a variety of event at the headquarters in Rome and around the world, as well as seminars with UN officials.[37]

By the World Food Programme[edit]

Fight Hunger: Walk the World campaign is a United Nations World Food Programme initiative.

The World Food Programme (WFP) is a branch of the United Nations that uses food aid to promote food security and eradicate hunger and poverty. In particular, the WFP provides food aid to refugees and to others experiencing food emergencies. It also seeks to improve nutrition and quality of life to the most vulnerable populations and promote self-reliance.[50] An example of a WFP program is the "Food For Assets" program in which participants work on new infrastructure, or learn new skills, that will increase food security, in exchange for food.[51] The WFP and the Government of Kenya have partnered in the Food For Assets program in hopes of increasing the resilience of communities to shocks.[52]

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