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Food Security Essay

Defining food security: a multidimensional perspective, the sociocultural significance of food, global population growth and food demand, challenges to achieving global food security, addressing food insecurity: global efforts and challenges, the future of food systems and sustainability.

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Food Security - List of Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

Food Security is the condition where all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food. Essays might explore the strategies to achieve food security, challenges like climate change or political instability hindering food security, and the roles of individuals, communities, and nations in promoting food security. We’ve gathered an extensive assortment of free essay samples on the topic of Food Security you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Food Security in the USA and Third World

Food security is especially important to our global economy it determines where funding should be allocated. Food security is as defined by the following statement “the United Nations' Committee on World Food Security, means that all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life.” Unfortunately, not all countries have this luxury and many people still go to bed […]

Child Food Insecurity

It is wrong to think that child food insecurity, malnourishment, and other food issues are only present in "third-world" countries because in reality, they occur worldwide ("Woodhouse"). They are especially prevalent in the United States ("Morrissey"), which is considered to be one of the most advanced and affluent countries in the world. Children from low-income families feel the greatest effects of food insecurity in the United States because they have minimal access to fresh foods, which is caused by the […]

Poverty in Haiti: is there a Solution?

Abstract Haiti is a Latin American country that is often ignored. People do not hear much about it, except if a natural disaster such as the earthquake in 2010 happens. It was once the richest colony of the Caribbean and nowadays is known as the poorest country of the Western Hemisphere. Haiti has been facing a cycle of poverty since it became independent. Haiti’s location and deforestation have contributed to make the situation worse. More than half of the population […]

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GMO’s and World Hunger

As the world begins to feel the constraints of overpopulation and diminishing resources, the rate at which people are affected by chronic world hunger continues to grow exponentially (Geldof). Record climate change brought about by global warming and an increase in greenhouse emissions has increased the longevity of droughts, causing the desert to spread, and what small area of forest we have to left to soon run out (Gerry). According to research conducted at Harvard, the world population is estimated […]

Fall of Ancient Civilizations Due to Agriculture

Soil plays an important part in people's daily lives. It plays a factor in how plants grow, how it can filter our water, provides essential nutrients to our forests and crops, and it also helps regulate the Earth's temperature. It also plays a role in our food source. Without soil how would we grow our vegetables and fruits? Without proper care for the soil most civilizations would rapidly decline. For example, many ancient civilizations rose in power but declined rapidly […]

Reasons and Effects of Climate Change

Introduction Climate change is a complex issue, but one thing is for sure it’s humankind's responsibility to be accountable for their actions and develop solutions to the negative effects of climate change. Some people believe that climate change is a natural phenomenon, but this is simply not true, especially when the rate of change is the issue. There is a plethora of evidence that suggests that humankind are the main contributors to carbon dioxide emissions, which is one of the […]

Food Insecurity Among Asian Americans

This study evaluated the prevalence and burden of food insecurity among disaggregated Asian American populations. In this research, prevalence of food insecurity among Asian American subgroups was assessed, with the primary exposure variable of interest being acculturation. This assessment utilized the California Health Interview Survey, the largest state health survey. The results demonstrated that the highest prevalence of food insecurity was found among Vietnamese (16.42%), while the lowest prevalence was among Japanese (2.28%). A significant relationship was noted between the […]

Love Food Hate Waste

The global food crisis is currently affecting more than one-sixth of the world's population. The number of people suffering from starvation and undernourishment is increasing at an alarming rate and will continue to increase if a solution is not found soon. The food scarcity being experienced throughout the world is caused by many factors including urbanization, climate change, population increase, and much more. One of the biggest factors playing a part in the global food crisis is food waste. Approximately […]

The United States Faces Poverty and Hunger

The media provides individuals with various platforms to discuss problems happening in America. However, society talks about celebrities instead. In the 21st century, people would rather be distracted and entertained than know the issues happening around them. During the Great Depression, people used media platforms like the local newspapers and radio get updates and know about the actions taken by the U.S. government. Today, there is even more advanced technology available for men and women to purchase. The majority of […]

Civilization in Modern Society

Thesis: As a result of the dawn of civilization, humanity evolved, and it benefited all of mankind, but especially the upper-class society. Despite the disadvantages that the lower-class had to endure, the advancements of civilization were favorable for society as a whole because people were able to rely on a sufficient food supply. All of society benefited from the advances of Mesopotamian Civilization, especially the upper-class because they had a food surplus which contributed to a more stable lifestyle. The […]

College Food Insecurity: how Big is the Problem?

Working while attending college or university is also associated with food insecurity. 4,5,9 Higher rates of food insecurity have been reported among students working longer hours. 4,5 Rates of food insecurity for students working over 20 hours per week have ranged from 38-46%. 4,5 In addition, university students who live off campus and those who do not have a meal plan tend to have an increased risk for food insecurity as compared to students living on campus and those with […]

Food Insecurities on Development in Early Childhood

Food and nutrition is a known fact of being a key player in the development of children and adolescents. Starting at a young age, lack of nutrients hinders many parts of a child’s growth. This can result in neuro-cognitive, emotional, academic, etc. delays as well as be a precursor to developing other disorders and health conditions. Early childhood and food security is a cornerstone for living a healthy and functional adolescent and adult life. When that is compromised, a generational […]

Human Impact to Climate in African Continent

Humans in the quest for development and survival have consistently caused irreparable damage to the planet. Everything that makes development possible and life worth living is extracted from nature. These consistent activities that is extracting from nature have caused mass extinction of plants and animal species, pollution of water bodies, gradually causing harmful change in the atmosphere, land degradation and other immutable bearings. These happenings are termed as Anthropocene. Simply, the age which human activities have been the major effect […]

Food Waste Due to Poor Products

The idea of food aid originated from the excess amount of agricultural commodities around the time of the Great Depression. There was an abundance of food during this time, so the Food Stamp Act of 1964 was created in hopes to counteract this and to also assist those in need, or those that would be considered “food insecure.” Food insecurity is divided into two different types, low and very low, and is defined by The United States Department of Agriculture […]

Starvation in the World

Starvation has been a constant problem throughout the ages. It is a problem that should and can be solved easily, yet there are still over one billion undernourished people worldwide. What is extremely sad is that With the world population being over seven trillion people, the Earth produces more than enough food for this amount of people, yet there are still hungry, malnourished people all around the globe? You can blame three key factors for this, food shortages, climate and […]

Reducing Food Waste in Australia

Reducing food Waste by 20% in a year through Changing Food Practices and Behavior amongst Young Adults (18-24 years old) in New South Wales. Food waste is a growing national problem in Australia. It accounts to a billion worth of food waste each year. It is wasted through production, retail, and consumer wastes. Food insecurity and obesity cohabit in this problem. Food insecurity exists when there is limited or uncertain access to nutritious and safe food. Obesity in this context […]

