Lesson 10. Hunger, Malnutrition and Food Insecurity

is usually defined as food that is available at all times, that all people have means of access to it, that it is nutritionally adequate in terms of quantity, quality and variety, and that it is acceptable within the given culture.

An adequate global supply of food does not necessarily mean food security. is a vital but insufficient condition for ensuring the population has enough to eat. Many developing countries need both to increase their domestic production and to increase their imports to meet the demands of an increasing population. That is, they have capacity to increase domestic production, but that alone will not ensure enough food to meet domestic demand. Some demand will have to be met through imports which have to complement expanding domestic production rather than displacing it.

depends on such things as markets, transportation infrastructure, relative purchasing power and the source and nature of the supply (whether the produce grows locally, whether it is perishable and if there are any cultural biases affecting distribution). Where food is traded commercially, the volume and type of food traded is related to purchasing power and the ease with which the trader can reach a market. Profits from international agricultural trade are increasingly in processed and higher value-added products. This trend has also meant a shift from staple crop production to “new” commodities, such as shrimp, fresh vegetables and cut flowers. Exports from fisheries in developing to developed countries are now often worth more than the combined value of net exports of coffee, tea, cocoa, bananas and sugar. These new exports have created and brought prosperity to many producers, but they have also increased the risks of failure.

Standards for the export of such perishable goods (especially seafood and horticulture) are high and one incidence of disease can lead to the whole crop being rejected. Without a strong system of support, technical advice and insurance, the shift to higher-value agricultural exports can leave farmers vulnerable to expensive failures.

is about a person’s relative position in the economic or social order. Only rarely does a whole country face hunger or famine. When the food supply is insufficient, those with greater purchasing power get food while those without sufficient income go hungry. Famines, or simple food shortages, can be created by changes in people’s relative wealth. A person’s access to food depends on a number of interconnected things. Employment and wage levels, health care, land policy, even the availability of credit on reasonable terms: each of these can be the determining factor in whether a person is food secure.

It was once commonplace to think that food security was best met entirely by . Many countries dedicated themselves to increasing food production to meet their food needs from within their borders. Governments maintained stocks of food, particularly staple grains such as wheat and rice, as insurance against bad harvests or other shortfalls in supply. Food security was defined as having the wherewithal to feed a country’s people without recourse to imports. Increasingly, however, the effort to ensure national food has come to be seen as counter-productive. Self-sufficiency is an unrealistic, even impossible, goal for many countries. Some countries lack the necessary natural resource base to grow all the food they need. Some countries are the result of political histories that did not respect the food production and exchange patterns that had built up over centuries.

Nonetheless, most governments also view food security as part of their national security; few governments, whether in developed or developing countries, are prepared to abandon all domestic food production. Only a relatively small percentage of total food production is traded internationally: although the volume of food exports is expanding, roughly 90% of food never crosses an international border.