It is estimated that 64 percent of Mozambique's population is food insecure. The prevalence is higher in the southern region (75 percent). [1] [2] [3] Mozambique is a net importer of food. Total annual cereal import requirements average 0.89 million tons (0.14 million of maize, 0.39 of rice and 0.36 of wheat). Mozambique must also import substantial quantities of meat and livestock products. [4]
Despite good land and water availability, much of the food system relies on smallholder farmers which are vulnerable to natural disasters, exacerbating food insecurity challenges.
Health in Mozambique is affected by the food insecurity of the country. [5]
According to the 2009 Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme, about 55 percent of the population of Mozambique is living in poverty, nearly half is illiterate, 40 percent is undernourished, only 47 percent have access to safe water, and there is a standing life expectancy at birth of only 48 years. Mozambique ranked 165th out of 169 countries in the human development index. Much of this is a result of the food insecurity in the country.
The country has one of the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in the world. The prevalence of the HIV/AIDS virus in Mozambique is a further point of vulnerability for poor rural households, aggravating poverty and malnutrition levels. These factors put the country’s agricultural production at risk.
With more than 70 percent of its population dependent on agriculture for livelihood, Mozambique’s food security can be extremely volatile. 90% of the land is made up of farms of 10 hectares (25 acres) or less. Large-scale productive farming is virtually non-existent.
Mozambique suffers from multiple plagues. The most devastating by far for agriculture is the red locust, which is endemic in the Pungwe basin.
Mozambique is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters such as droughts and floods, with a total of 15 over the last 25 years. These events greatly damaged the rural sector and the country’s overall economy. For example, the floods of 2000 affected some 2 million people, while the droughts of 1994 and 1996 affected 1.5 million people in the southern and central parts of the country. [6]
Cyclones in Mozambique occur during the cropping season, from October to April. For example, in February 2007, Cyclone Flávio caused widespread damage in Inhambane, Sofala and Manica provinces.
The poor are particularly vulnerable to weather-induced risks simply by virtue of their poverty. Poor households have few assets to sell and their consumption is already low, so in times of scarcity they do not have much to buffer them from food insecurity. Most households have little income or real food security, and women-headed households have even less.
Mozambique has a relatively well-developed system of disaster preparedness plans at the district level. Donor-funded projects related to the National Early Warning System help the government cope with food insecurity.
The World Food Programme (WFP) is an international organization within the United Nations that provides food assistance worldwide. It is the world's largest humanitarian organization and the leading provider of school meals. Founded in 1961, WFP is headquartered in Rome and has offices in 80 countries. As of 2021, it supported over 128 million people across more than 120 countries and territories.
The economy of Mozambique is $14.396 billion by gross domestic product as of 2018, and has developed since the end of the Mozambican Civil War (1977–1992). In 1987, the government embarked on a series of macroeconomic reforms, which were designed to stabilize the economy. These steps, combined with donor assistance and with political stability since the multi-party elections in 1994, have led to dramatic improvements in the country's growth rate. Inflation was brought to single digits during the late 1990s, although it returned to double digits in 2000–02. Fiscal reforms, including the introduction of a value-added tax and reform of the customs service, have improved the government's revenue collection abilities.
Food security is the state of having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. The availability of food for people of any class, gender or religion is another element of food security. Similarly, household food security is considered to exist when all the members of a family, at all times, have access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Individuals who are food-secure do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Food security includes resilience to future disruptions of food supply. Such a disruption could occur due to various risk factors such as droughts and floods, shipping disruptions, fuel shortages, economic instability, and wars. Food insecurity is the opposite of food security: a state where there is only limited or uncertain availability of suitable food.
A smallholding or smallholder is a small farm operating under a small-scale agriculture model. Definitions vary widely for what constitutes a smallholder or small-scale farm, including factors such as size, food production technique or technology, involvement of family in labor and economic impact. Smallholdings are usually farms supporting a single family with a mixture of cash crops and subsistence farming. As a country becomes more affluent, smallholdings may not be self-sufficient, but may be valued for providing supplemental sustenance, recreation, and general rural lifestyle appreciation. As the sustainable food and local food movements grow in affluent countries, some of these smallholdings are gaining increased economic viability. There are an estimated 500 million smallholder farms in developing countries of the world alone, supporting almost two billion people.
Malawi is one of the world's undeveloped countries and is ranked 170 out of 187 countries according to the 2010 Human Development Index. It has about 16 million people, 53% of whom live under the national poverty line and 90% of whom live on less than $2 per day.
Agriculture employs the majority of Madagascar's population. Mainly involving smallholders, agriculture has seen different levels of state organisation, shifting from state control to a liberalized sector.
The 2008 Namibia floods took place in early February 2008, a rapid onset of heavy rains triggered floods in northern Namibia, leading to one of its worst floods in 50 years. The floods had killed 42 people by early March and an estimated 65,000 people were affected, primarily in the regions of Omusati, Oshikoto, Oshana, Ohangwena and Caprivi. 40,000 people were assisted by the Namibian Red Cross with 4,600 in relocation camps. Over-crowding and insanitary conditions caused health concerns in relocation camps and an outbreak of cholera was announced in March. On 14 March, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs triggered the International Charter for "Space and Major Disasters". Staple crops were devastated and 52,000 people from flood-affected areas were considered in need of immediate of assistance to cover their basic food needs. Deputy Prime Minister Libertine Amathila declared that the government would spend 65 million Namibian dollars to assist the displaced. Long-term impacts included damage to farmland, housing, schools, roads and infrastructure across the region. The floods reduced the resilience of the population who were left vulnerable to further flooding which occurred in 2009.