AB-1747 Bill and the Republican Party’s Stance on Student Food Assistance

Republican: the bill AB-1747 food assistance: higher education students.Bill AB-1747 food assistance: higher education students is a bill about college students who have low income and are entitled to help from food assistance. The food assistance, SNAP, supplemental nutrition assistance Program, also known as CalFresh in California was introduced to supplement college students hunger. The students with low income are expected to pay a little amount of money to be eligible for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program to qualify for food […]

Bridging Communities through the River Food Pantry

The River Food Pantry stands as a testament to the power of community-driven initiatives in addressing food insecurity. Located in Madison, Wisconsin, this organization goes beyond merely providing food; it serves as a cornerstone for fostering connections, offering hope, and building a stronger, more resilient community. With a focus on dignity and respect, The River Food Pantry creates an environment where individuals and families can access not only nutritional support but also a sense of belonging. At its core, The […]

Butylated Hydroxyanisole (BHA) in Food: Uses and Health Implications

Butylated hydroxyanisole, recognized as BHA, emerges as a synthetic antioxidant extensively employed in the alimentary sector to safeguard freshness by impeding the oxidation of fats and oils. Grasping the function and ramifications of BHA in our victuals can empower consumers to craft discerning dietary selections. While it fulfills a pivotal role in prolonging shelf life and upholding food quality, dialogues regarding its safety and plausible health repercussions persist. BHA primarily functions to thwart rancidity in fat-laden victuals, impacting not solely […]

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Food Security in the United States: The Major Lapses of the Conventional Food Systems Essay

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Introduction

The meaning of food security, food insecurity in the american perspective, major problems associated with the traditional food systems, american communities affected by food insecurity, my role in the food system.

Even as commercial and peasant farmers continue to increase pressure on farmland for the production of non-food crops, food security continues to dominate major global forums. Global farmlands are gradually losing their historical fertility, food-processing companies are increasingly becoming unstable, and food galleries are becoming emptier.

The issue of food security is a universal dilemma that has struck several nations across the world, even as climate continues to be unpredictable, and the events of hunger and drought continue to occur repeatedly. The intent of this essay is to give an in-depth meaning of food security, the perspective of food insecurity to the case of the United States, the major lapses of the conventional food systems, and the American communities that frequently remain affected by food insecurity.

Food security may refer to the sufficient accessibility of nutritious, safe, and religiously and culturally appropriate food to all the people across the world. Food security may also depict a situation whereby all communities of the world, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds, religious beliefs, political affiliations, and socioeconomic statuses, rightfully enjoy unlimited access to reliable and affordable food that is nutritious and safe for human consumption.

Food security is also a state whereby all the people across the continents are capable of accessing food that is sufficient in quantity and quality, depending on their daily nutritional demands. The concept of quantity applies because food has to be adequate to feed the populations sufficiently. The concept of quality applies because food has to be safe and nutritious.

Despite the United States seeking equitable access to economic food resources and physical food resources, food insecurity in the American perspective comes in a disparity manner. American food insecurity occurs when the vulnerable groups of people in different communities are suffering an acute shortage of ability to have an economic and physical access to safe, nutritious, and religiously and culturally appropriate food.

Food insecurity in America is eminent when children are facing a devastating shortage of adequate food that is nutritious and safe for human consumption. Food insecurity in the United States also becomes eminent when the elderly, the ethnic minority, and the rural people, lack access to food of the right quality and quantity, due to their mobility conditions and other socioeconomic situations.

The foremost problem associated with the American conventional food systems is lack of food maintenance. The traditional American food systems lacked proper food maintenance because they lacked proper food harvesting techniques, they lacked proper food preservation methods, and they lacked ample storage infrastructures.

Although the traditional food systems are more nutritious and safer compared to the foods produced through the contemporary technologies and stored through the modern industrial systems, they lack their sustained value because of poor preservation. Since the modern industrial food systems replaced the traditional methods of producing and preserving food, food security has improved tremendously across the continents. The traditionally gathered foods have never proven significant in dealing with the modern food insecurity. The replacement of traditional galleries with industries is worthwhile.

Although hunger is a universal problem that affects all the global communities, food insecurity in United States affects the minority ethnicities unfairly. The most affected minority communities are those that make up the biggest minority groups. The ethnic communities of America that often face food insecurity are large minority communities.

These communities involve the African American ethnic communities and the Latino minority population, which report constant events of food shortages. In the American demographic statistics and history, the two minority communities have remained disproportionately affected by poverty, food insecurity, and unemployment misfortunes. These two ethnic communities of the United States live in the rural, the suburban, and the underdeveloped cities of America. These are areas, where racial poverty, lack of education and unemployment, are major social concerns.

My major role in the modern food system is to ensure appropriate use of the available food in the markets, at home, and within the institution. People must use the right amount of food required by the body tissues to enable the body systems work properly. I must practice suitable cooking. Suitable cooking means cooking the right amount of food, without wasting any food amount that may deem important somewhere else in the world.

My other significant role in the food system is ensuring an appropriate budgeting of food to avoid unnecessary food decay, which literally leads to loss of food. Lastly, my other role in the food security is sensitizing the local communities about the appropriate use of farmland.

Food insecurity is becoming a growing concern in many nations. Food security primarily means an unlimited economic and physical access to food that is nutritious, safe, and culturally and religiously acceptable. Although hunger is a universal problem that affects many people across the world, the situation may sometimes be disproportionate in some parts of the world, depending on several socioeconomic dynamics.

In America, poverty, unemployment, and old age are some of the variables that determine access to food, as well as define the situation of food insecurity in the nation. In America, there is food insecurity when the elderly, the ethnic minority, the children, and the rural and suburban populations report considerable incidences of hunger. Such situations make the issue of food insecurity a complex phenomenon.

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IvyPanda. (2020, May 15). Food Security in the United States: The Major Lapses of the Conventional Food Systems. https://ivypanda.com/essays/food-security-in-the-united-states/

"Food Security in the United States: The Major Lapses of the Conventional Food Systems." IvyPanda , 15 May 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/food-security-in-the-united-states/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Food Security in the United States: The Major Lapses of the Conventional Food Systems'. 15 May.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Food Security in the United States: The Major Lapses of the Conventional Food Systems." May 15, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/food-security-in-the-united-states/.

1. IvyPanda . "Food Security in the United States: The Major Lapses of the Conventional Food Systems." May 15, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/food-security-in-the-united-states/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Food Security in the United States: The Major Lapses of the Conventional Food Systems." May 15, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/food-security-in-the-united-states/.

What is Food Security?

