Global Food Security: Challenges and Response
Abstract
Food is the first basic human need and fundamental right of every human being, having constitutional guarantees in almost all countries. The United Nations (UN) recognized the Right to food in its Declaration of Human Rights issued in 1948. That’s why food security has always been a crucial issue in every country. However, there is increasing global concern about it after the 2007/8 food crisis which not only wiped out a significant proportion of progress made in the previous two decades but also created legitimacy crises for many regimes and posed existential threats to several weak states.
Unfortunately, the majority of people consider adequate availability of food grains as sufficient for food security; it is wrong. During the infamous 1942 Bengal Famine, the province harvested bumper rice crops. AK Sen was granted the Noble Prize for identifying the causes of this famine in the presence of so much food in the country. He developed the concept of “Lack of Access to Food” as the major cause of this famine; food was available but people had no money to purchase it!
Since then, food security has expanded and includes three more concepts namely food absorption, food stability, and food nutrition
I am enclosing two articles. In the first essay, essay, I discussed food security from a global perspective, while the second essay explains food security in Pakistan.
Introduction
Food is the first basic human need and fundamental right of every human being, having constitutional guarantees in almost all countries. The United Nations (UN) recognized the Right to food in its Declaration of Human Rights issued in 1948, considering it to be vital for the enjoyment of all other rights. That’s why food security has always been a crucial issue in every country.
However, there is increasing global concern about it after the 2007/8 food crisis which not only wiped out a significant proportion of progress made in the previous two decades but also created legitimacy crises for many regimes and posed existential threats to several weak states. There were many reasons for these food crises including:
1. Global population growth combined with increasing prosperity in middle-income countries particularly China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia resulted in a more than proportional increase in the demand for food grains.
2. Loss of valuable arable agricultural land as a result of climate change, urban sprawls, infrastructural development, and industrial growth in developing countries. The increase in area under agricultural use was utilized for the production of those crops which were used for making biofuel.
3. Failure of technology to develop high-yielding varieties because of consistently reduced investment in agricultural R&D over a long period.
4. Sudden increase in world oil prices at more than $100 a barrel-making not only the agricultural inputs expensive but also increased transportation costs.
5. Imposition of restrictions on the export of food commodities by the food-exporting countries and panic buying by the developing countries were the last straw on the camel’s back. These were exacerbated by the speculative trading in food commodities.
6. Governance issues in developing countries accentuated the food crises as access to food was restricted due to mismanagement more than the lack of resources. Similarly, the anti-agricultural bias of public policies and the non-availability of social safety nets also worsened the food security situation in most developing countries.
Food Security –Evolution of the Concept
Food Security is an evolving concept, getting refined after new developments and greater awareness about its necessity.
l During the 1970s, food crises created awareness for food security and led to formal institutional response globally. However, food availability through buffer stocks was considered enough for ensuring food security.
l During the 1980s, concern with increased poverty added access to food as essential as food availability for food security.
l During the 1990s, interest in human development led to the absorption of food also as an essential component of food security.
l During the 2000s, recurring food crises necessitated including food price stability as one of the main components of food security.
l During the 2010s, evidence of increasing malnutrition among children/females led to the inclusion of nutritious food also as an essential element of food security.
Defining Food Security
While Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN defines food security
“when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”,
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a more comprehensive definition of food insecurity. It says that
“Food insecurity 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“.
Irrespective of which definition we choose, food security invariably means five things;
A. Availability: Sufficient quantity of staple food is available in the country, whether produced locally or supplemented with imports to meet the deficit
B. Access: It is accessible to people who have enough resources to purchase it or the state can provide them under its social safety net. And it is physically accessible also to a common man without any let or hindrance.
C. Absorption: People are healthy to absorb it
D. Stability: Food supplies /prices are stable over the period
E. Nutrition: It is nutritious enough to sustain a human body
Global Food Security Profile
No doubt substantial progress has been made by all the countries in improving their respective food security profiles since the MDGs were launched in 2000, the number of people chronically undernourished is more than 870 million, the bulk of whom are in Africa and Asia. Despite the inadequate methodology used by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO)to assess the magnitude of mal/undernourishment, it is estimated that almost 15 per cent of the population living in Africa, Asia, and South America is undernourished. In its recent report, FAO estimates
l Between now and 2050, the global population is projected to rise from about 7 billion to 9.2 billion, demanding a 60 per cent increase in global food production.
l A total of 842 million are estimated to be suffering from chronic hunger, regularly not getting enough food to conduct an active life.
