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Food security is the measure of the availability of food and individuals' ability to access it. According to the United Nations' Committee on World Food Security, food security is defined as meaning 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. The availability of food irrespective of class, gender or region is another one. There is evidence of food security being a concern many thousands of years ago, with central authorities in ancient China and ancient Egypt being known to release food from storage in times of famine. At the 1974 World Food Conference, the term "food security" was defined with an emphasis on supply; food security is defined as the "availability at all times of adequate, nourishing, diverse, balanced and moderate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices". Later definitions added demand and access issues to the definition. The first World Food Summit, held in 1996, stated that food security "exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is an international agricultural research center founded in the early 1970s to improve the understanding of national agricultural and food policies to promote the adoption of innovations in agricultural technology. Additionally, IFPRI was meant to shed more light on the role of agricultural and rural development in the broader development pathway of a country. The mission of IFPRI is to provide research-based policy solutions that sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition.
FEWS NET, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, is a website of information and analysis on food insecurity created in 1985 by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the US Department of State, after famines in East and West Africa. In 2008, Molly E. Brown argued that during its twenty years of activity, FEWS NET had been extremely successful. She said that it was widely viewed as "the most effective program in existence for providing information to governments about impending food crises".
Oportunidades is a government social assistance program in Mexico founded in 2002, based on a previous program called Progresa, created in 1997. It is designed to target poverty by providing cash payments to families in exchange for regular school attendance, health clinic visits, and nutrition support. Oportunidades is credited with decreasing poverty and improving health and educational attainment in regions where it has been deployed. Key features of Oportunidades include:
The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool that measures and tracks hunger globally as well as by region and by country, prepared by European NGOs of Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe. The GHI is calculated annually, and its results appear in a report issued in October each year.
Water security is a policy goal that describes the fundamental societal goal of water policy and water management, whereby the productive potential of water is harnessed and its destructive impact is limited. Water has productive contributions to human and ecosystems’ well-being, livelihoods and development. It can also have destructive impacts on societies and ecosystems when there is too much water (flood), too little water or poor quality (polluted) water. A widely accepted definition of water security is: "Water security is the reliable availability of an acceptable quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods and production, coupled with an acceptable level of water-related risks". Improving water security, by managing water resources, is a key factor to achieve growth, sustainable development and poverty reduction. The main three factors that determine a society's ability to sustain water security include: hydrologic environment, socio-economic environment and changes in the future environment. Water security is critical for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) because most SDGs cannot be met without access to adequate and safe water.
Monga is a Bengali term referring to the yearly cyclical phenomenon of poverty and hunger in Bangladesh. It is also called "mora Kartik," which means "months of death and disaster." It refers to two times per year, from September–November and from March–April. These natural phenomena lead to fewer available job opportunities for rural workers, resulting in the workers becoming migrant and moving to towns. Those who cannot migrate can face malnutrition and starvation. The public awareness of Monga has risen with media focus in the 2000s. It was cited in Bangladesh's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, and has been the subject of NGO aid programs.
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is an organisation that seeks to transform African agriculture from a subsistence model to strong businesses that improve the livelihoods of the continent’s farming households.
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.
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.
It is estimated that 64 percent of the Mozambique population is food insecure. The prevalence is higher in the southern region.
The Relief Society of Tigray is an NGO based in Tigray, northern Ethiopia. REST was founded in 1978 as an organisation providing relief efforts to civilians. As of 2008, Teklewoini Assefa served as Executive Director of REST. REST emerged as the humanitarian wing of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and has remained closely linked to TPLF. REST was active throughout the armed conflict of the 1980s, including during the devastating 1984–1985 famine. Since the 1990s it is the major NGO operating in Tigray.
The agricultural system in Sub-Saharan Africa is a predominantly small-scale farming system with more than 50% of the agricultural activity performed by women, producing about 60-70% of the food in this region. While women provide the majority of the labor in agricultural production, their access and control over productive resources is greatly constrained due to inequalities constructed by patriarchal norms.