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What is Food Security

Based on the 1996 World Food Summit , food security is defined when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

The four main dimensions of food security:

Physical availability of food: Food availability addresses the “supply side” of food security and is determined by the level of food production, stock levels and net trade.
Economic and physical access to food: An adequate supply of food at the national or international level does not in itself guarantee household level food security. Concerns about insufficient food access have resulted in a greater policy focus on incomes, expenditure, markets and prices in achieving food security objectives.
Food utilization : Utilization is commonly understood as the way the body makes the most of various nutrients in the food. Sufficient energy and nutrient intake by individuals are the result of good care and feeding practices, food preparation, diversity of the diet and intra-household distribution of food. Combined with good biological utilization of food consumed, this determines the nutritional status of individuals.
Stability of the other three dimensions over time: Even if your food intake is adequate today, you are still considered to be food insecure if you have inadequate access to food on a periodic basis, risking a deterioration of your nutritional status. Adverse weather conditions, political instability, or economic factors (unemployment, rising food prices) may have an impact on your food security status.

For food security objectives to be realized, all four dimensions must be fulfilled simultaneously.

The World Bank Group works with partners to build food systems that can feed everyone, everywhere, every day by improving food security, promoting ‘nutrition-sensitive agriculture’ and improving food safety. The Bank is a leading financier of food systems. In fiscal year 2022, there was US$9.6 billion in new IBRD/IDA commitments to agriculture and related sectors

Activities include:

Strengthening safety nets to ensure that vulnerable families have access to food and water–and money in their pockets to make vital purchases
Delivering expedited emergency support by fast-tracking financing through existing projects to respond to crisis situations
Engaging with countries and development partners to address food security challenges. Instruments include rapid country diagnostics and data-based monitoring instruments and partnerships such as the Famine Action Mechanism and the Agriculture Observatory
Promoting farming systems that use climate-smart techniques , and produce a more diverse mix of foods, to improve food systems’ resilience, increase farm incomes and enable greater availability and affordability of nutrient-dense foods
Improving supply chains to reduce post-harvest food losses, improve hygiene in food distribution channels, and better link production and consumption centers
Applying an integrated “One Health” approach to managing risks associated with animal, human and environmental health
Supporting investments in research and development that enable increasing the micronutrient content of foods and raw materials
Advocating for policy and regulatory reforms to improve the efficiency and integration of domestic food markets and reduce barriers to food trade
Working with the private sector, government, scientists, and others to strengthen capacities to assess and manage food safety risks in low and middle-income countries
Supporting long-term global food security programs: The Bank houses the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) , a global financing instrument that pools donor funds and targets additional, complementary financing to agricultural development across the entire value chain. Since its launch in 2010 by the G20 in response to the 2007-2008 food price crisis, GAFSP has reached over 13 million smallholder farmers and their families with over $1.3 billion in grant funding to 64 projects in 39 countries, $330 million to 66 agribusiness investment projects in 27 countries, and $13.2 million in small-scale grants to support producer organizations. Most recently, in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, GAFSP allocated over $55 million of additional grant funding to on-going public sector and producer organization-led projects to support COVID-19 response and recovery.
The Bank also supports the CGIAR which advances agriculture science and innovation to boost food and nutrition security globally.

Global Food and Nutrition Security Dashboard

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Food security: your questions answered

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Over the past month, the University of Cambridge has been profiling research that addresses one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century – how to guarantee enough food, fairly, for the world’s rapidly expanding population. As part of this, we asked whether you had a question that you wanted us to answer, and put them to a panel of academics who specialise in research to do with food security. Here's what they had to say. Thanks to everyone who sent questions in!

I would suggest that the problem is less the number of people, than a particular kind of political economy that presents some people as a liability to the welfare of others. David Nally

Should I use GM?

I live in Manipur, north eastern India. It’s a hilly area. The cropping system is a traditional terrace system and we sow once a year. We grow rice, some indigenous pulses, vegetables and fruit. Most of these crops are sown in the month of June and the rest of the year the land remains dry and unused. Nowadays cropping lands are reducing due to lack of water and growing of unwanted plants in the plot. So, I want to ask what measurement should we take either to adopt GM which we could not afford and is hardly available or should we focus on traditional recovery?

N G Ngashangva, Phadang Village Christian Compound, Manipur, India

Dear Mr Ngashangva, I do not think that there are GM varieties that would be useful to you – at least at present. However if you had herbicide-resistant crops then that might allow you to reduce weeds in your plots. It may also allow you to plant without ploughing or digging up the soil because you could drill holes to plant your herbicide resistant seed and then kill the weeds by herbicide application. Drought resistant GM crops are being developed but they are not available yet.

Professor Sir David Baulcombe

Can we tackle the financialisation of food?

I would like to ask what your analysis is of the impact of speculation in the food derivative markets on food prices. Bodies including the OECD and the G20 agriculture ministers are increasingly recognising the contribution of speculation in commodity derivative markets to food price spikes, which obviously has an immediate and negative impact on consumers everywhere, but especially in developing countries where food security is already a problem. Do you think we can tackle food security for the poorest people in the world without also tackling the financialisation of food globally?

Vicki Lesley, Brighton

The theory is that food derivatives help farmers to hedge the price risk they face. Demand for food has grown enormously in recent years, not the least with the 'emergence' of the Indian and Chinese economies. The supply of food has suffered erratically due to climatic calamities. Food prices have not only risen but have been volatile. Uncertain prospects of future food prices encourage farmers to hoard, and volatile prices stifle investments. Derivatives contracts allow the price risk to be traded so that speculators can take it on, induced of course by some probable return. A farmer who fears that the price of his crop will decline as it grows can hedge the price risk by entering into a futures contract to sell his crop in so many months’ time at a price determined now. This principle of transferring risk from hedgers to speculators is also the basis of option contracts which give holders the right to buy or to sell the commodity at an agreed price on or before a specified future date. If derivatives markets stayed true to principle, they should help in discovering price and encourage farmers to invest in the right crops. That is the theory!

But as markets for food derivatives have grown, large buyers and sellers, attracted by the potential for speculative gains, have come to dominate the market, and physical hedgers are of much less significance. Demand and supply are now driven by speculative investment strategies in which commodities form one asset class in large portfolios.

Does this matter? The real price of food rises through changes in real demand and supply. Speculators never take physical delivery of the good. Can demand for futures contracts change real demand and their sales change real supply of food?

The markets for food and for food derivatives are linked of course. Speculators act upon small events that can potentially create price fluctuations in the real market, and amplify them in the derivatives market. Momentum traders render prices volatile. Volatility in turn drives more speculation. Volatile derivative prices that result can move real food prices when (at least some) farmers take them as signals of real prices in the future, and change their inventories accordingly. The risk management and price discovery functions of the derivatives market are ever at risk of being washed out by speculators. More often than not, the tail can wag the dog.