l The vast majority of hungry people — 827 million — live in developing regions, where the prevalence of undernourishment is estimated at 14.3%.
l In developing countries, almost five million children under the age of five dies of malnutrition-related causes every year.
l Malnutrition is the single largest contributor to disease in the world.
l Severe acute malnutrition affects nearly 20 million preschool-age children, mostly from Africa and South-East Asia.
l 1/3 of the developing world’s population suffers micronutrient deficiencies leading to blindness, mental retardation, and early death.
l 162 million children are stunted; 99 million are underweight9 and 51 million are wasted due to acute malnutrition.
l The cost to the economy caused by malnutrition could be up to 5 per cent of GDP — US$3.5 trillion per year or US$500 per person.
l The costs of under-nutrition and micronutrient deficiencies are estimated at 2–3 per cent of global GDP, or US$1.4–2.1 trillion per year
Global Food Security Challenges
The global food security situation cannot be improved unless we identify the challenges it is facing and find appropriate responses to these challenges. Some of the challenges can be identified as follows;
Production Challenges
The slow rate of growth of food production is adversely affecting the supply of food grains which in turn is due to the following reasons:
1. Decrease in the cultivated area as a result of rapid urbanization, industrialization, and infrastructural projects on lands used for agriculture
2. Degradation of arable lands due to bad agricultural and irrigation practices resulting in stagnant yields. The situation is exacerbated due to less than adequate resource allocation for agricultural R&D
3. Climate change and environmental threats adversely affecting the crop cycles and loss of soil fertility
4. Increased cultivation of Biofuels crops in areas previously used for food crops cultivation
5. Land grabbing by corporate firms in food insecure countries for the cultivation of food grains and their export to rich countries
Consumption Challenges
Increasing consumption and wastage are putting pressure on food grains stocks as a result of:
1. Increasing population- the sheer number of people demanding food is increasing
2. Growing prosperity-more meat items on the domestic menu which needs more food grains
3. Changing food habits-urbanization needs more processed food which consumes more food
4. Wastages-over eating, throwing away food cooked more than the needs, and food getting expired in the domestic fridges/chain stores
Distribution Challenges
There are bottlenecks in the distribution chain which accentuate the food security situation in developing countries even in normal times i.e.
1. Access to food-financial constraints due to persistent poverty, inequality, and lack of sufficient job opportunities
2. Access to food-physical constraints, due to bad governance, infrastructural inadequacies, or wrong policy framework i.e. imposing restrictions on the movement of food grains from surplus areas to deficit ones for facilitating official procurement
3. Food Denial to people and communities due to militancy, civil war, or proxy wars
Governance Challenges
Finally, there are governance issues, particularly in poor countries which adversely affect the availability of food to the people at affordable prices due to the:
1. Poor commitment of the ruling elite in the form of appropriate policy formulation, resource allocation, and institutional mechanism to ensure access of the common man to food through agricultural development, creation of social safety networks, etc
2. Not providing good governance whereby people have the freedom to get food grains without any hassle
3. Not improving overall law and order and security situation in the country for peaceful movement of the food grains and its convenient availability
4. Not making special arrangements for the provision of food grains in conflict/disaster-prone areas
Global Food Security: Responses
The food crises of 2007/8 forced policymakers and academia all over the world to focus on food security from new perspectives. Some of the following lessons learned during the crises are providing guidelines for them to devise an appropriate response;
1. Poverty main cause of food insecurity: Food security is now inextricably linked with poverty reduction strategies of developing countries because of their complex interdependence. That is why the very first Millennium Development Goal dealing with the reduction of poverty lays special emphasis on the eradication of hunger from the member countries.
2. Growth with Social Justice: No doubt, growth is essential for poverty alleviation which in turn is a crucial condition for food and nutrition security. However, growth must be accompanied by social and political structural changes which could result in good governance, people empowerment, gender balance, private sector participation, etc. Only all-inclusive growth can ensure the participation of the poor in the growth process for substantial improvement in the food security profile of the country
3. Targetted Attack is Essential: Within this framework, there must be a targeted attack on the worst forms of poverty, particularly on the food and nutrition aspects to ensure food security — -safe drinking water, health services, and targeted food fortification.
4. Agriculture is still Important: Although industrial development is the quickest means to achieve high growth rates, agriculture being the base of these economies, it is the agricultural development that makes the biggest dent in poverty reduction and hence food and nutrition security.
5. Social Safety Nets: Despite the highest growth rates which can be achieved, there will always remain a significant section of society that could not reap the benefits of growth for any reason. The state must create an effective, efficient and transparent system of social safety nets for them.