Purchase for Progress (P4P) is an initiative of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), involving over 500 partnerships, including Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, FAO, ACDI/VOCA, TechnoServe and others. Launched in September 2008 as a five-year pilot, P4P sought to explore programming and procurement modalities with the greatest potential to stimulate agricultural and market development in ways that maximized benefits to smallholder farmers. The program, largely developed by the eleventh Executive Director of the WFP, Josette Sheeran, arose as the WFP desired to purchase food in a way that was part of the "solution to hunger". These efforts are aligned with recommendations issued by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that call for an establishment of programs in support of socially vulnerable groups. and to the Zero Hunger Challenge launched by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Special UN Reporter 2012–2014, Olivier De Schutter, claimed that public procurement systems favour economically-strong bidders, thus excluding smallholder farmers. His conclusion was that public procurement schemes supportive of smallholders could have "powerful impacts on the reduction of rural poverty." P4P is built upon this very principle as it enables low-income farmers to supply food to the WFP's operations. Eventually the transaction can be regulated by a forward contract, with the farmer agreeing in selling in the future a certain amount of output at a fixed price. Essentially, the P4P program aims to create a wide and sophisticate market for commodities in developing countries.
The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) is an intergovernmental body within the United Nations System.
Food security is defined, according to the World Food Summit of 1996, as existing "when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life". This commonly refers to people having "physical and economic access" to food that meets both their nutritional needs and food preferences. Today, Ethiopia faces high levels of food insecurity, ranking as one of the hungriest countries in the world, with an estimated 5.2 million people needing food assistance in 2010. Ethiopia was ranked 92 in the world in Global Hunger Index 2020.
Mozambique has a variety of regional cropping patterns; agro-climatic zones range from arid and semi-arid to the sub-humid zones to the humid highlands. The most fertile areas are in the northern and central provinces, which have high agro-ecological potential and generally produce agricultural surpluses. Southern provinces have poorer soils and scarce rainfall, and are subject to recurrent droughts and floods.
The island country of Madagascar remains plagued by political and economic instability, poverty, and food insecurity. While the country engaged in an ambitious transformation program designed to improve social, economic, and governance indicators between 2002 and 2008, a 2009 political crisis has thrown these improvements off-course. This political strife, in combination with the global financial downturn, led to a 4 percent decline in economic growth in 2009.
There were 795 million malnurished people in the world in 2014, an increase of 216 million since 1990, despite the fact that the world already produces enough food to feed everyone—7.951 billion people—and could feed more than that—12 billion people.
In feminist economics, the feminization of agriculture refers to the measurable increase of women's participation in the agricultural sector, particularly in the developing world. The phenomenon started during the 1960s with increasing shares over time. In the 1990s, during liberalization, the phenomenon became more pronounced and negative effects appeared in the rural female population. Afterwards, agricultural markets became gendered institutions, affecting men and women differently. In 2009 World Bank, FAO & IFAD found that over 80 per cent of rural smallholder farmers worldwide were women, this was caused by men migrating to find work in other sectors. Out of all the women in the labor sector, the UN found 45-80% of them to be working in agriculture
Mexico has sought to ensure food security through its history. Yet, despite various efforts, Mexico continues to lack national food and nutrition strategies that secure food security for the people. As a large country of more than 100 million people, planning and executing social policies are complex tasks. Although Mexico has been expanding its food and nutrition programs that have been expected, and to some degree, have contributed to increases in health and nutrition, food security, particularly as it relates to obesity and malnutrition, still remains a relevant public health problem. Although food availability is not the issue, severe deficiencies in the accessibility of food contribute to insecurity.
Food insecurity in Niger is a growing concern, with more than 1.5 million people affected in the year 2017.
Hunger in Bangladesh is one of the major issues that affects the citizens of Bangladesh. The nation state of Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world and home for more than 160 million people. It progresses immensely in the Human Development Index, particularly in the areas of literacy and life expectancy, but economic inequality has increased and about 32% of the population, that is 50 million people, still live in extreme poverty.
Sustainable Development Goal 2 aims to achieve "zero hunger". It is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations in 2015. The official wording is: "End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture". SDG 2 highlights the "complex inter-linkages between food security, nutrition, rural transformation and sustainable agriculture". According to the United Nations, there are around 690 million people who are hungry, which accounts for slightly less than 10 percent of the world population. One in every nine people goes to bed hungry each night, including 20 million people currently at risk of famine in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Nigeria.
Agrifood systems encompass the primary production of food and non-food agricultural products, as well as in food storage, aggregation, post-harvest handling, transportation, processing, distribution, marketing, disposal and consumption. Within agrifood systems, food systems comprise all food products that originate from crop and livestock production, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture, and from other sources such as synthetic biology, and that are intended for human consumption.
Climate change in Africa is reducing its food security. Climate change at the global, continental, and sub-continental levels has been observed to include an increase in air and ocean temperatures, sea-level rise, a decrease in snow and ice extent, an increase and decrease in precipitation, changes in terrestrial and marine biological systems, and ocean acidification. The agricultural industry is responsible for more than 60% of full time employment in Africa. Millions of people in Africa depend on the agricultural industry for their economic well-being and means of subsistence. A variety of climate change-related factors such as worsening pests and diseases that damage agriculture and livestock, altered rainfall patterns, rising temperatures, droughts, and floods are having a negative impact on the agricultural industry in Africa. Many African populations access to food is being impacted by these climate change effects on the agricultural industry, which result in a trend of decreasing crop yields, animal losses, and rising food prices.