Furthermore, in the globalised world, commodity futures markets in different countries are linked. Returns and volatility spill over from rich country markets to emerging and developing country markets. Even in rich countries, futures contracts and the commodities they represent often do not converge to the same value at contract settlement. So even farmers and producers who do have access to the derivatives market cannot hedge efficiently using futures contracts.

The lives of large proportions of households in poor and developing economies depend on food prices. I agree with you that the need for the commodities futures market to be regulated more effectively, backed by careful research, is urgent.

Dr Paul Kattuman

How can we protect agricultural lands from urban spread?

I wish to congratulate you on such an innovative initiative to research into the biggest global concern - Food Security. Having been exposed to some of the causes of Global Food Insecurity as a young academic with background training and experience in Human Settlement Planning, I have come to appreciate that, one major challenge to ensuring food security is the invasion of prime agricultural land by residential and other urban land uses. In Ghana for instance, the pace of invasion is so fast that large tracts of fertile lands have suffered from urban expansion and population growth particularly in the peri-urban interface. This has not only resulted in reduced food production but has also taken away the very sources of livelihood derived by residents of peri-urban areas.

Against this background, I wish to know what practical strategies could be adopted within the framework of Spatial Planning to ensure that agricultural lands are protected as a basic prerequisite to ensuring food security. Secondly, I will be glad if the group could expound on how a good balance can be achieved between efforts by national and international communities to reverse deforestation and the provision of suitable land for food production as well as the sustenance of rural livelihoods.

Ransford Antwi Acheampong, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana

Thank you for these excellent questions. Although I am not an expert on spatial planning, my research deals with reconciling conflicting priorities for land, and as part of that work I spent a year in the forest zone of Ghana in 2006/2007.

Planners must consider a range of valid objectives (such as requirements for housing, commercial facilities, transport infrastructure, crop cultivation and biodiversity conservation) and attempt to find compromises between them to guide development without being overly prescriptive. To do this, a good place to start is in establishing very clearly what those objectives are, over an appropriate time horizon, by involving interested parties in a consultative process. Local plans need to be coherent with national policies, and national policies need to take account of local needs and constraints. If a particular group is excluded, there will be problems. For example, if only the needs of urban residents and businesses are considered in plans for urban expansion, and not those of peri-urban farmers (or of those who buy and eat the food they produce), any spatial plan will be built on a flawed foundation.

There is also a need for good information to inform decisions about zoning land for different uses. Here, communication and data-sharing between institutions is crucial. Which areas of land are most suitable for crop cultivation? Ghana has a Soils Research Institute which has produced detailed maps of crop suitability, but when I visited the country these were not accessible to planners. Which areas of land are most important for biodiversity conservation? Ghana has tropical forests internationally renowned for their diverse and endemic species, but while staff of the Forestry Commission might know this, many of those working within the Ministry of Food and Agriculture may not. These problems are not unique to Ghana: often here in the UK there is also poor communication between government departments.

How best to conserve forests while producing more food? My research in Ghana has persuaded me that the most promising approach is to grow more food on less land, while protecting (and in the long term, restoring) forests. Measures to increase food output while reducing food production can help too, such as reducing the amount of food that spoils before it can get to market. Increasing yields on existing farmland, while minimising pollution and other problems, will need the intensive application of both scientific knowledge and farmers’ knowledge. There is a role for planners here in synthesising information about the most appropriate lands for crop production (with good soils, low carbon storage and low biodiversity value) and directing agricultural development towards those areas.

In addition to targeting agricultural development towards existing croplands with the most potential, reducing deforestation will require zoning of land where further agricultural development is inappropriate. In Ghana, this might include all of the remaining high forests, many wetland areas, plus areas with potential for restoration, such as land dominated by shaded cocoa farms. Careful screening and regulation of any large-scale land acquisitions, particularly for biofuel crop cultivation, will be needed to ensure that they deliver real benefits for the nation and for local people, without damaging areas of high conservation value. Oil palm companies in Ghana have adopted a set of Principles and Criteria for responsible palm oil cultivation. Similar principles could be used to ensure that development of other crops, too, adheres to strict environmental and social safeguards.

Dr Ben Phalan

Should we instead address global overpopulation?

Thomas Malthus wrote. "Must it not then be acknowledged by an attentive examiner of the histories of mankind, that in every age and in every State in which man has existed, or does now exist, that the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence, that population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and, that the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice."

While not suggesting we do nothing and thereby cause misery and vice, by working to produce more food for a growing population, are we not just compounding the problem because it will enable the population to grow even bigger, requiring even more food, and at the same time having an even greater negative impact on our planet? Why not address the root of the problem, ie global overpopulation, by better education, financial incentives from government, and other means to encourage people to have less children and therefore reduce the population back to a level that is naturally sustainable on Earth?

Jacqueline Garget, Cambridge

The term ‘overpopulation’ makes a normative claim about population size, so we might begin to answer your question by first positing another one: what constitutes an ‘ideal’ or ‘naturally sustainable’ population?

A few statistics might help us frame this discussion. According to the United Nations, Somalia, Sudan, and Mozambique, three African countries severely affected by hunger and malnutrition, have between 14 to 29 inhabitants per sq km. These figures contrast sharply with 400 people per sq km for the Netherlands, 351 for Belgium, and 255 for the UK. Ghana, which is twice the size of the UK, has nearly a third of the population of the latter. Yet, we are unaccustomed to thinking of the UK or Belgium as ‘overpopulated.’ Why? Well, clearly the long-term carry-capacity of an area, rather than the overall population density, is what matters most. But that point aside, I do not think that one needs to delve too deeply to see that the tendency to single out the developing world for attention expresses a deep and abiding fear of the other. We all know that we would need several additional planet Earths if everyone adopted the consumption patterns of the average America; and yet that knowledge does not tend to diminish the perception that it is ‘their’ prolificacy that threatens ‘our’ existence. Historian David Arnold puts this very well when he writes that ‘too many people’ usually means ‘too many of the wrong sorts of people.’

Of course, Malthus’s own account of the population problem was saturated in this kind of moral reasoning. The poor, especially the non-European poor, were creatures of nature that bred without any consideration of the consequences. Malthus believed that in the ‘southern climates’, where virtue was absent and the inhabitants lived in a ‘degraded state’, the perennial threat of war, pestilence and famine was necessary to sharpen faculties, force improvements, and prevent additional population increases. The ‘four horsemen of the apocalypse’ were thus seen as a ‘positive check’ on human improvidence – a last resort to discipline the intractable and restore balance in the human and natural world.

The latent racism of Malthus’ worldview is frequently ignored. Instead arguments tend to concentrate on his more general point that famines are caused by a decline in food availability brought on by an increase in human numbers. We might ask, then, if this is a helpful way to think about the aetiology of subsistence crises?