Gender inequality both leads to and is a result of food insecurity. According to estimates women and girls make up 60% of the world's chronically hungry and little progress has been made in ensuring the equal right to food for women enshrined in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Women face discrimination both in education and employment opportunities and within the household, where their bargaining power is lower. On the other hand, gender equality is described as instrumental to ending malnutrition and hunger. Women tend to be responsible for food preparation and childcare within the family and are more likely to be spent their income on food and their children's needs. The gendered aspects of food security are visible along the four pillars of food security: availability, access, utilization and stability, as defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization.
Hunger in the United States of America affects millions of Americans, including some who are middle class, or who are in households where all adults are in work. The United States produces far more food than it needs for domestic consumption—hunger within the U.S. is caused by some Americans having insufficient money to buy food for themselves or their families. Additional causes of hunger and food insecurity include neighborhood deprivation and agricultural policy. Hunger is addressed by a mix of public and private food aid provision. Public interventions include changes to agricultural policy, the construction of supermarkets in underserved neighborhoods, investment in transportation infrastructure, and the development of community gardens. Private aid is provided by food pantries, soup kitchens, food banks, and food rescue organizations.
School feeding programs have been defined by the World Bank as "targeted social safety nets that provide both educational and health benefits to the most vulnerable children, thereby increasing enrollment rates, reducing absenteeism, and improving food security at the household level". Beyond improvements in access to food, school feeding programs also have a positive impact on nutritional status, gender equity, and educational status, each of which contributes to improving overall levels of country and human development.
Maximo Torero is a Peruvian economist. He is currently the chief economist and assistant director general for the Economic and Social Development Department at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome, Italy.
John Hoddinott, is a Canadian economist and the Howard Edward Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy at Cornell University. In 2002–2015, Hoddinott was a Deputy Division Director at the International Food Policy Research Institute. Since 1997, he has been a research associate at the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford. Hoddinott received his DPhil in 1989 from Oxford University.
Long term aid to those in need creates a fear of having those provided with aid falling into the dependency theory. The rationale is that those who are benefiting will lose motivation to improve their lives on their own. Some may even work to worsen their condition in order to qualify for the aid. Additionally, one argument is that peripheral countries, such as Ethiopia, will not move out of needing aid because of the advanced economy's control. On average, Ethiopia has received 700,000 tons of food aid per year for the past 15 years. In rural Ethiopia, food aid has been provided for over three decades.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, food insecurity has intensified in many places – in the second quarter of 2020 there were multiple warnings of famine later in the year. According to early predictions, hundreds of thousands of people would likely die and millions more experience hunger without concerted efforts to address issues of food security. As of October 2020, these efforts were reducing the risk of widespread starvation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
References
- ↑ Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD) of Ethiopia (2014). Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) Programme Implementation Manual (Revised). Addis Ababa: Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD) of Ethiopia.
- ↑ Cochran, Logan; Tamiru, Y (2016). "Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Program: Power, Politics and Practice". Journal of International Development. 28 (5): 649–665. doi:10.1002/jid.3234.
- ↑ Cochran, Logan; Tamiru, Y (2016). "Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Program: Power, Politics and Practice". Journal of International Development. 28 (5): 649–665. doi:10.1002/jid.3234.
- ↑ "Irish Aid in Ethiopia". Department of Foreign Affairs . Retrieved 11 October 2020.
- ↑ Cochran, Logan; Tamiru, Y (2016). "Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Program: Power, Politics and Practice". Journal of International Development. 28 (5): 649–665. doi:10.1002/jid.3234.
- ↑ Coll-Black, S; Gilligan, D; Hoddinott, J; Kumar, N; Taffesse, S.A.; Wiseman, W (2011). "Targeting Food Security Interventions When "Everyone is Poor": The Case of Ethiopia" s Productive Safety Net Programme". IFPRI-ESSP Working Paper. 24.
- ↑ Berhane, G; Gilligan, D; Hoddinott, J; Kumar, N; Seyoum Taffesse, A (2014). "Can Social Protection Work in Africa? Evidence on the impact of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme on food security and assets". Economic Development and Cultural Change. 63 (1).