Food Security-Country Response
Learning lessons from the food crises of 2007/8, there has been renewed interest among the policymakers and the academia in devising an appropriate policy framework as well as an institutional mechanism to avert the recurrence of such crises in the future and for timely response in case of any such eventuality. Each country is therefore encouraged to take the following actions to improve its food security profile:
Food Availability
1. Increase production through horizontal expansion-increase areas under cultivation through technological interventions, greater water availability, and use it efficiently
2. Devise an appropriate land use policy to save arable lands from property development and infrastructural use, more reliance on inter-cropping and agro-forestry, etc
3. Increase production through vertical expansion-increase the productivity of the total factors by devoting sufficient resources for agricultural R&D, creating greater awareness and use of good agricultural practices including farm mechanization, making available quality inputs at affordable prices to the farmers, etc.
4. Reduce production and post-production losses and wastages by encouraging judicious use of chemicals and improved processing facilities
5. Timely import of food grains in case of likely production shortfalls and establishing food godowns at convenient places to respond to the needs of vulnerable groups as and when needed
Food Access
1. Improve financial access people to food through employment creation, skill development, and job clearance information networks
2. Provide income support to the extremely poor by creating social safety nets
3. Improve physical access of the people to food by facilitating the free movement of food grains throughout the country and ensuring law and order
Food Absorption
1. Improve general health care by allocating more resources to promotive and preventive healthcare which is more cost-effective and helpful in developing countries than the curative
2. Population planning for arresting its rapid growth with particular attention to mother and child healthcare
3. Pay special attention to water-borne diseases which are widespread but can be controlled with dedicated efforts
4. Food fortification to make it healthy and absorption friendly
Food Stability
To ensure the price stability of food grains
1. Establish an adequate system to forecast shortages and take timely measures to keep the prices of food grains stable
2. Each country must have sufficient buffer stocks conveniently located for transportation in different parts to ensure their easy availability in emergency
3. Timely import of food grains whenever a country or a region’s stocks appear to fall below the danger threshold
Food Security-Global Response
Although ensuring food security for their citizens is the ultimate responsibility of respective countries, it cannot be adequately accomplished without a collective and coordinated response by the global community. Some of the measures needed in this respect are as follows;
1. There is a need for a formal renewed commitment at the global and state level to reduce poverty by dedicating sufficient resources for job creation, skill formation, social safety nets, and ensuring good governance
2. All countries must allocate more resources for Agricultural Research and Development and encourage global collaboration to share the findings of research at institutional and private levels.
3. Similarly there is an urgent need for global collaboration to carry out healthcare reforms to improve the absorption and nutrition capacity of people in the developing countries
4. There cannot be two opinions about the need and urgency for putting in place efficient and reliable forecasting and early warning systems for food grains production and stock position. Timely information about the global trends in stocks and production and early warning in case of looming food shortages must be available
5. United Nations should devise a Code of conduct for food-exporting countries not to impose restrictions on the exports of food in times of crises which aggravate the situation more than the actual crises
6. Early agreement on global warming, environmental sustainability, and climate change which is a looming threat to global food security
7. Regional buffer stocks at neutral places under the supervision of WFP be established for timely response to emergent threats of food shortages
8. There is an urgent need for devising fair rules of the game in international trade which could ensure equitable share for every trading nation in the increase in global trade and development
9. There must be a universal policy framework for corporate farming to restrain the rich nations to grab lands in developing countries to ensure their food security at the cost of malnutrition in the developing nations.
10. Fuel security cannot be achieved at the cost of food security, particularly in countries already facing food crises. They must ban the use of arable land for the cultivation of crops for biofuels on lands already under cultivation for the production of food crops.
Conclusion
No doubt, developing countries have made significant progress in reducing poverty/hunger as suggested in the Millennium Development Goals resulting in more than a 17 per cent decline in the incidence of undernourishment in developing countries as a whole from 1990–92. However, still, the one-eighth population of the world is food insecure in these countries.
There is thus a very crucial lesson for policymakers worldwide-exclusive reliance on growth for raising incomes and reducing hunger is not enough: only sustainable & broad-based growth accompanied by a targeted attack on the worst forms of poverty and hunger can ensure food security.
Growth policies must therefore aim at enhancing agricultural productivity by allocating sufficient resources for agricultural R&D, improving the terms of trade for the agricultural sector, and devising appropriate social safety nets for the urban poor and rural landless farmers.