Unfortunately, measuring aggregate food supply against population totals – as Malthus did – is profoundly misleading, because it gives little consideration to the ways in which resources are unequally apportioned. This is one of the major contributions of Amartya Sen’s classic work on famines as ‘entitlement failures’ (Sen’s book, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, was first published in 1981). According to Sen, people starve when either their ‘endowments’ (by which he means their resources) or their ‘entitlement set’ (by which Sen means the bundle of goods and services that a person can legally utilise) change to such a degree that they can no longer obtain adequate sustenance.

Sen offers many examples to think about how shifts in resources and entitlements can lead to starvation. For example, a farmer and his family may starve because they find themselves unable to pay rent and are forced of the land. Alternatively they may starve or undergo severe hardship because the cost of labour or price of inputs (for, say, seeds and fertilisers) increases to such a degree that they are unable to undertake the usual cultivation the land. The point is that people ‘command’ food through a variety of mechanisms, and thus analysing the ‘entitlement set’ is much broader than looking only at, say, income or indeed food supply, as the determining factor in precipitating a subsistence crisis.

I spend some time discussing Sen’s Nobel Prize winning research because it demonstrates how the ‘famine question’ involves so much more than the ‘population question’. Or as Sen has put it himself, ‘the most important denial made by the entitlement approach is ... the simple analysis in terms of ‘too many people, too little food.’ The Malthusian ‘food availability decline’ model, as Sen calls it, presupposes that starvation deaths result from a severe interruption in the supply of food (caused by an environmental catastrophe, like a drought, or arising from the effects of overpopulation), whereas the ‘entitlement’ approach focuses attention on the allocation of resources within a market-based economy.

I find the latter approach to be a more helpful method to analyse the problem of global hunger. It is a well-established fact that there is enough food to feed the world’s present population – indeed by some estimates there is 20% more food than the world currently needs. Yet hunger persists and future famines seem very likely. I would suggest that the problem is less the number of people, than a particular kind of political economy that places food in some hands and not others.

Dr David Nally

How do we reclaim nutrients from water?

How long have we got to develop massive systems of nutrient reclamation from the world's sewers (before phosphate or potassium, or perhaps boron becomes limiting) and how much energy might such a system, require - energy that has to be added to our energy budget for the future? Agriculture exports nutrients to the cities of the world with every tonne of food supplied. Until mankind finds ways of returning those nutrients to the cropland (instead of flushing them out to sea) no system of farming can be described as sustainable. There is an added challenge here: we need those nutrients returned, but without the pollution that the cities inevitably mix with them - particularly heavy metal contamination.

Bruce Danckwerts, Choma, Zambia

Many of the world's larger communities are exploring the option of nutrient recovery, although often in the context of recovering the energy content of the organic matter in sewerage. For example the city of San Diego in California is producing such as system, in part in response to recovering energy content and in part to recover the water. Nutrient recovery has tended to be a side benefit. You are, however, correct that nutrient recovery will become increasingly important in the future, not only because the raw materials of nutrients are being depleted, but because the energy required to make these into useful materials such as fertilisers is quite large, and so contributes to the greenhouse gas emissions of nations.

Dr Douglas Crawford-Brown

Can we afford the energy input? Do we have adequate water resources?

Someone once said that modern agriculture is the conversion of fossil fuel calories into edible calories, due to the reliance on mechanisation. If oil prices continue to rise as predicted, the cost of farming will increase markedly, as will the cost of the food produced. Since it seems we can no longer control oil prices in a sustainable fashion, except by recession, it would appear that permanent food price rises are now a reality. How can we give people access to affordable food when we rely so heavily on expensive fossil fuel to produce it? Also, we know that water tables in the Middle East, China and Australia are already severely depleted, mainly due to the demands of agriculture. If this issue turns out to be more widespread, how on earth can we expand agriculture further?

Tristan Collier, Cambridge

Your comments are right on the mark. In fact, the Foreseer Project we are involved in aims to study the physical linkages between energy, agriculture and water resources to inform discussions like this on a local, regional and global level. The aim of the project is to develop an online visualisation tool to help the policy makers, industry and the general public understand the importance of future resources such as energy, land and water.

The major physical linkages between food production and energy occur through the production and use of fertiliser (which uses about 2% of world energy production) and the use of fossil fuels for mechanisation of food production and transportation of food. Decreasing this physical reliance might make food prices less linked to energy prices. One possible strategy to do this would be to avoid the use of excess fertilisers.

Agricultural yields in developing countries could potentially increase without adding much mechanisation, fertilisation and irrigation. Yields and productivity can be improved by better informing the local farmers about the use of new practices, such as agro-forestry and soil moisture conservation practices, including minimum tillage, depending on local conditions.

Water scarcity is probably the biggest limitation to expansion of agricultural production, as you correctly point out. There is some room for improvement, such as better irrigation technologies, rainwater harvesting and increase use of wastewater in agriculture production. However we agree that agricultural production cannot be expanded infinitely. Using desalinated water is also an option, though today it is still much too expensive to be used for irrigation – and it comes at energy price. One of the main goals of The Foreseer tool is to include this kind of energy, water and land interactions into the analysis.

Grant Kopec, Bojana Bajzelj and Liz Curmi

Is GM the answer?

How can GM technologies serve enough food for the human population which is growing rapidly every year and if we compare with sosiocultural aspect of human, poverty and planting areas? Maybe we can increase the quality and quantity of food with genetically modified food, but it can’t compare with population growth. I come from Indonesia, most people said my country is a high biodiversity country, evergreen and we can grow up every vegetable and rice, but it can serve for Indonesian (for about 200 million people), there are many malnutrition children, hungeroedema and etc. What do you think about the connection between population growth, poverty and quantity of foods?

Rikhsan Kurniatuhadi, University of Tanjungpura, Pontianak City, Indonesia

To feed the growing population we will likely need a whole array of approaches. This will include, but will not be limited to strategies like traditional breeding, enhanced breeding strategies (including making use of genetic information that is not currently residing in the genepool of the crop in question), as well as improvements in engineering aspects of agriculture, and the supply chain itself. All of these areas have the potential to be important. Whether any one part of the process, including genetic modification, is the most important will only be clear when we look back.

However, there are traits that one could engineer into crops to improve tolerance to stresses, including pest and pathogen attack. There are also the approaches currently being taken to improve nutrition of crops. There is also the possibility of using natural variation in photosynthesis to increase the potential yield of crops. There is growing support for the argument that, to maintain biodiversity, we need to ensure the agricultural land that is in use is used as efficiently as possible. The hope is that multiple technologies will be combined and this will contribute to sustainable food production in the future.

Dr Julian Hibberd

And finally….

Watch out for the following events at the University of Cambridge’s Festival of Ideas :

Is the future of food GM?

Saturday 22 October 3.30pm – 4.30pm, Faculty of Law, Sidgwick Site

What are the challenges and solutions to the global food crisis? Are genetically modified crops a natural progression in efficient agriculture or are we playing God with nature?

Can we afford not to embrace GM? Join Professor Sir David Baulcombe, Regius Professor of Botany; Tony Juniper, Sustainability Adviser; David Nally, Department of Geography and the chair, Jack Stilgoe, University of Exeter for the debate.

Seven billion: the crowded planet

Tuesday 25 October, 6pm – 7pm, Mill Lane Lecture Rooms, 8 Mill Lane

The world’s population will reach seven billion this year. Can the Earth sustain this many people and is reproductive freedom a fundamental liberty? What will the future hold for a crowded planet? Panel discussion with Professor John Guillebaud, Population Matters; Sara Parkin, Forum for the Future; Dr Rachel Murphy, University of Oxford; Fred Pearce, author of Peoplequake and the chair, Sir Tony Wrigley, Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure.

Energy policy: should scientists be in charge?

Thursday 27 October, 5.30pm – 6.30pm, Judge Business School, Trumpington Street

The Electricity Policy Research Group lift the lid on the long-standing dispute between engineers and economists. Who knows best and whose contributions should be used to solve the problems of energy usage in the UK today?

For more information about these and many other events, please visit www.cam.ac.uk/festivalofideas

Panel contributors

Sir David Baulcombe is Regius Professor of Botany, a Royal Society Research Professor and Head of the Department of Plant Sciences. His research interests include genetic regulation, disease resistance and gene silencing; he discovered small interfering RNA and the importance of this molecule in epigenetics and in defence against viruses. In 2008, he chaired a Royal Society Working Group on how biological approaches can enhance global food crop production. In 2009, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to plant science.

Douglas Crawford-Brown is Executive Director of the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research in the Department of Land Economy. He is interested in all aspects of research related to the development of policies for mitigating the risks of environmental change, including - but not restricted to - climate change, and has provided expertise to government bodies and businesses.

Julian Hibberd is a plant scientist in the Department of Plant Sciences. His research interests lie in the evolution and assembly of photosynthetic apparatus in plants. In 2008, he was named by Nature magazine as one of ‘Five crop researchers who could change the world’ for his research, which would greatly increase the efficiency of photosynthesis and create a rice cultivar that could ‘have 50% more yield’.

Paul Kattuman is a Reader in Economics at Cambridge Judge Business School and Director of Studies in Economics and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. Dr Kattuman’s research interests include: applied econometrics and statistics; industrial organisation; distribution dynamics methods and applications; online markets; the software industry; co-operative game theory applications; system dynamics; India. He is a member of the Business & Management Economics subject group at Cambridge Judge Business School and is on the editorial board of the B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy. Prior to beginning his academic career, he was an economist in the Indian civil service.

David Nally is political geographer in the Department of Geography. His research focuses on the relationship between famine and society and the politics of disaster relief, as well as the historical origins of development geographies and theories of political violence. Nally has also worked on the political economy of agro-biotechnologies. His latest book Human Encumbrances: Political Violence and the Great Irish Famine (2011) traces the causes of the Irish Famine of 1845-50.

Ben Phalan is a conservation biologist in the Department of Zoology and a junior research fellow at Churchill College. His current research is concerned mainly with understanding the impacts of agriculture on tropical faunas and identifying land use strategies to minimise those impacts. He works in collaboration with BirdLife International, the RSPB and the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre.

Grant Kopec, Bojana Bajzelj, Liz Curmi

Grant Kopec, Bojana Bajzelj and Liz Curmi are researchers on the University of Cambridge's Foreseer Project, a cross-departmental project which examines current and future interactions between the supply and demand of regional energy, land and water resources. Collectively, they have expertise in water economics, energy systems, land-use issues and climate change mitigation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence . If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

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Home — Essay Samples — Science — Food Safety — Global Food Insecurity: Causes And Solutions

Global Food Insecurity: Causes and Solutions

Categories: Food Safety World Food Crisis

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Words: 2149 |

11 min read

Published: May 17, 2022

Words: 2149 | Pages: 5 | 11 min read

Introduction, section i. background, section ii. technologies that can reduce hunger and improve food security, section iii. specific factors in chosen developing country.

Chad de Guzman. 2018. CNN Philippines. Philippines food security ranking goes up. Retrieved from https://cnnphilippines.com/news/2018/10/18/Global-Food-Security-Index-2018-Philippines.html
HealthyPeople.gov. 2020. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Food Insecurity. Retrieved from https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/social-determinants-health/interventions-resources/food-insecurity
World Resources Institute. 2018. How to Sustainably Feed 10 Billion People by 2050, in 21 Charts? Retrieved from https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/12/how-sustainably-feed-10-billion-people-2050-21-charts
Bread for the World. 2020. About Hunger. Who Experiences Hunger. Retrieved from https://www.bread.org/who-experiences-hunger
World Food Programme. Philippines: World Food Programme Clarification on Yolanda Response Funds. Retrieved from https://www.wfp.org/news/wfp-statement-yolanda-reponse-funds
Bill Gates. 2017. The tech solutions to end global hunger. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/23/health/tech-apps-solving-global-hunger-famine/index.html
iCow. 2020. We aim to secure food production. Retrieved from https://www.icow.co.ke/
WordPress. 2020. Kilimo Salama. Since we cannot control the weather. Retrieved from https://kilimosalama.wordpress.com/about/
Grameen Foundation. 2020. The end of poverty is finally within reach. Retrieved from https://grameenfoundation.org/?url=https://grameenfoundation.org/&gclid=Cj0KCQiAkKnyBRDwARIsALtxe7iX8k7sJWnhLUIi7-zh8cEXVS_OvdMq4hAD4Hq9n-rW4O3wM2oniP0aAgo3EALw_wcB
Kiko Pangilinan. 2016. P-Noy Becoming a Farmer Upon Retirement a Big Boost to PH Farmers, Agriculture. Retrieved from https://kikopangilinan.com/2016/03/18/pangilinan-p-noy-becoming-a-farmer-upon-retirement-a-big-boost-to-ph-farmers-agriculture/
OXFAM. 2020. The power of people against poverty. Retrieved from https://philippines.oxfam.org/
Investopedia. 2019. How Corruption Affects Emerging Economies. Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/012215/how-corruption-affects-emerging-economies.asp

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Essay on food security.

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According to FAO, “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food for a healthy and active life.”

This involves four dimensions:

i. Adequacy of food supply or availability;

ii. Stability of supply, without seasonal fluctuations or shortages;

ii. Accessibility to food or affordability; and

iii. Utilisation: quality and safety of food.

These factors include a broad spectrum of socioeconomic issues with great influence on farmers and on the impoverished in particular.

Large shares of the world’s small-scale farmers, particularly in central Asia and in Africa, are constrained by access to markets, while inputs, such as fertilisers and seed, are expensive. With lack of irrigation water, infrastructure and investments, and low availability of micro-finance combined with dependency on few multinational suppliers, crop production is unlikely to increase in those regions where it is needed the most, unless major policy changes and investments take place. These constraints are further compounded by conflicts and corruption.

Agricultural prices are forecast to remain well above the levels of the first half of 2001-10. In addition, a production short of demand, a greater geographical inequity in production and demand, combined with possibly more extreme weather and subsequent speculation in food markets, could generate much greater price volatility than before.

Food Availability:

The availability of food within a specific country can be guaranteed in two ways: either by food production in the country itself or by trade.

Increase in productivity can come about by using innovative soil and moisture conservation techniques, e.g., the double plantation techniques adopted by farmers in the Mekong plains of Indo- China and the elaborate terraces and irrigation systems of Bali and South China.

The Green Revolution helped to increase production in cereals in some regions, but the technologies involved had their own limitations.

Developments on the demand side require increase in production in those regions with the highest economic growth or population increase. The majority of these regions will be in emerging economies in Africa and Asia. Nowadays, Africa is especially dependent on food imports. Food production in this region is lagging behind due to limited research investments and the problems for farmers to use the appropriate inputs in their production process.

The world regions are sharply divided in terms of their capacity to use science in promoting agricultural productivity in order to achieve food security and reduce poverty and hunger.

Productivity has risen in many developing countries, mainly as a result of investment in agricultural R&D combined with improved human capital and rural infrastructure. In Africa, the levels of productivity are much lower and their growth has also been slower than in Asia.

One of the major options for significantly raising crop production is increasing the use of mineral fertilisers. The Africa Fertiliser Summit 2006 concluded that the use of fertilisers should be increased to a level of at least 50 kg/ha by 2015.

A major challenge is to find ways of making fertiliser available to smallholders at affordable prices. There is also a need for holistic approaches to soil fertility management that embraces the full range of driving factors and consequences of soil degradation. This would include the integration of mineral and organic sources of nutrients, thereby using locally available sources of inputs and maximising their use efficiency, while reducing dependency upon prices of commercial fertilisers and pesticides. The use of perennials, intercropping and agroforestry systems, such as the use of nitrogen fixating leguminous trees, are ways to increase nutrient availability, and enhance water availability and pest control, in a more sustainable manner.

After 1980, growth in expansion of irrigated area decreased and it is assumed this trend will continue in the near future. One of the reasons is that the areas most suitable for irrigation are already used, leading to higher construction costs in new areas. Current irrigation systems could be improved by investing in water control and delivery, automation, monitoring and staff training.

In most African regions, the major challenge is not the lack of water, but unpredictable and highly variable rainfall patterns with occurrences of dry spells every two years causing crop failure. This high uncertainty and variability influence the risk adverse behaviour of smallholder farmers. Rarely are investments made in soil management and fertility, crop varieties, tillage practices and even labour in order to avoid losses in case of total crop failure.

Managing the extreme rainfall variability over time and space can provide supplemental irrigation water to overcome dry periods and prevent crop failure. In combination with improved soil, this should reduce the risk of total crop failure and enhance the profitability of investments in crop management, for example, fertilisers, labour and crop varieties. Increasing crop canopy coverage reduces evapotranspiration from the soil, improving soil moisture and the provision of water for the crop.

This option has become more and more important with increasing transport possibilities and storing capacities and the growing challenges faced by some countries in their domestic production, including because of limitations in available cropland. International trade in agricultural products has expanded more rapidly than global agricultural GDP.

An increasing share of global agricultural exports originates from developed countries. The EU countries account for most of the global growth.

A large portion of this increase is accounted for by intra-EU trade.

Another perspective of trade is the purchase of land abroad for food production. Responding to recent food crises, a number of countries have started to purchase land abroad for cultivation of – crops needed to support domestic demand.

This is seen as a long-term solution to the high prices of agriculture commodities and increasing demand for Agroforestry products such as palm oil. Among the most active countries owning, leasing or concessioning farmland overseas are China, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and United Arab Emirates. The total area of overseas farmland in different countries was estimated at 5.7 million ha at the end of 2008 or 0.4 per cent of the global cropland area.

Food Supply Stability:

A major reason for instability in food supply is high fluctuation in food prices (price volatility). Volatile prices lead to poor investment strategies of producers and immediate impacts on consumers, especially in developing countries where consumers spend a large share of their income on food. Another source of instability is conflicts, which increase food supply risks.

Trade policies that limit market access, increase the volatility of commodity prices, unfairly subsidise developed country exports and constrain the trade policy flexibility of the developing world affect the stability and security as well as overall economic well-being of developing countries.

A quarter of the world’s governments implemented some export restrictions in the period of high prices in 2007-08 to ensure domestic food security. The impacts of these restrictions varied from panic-buying to the cultivation of smaller areas due to high input costs and the expectation of low product prices. These restrictions even increased price volatility of food products on the world market, thereby decreasing the food security of other countries.

With open markets, developing countries are very vulnerable to fluctuations in global food supply and prices and temporary protection of their own agricultural markets is promoted for these countries.

Conflicts greatly increase the risk of food supply instability. Countries in conflict and post-conflict situations tend to be food insecure, with more than 20 per cent of the population, and in many cases far more, lacking access to adequate food.

Accessibility to Food:

Accessibility to food refers not only to physical access but also affordability. Access to markets includes transportation of commodities and its costs and the transmission of price developments to producers. Poor transmission of price incentives to producers results in increasing the gap between consumers and producers especially as diets change.

As urbanisation increases, large urban markets are created and with this the scope of the establishment of big supermarket chains increases. This has implications for the entire food supply chain. Supermarkets have become an emerging force in South Asia, particularly in urban India, since the mid-1990s. The growth and power of international food corporations affect the opportunities of small agricultural producers in developing countries. Market entry is often barred to the majority of producers because of stringent safety and quality standards of food retailers.

Trade and urbanisation affect consumer preferences. The rapid diversification of the urban diet cannot be met by the traditional food supply chain in the hinterland of many developing countries. Consequently, importing food to satisfy the changing food demand could be relatively easier and less costly than acquiring the same food from domestic sources.

In Asia, traditional rice-eating societies are consuming increasing quantities of wheat in the form of bread, cakes, pastry and other products. Countries that traditionally [imported rice for meeting food shortfalls may now be shifting towards increasing levels of Wheat imports. This trend is also evident in the import of other temperate products like vegetables, milk and dairy products and temperate fruit. The overall result is that we are beginning to see a homogenisation of food tastes across the globe, but with regional variations.

Poor connections between urban and rural areas hinder price transmissions towards local markets, broadening the gap between urban demand and rural production in increasing demand for traditional products or for product diversification. The lack of access to markets is most evident in Africa, although large parts of Latin America and Asia are also experiencing long transport hours to reach markets. Consequently, domestic prices do not always follow international prices as an FAO report pointed out in 2006.

The periods of rising real prices were generally associated with real exchange rate devaluations. Relaxation of government controls over prices and market systems also led to gains in producer prices in some cases. In other instances, import liberalisation appears to have contributed to a decline in the real domestic prices of some commodities. Consequently, global shortages of food and feed that lead to global price increases are not followed by production increases at the local level.

Future World Food Prices:

Accessibility to food is also determined by the long-term trend in food prices (which is a different issue from price volatility).

In 2007-08 food prices were driven by a combination of rising fuel costs, production of biofuels, and unfavourable weather conditions, with trade restrictions boosting upward price pressures.

As the cost, and subsequent use, of fertiliser is strongly correlated with price, a potentially higher oil price would lower the use of fertiliser or further increase the food price.

Fuel price is one of the main determining factors for fisheries. Rising energy prices have a strong impact on capture as well as aquaculture (for the production and transport of fish feed) and lead to higher costs during the processing, transport (particularly air freight) and distribution of fish products. Small-scale fisheries, which depend on outboard motors and small diesel engines, have especially suffered from the spiralling rise in fuel prices.

While a higher oil price increases demand for biofuels, there is a catch: the agricultural commodities used nowadays or biofuels were previously used for feed and fodder; in the circumstances, demand for agricultural commodities as for factor inputs increases in this case. The overall decline in food prices is not expected to be so marked because of biofuel use.

Most of the quantitative and qualitative indicators of food security at the household level are linked to the poverty issue. As Amartya Sen (1981) points out, the poor do not have adequate means or entitlements to secure food, even when food is locally or regionally available. It is interesting to note that merely increase in income does not necessarily ensure improved nutritional status. Access to gainful employment, suitable technologies and other productive resources are important factors influencing undernutrition.

Though, overall, soaring food prices are blamed for their impacts on human vulnerability, there are two sides to this picture. Increasing food prices do have a positive effect on net food-selling households (FAO, 2008), augmenting their incomes and allowing more possibilities for farmers to afford investments in production inputs.

This underlines the need to minimise short-term price volatility and stimulate slow increases in long- term food prices, in order to enhance investments in the agricultural system and bridge the gap between developed and developing countries as well as between rural food producing and urban food consuming regions. Ideally, these developments should take environmental aspects into account to achieve sustainable agricultural systems that will meet the food demand of all the world citizens and eradicate hunger.

However, increasing yield and food supply without simply continuing the conventional expansion of cropland and rangeland and use of fertilisers and pesticides—at the cost of biodiversity and future generations—will require major investments and implementation of food energy considerations in the entire food production and consumption chain.

Utilisation, Quality and Safety:

As already mentioned in discussing the problems of nutrition patterns, much requires to be accomplished to acquire equitability in this regard.

Apart from quantitative aspect, qualitative aspects of diet such as consumption habits and nutritional needs also affect food security. In the absence of adequate attention to qualitative aspects of food, the ability of the individual to sustain the benefits of development gets affected.

A number of more novel matters will need to be dealt with, such as:

(i) The positive and negative impacts on non-communicable diseases of intensive production systems, not only in terms of health (e.g. nitrite in vegetables, heavy metals in irrigation water and manure, pesticide use), but also in terms of dietary quality (e.g. leaner meats in intensive poultry production);

(ii) The effects of longer food chains, in particular of longer storage and transport routes, such as the higher risk of -deterioration (even if most of this may be bacterial and hence not a factor in chronic diseases), and the use and misuse of conserving agents and contaminants; and

(iii) The effects of changes in varietal composition and diversity of consumption patterns, for example, the loss of traditional crop varieties and, perhaps even more significantly, the declining use of foods from “wild” sources.

Improving Food Security:

In the short term, the volatile prices can be decreased by price regulation and creation of larger cereal stocks to buffer the tight markets of food commodities and the subsequent risks of speculation. Safety nets need to be provided to alleviate impacts of rising prices and food shortage. Subsidies on agricultural commodities and inputs that are aggravating the food crisis need to be reduced/removed and investments made to shift to sustainable food systems and food energy efficiency.

In the middle term, efforts should be made to develop alternatives for feeds for animals and fish. Our ability to change the feed destined for livestock and aquaculture is probably greater than that of changing people’s food choice habits, which are not as easily controlled. Finding alternative feed sources provides a huge potential for increasing the availability of cereal for human consumption.

For other feed sources to become a sustainable alternative to the current use of cereals, their exploitation must not be resource- demanding. This poses a big challenge, since most of the easily available feed sources have already been fully exploited, although some alternatives still exist.

By using discards, waste and other post-harvest losses, the supply of animal and fish feed can be increased and be sustained without expanding current production, simply by increasing energy efficiency and conservation in the food supply chain.

There has been little focus on salvaging food already harvested or produced. An important question centers around the percentage of food discarded or lost during harvesting, processing, transport and distribution as well as at the point of final sale to consumers. Reducing such losses is likely to be among the most sustainable alternatives for increasing food availability.

Discarded fish from’ marine fisheries is the single largest proportion lost of any food source produced or harvested from the wild. The proportion is particularly high for shrimp bottom trawl fisheries. If sustainable, the amount of fish currently discarded at sea could alone sustain more than a 50 per cent increase in aquaculture production. However, many of these species could also be used directly for human consumption.

The potential to use unexploited food waste as alternative sources of feed is also considerable for agricultural products.

Food losses in the field (between planting and harvesting) could be as high as 20-40 per cent of the potential harvest in developing countries due to pests and pathogens. Postharvest losses vary greatly among commodities and production areas and seasons.

Substantial losses and wastage occur during retail and consumption due to product deterioration as well as to discarding of excess perishable products and unconsumed food. Food waste represents a major potential, especially for use as animal feed, which, in turn, could release the use of cereals in animal feed for human consumption.

Recovering energy from agricultural wastes is becoming increasingly feasible at the industrial production level; investments in technology enhancement of existing systems and innovation in new waste management systems is called for to support this expanding green economy.

Farmers need to be supported in developing diversified and resilient eco-agricultural systems. This includes management of extreme rainfall and use of inter-cropping to minimise dependency on external inputs like artificial fertilisers, pesticides and over irrigation.

Increased trade and improved market access can be achieved by improving infrastructure and reducing barriers to trade.

In the long term, awareness needs to be created about the pressures of increasing population growth and consumption patterns on sustainable functioning of the ecosystem. Alternative sources of food have to be explored and developed.

Food Problems: Notes on the Causes of Food Problems
Food Security in India: Definition, Availability of Food Grains and Other Details

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Food Security Essay Examples

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