Food Security and Development

Country Case Studies

Udaya Sekhar Nagothu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317596486
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

The global food system is characterized by large numbers of people experiencing food insecurity and hunger on the one hand, and vast amounts of food waste and overconsumption on the other. This book brings together experiences from different countries addressing the challenges associated with food security. Seen through various disciplinary lenses the different cases included are countries at various stages of food security, with diverse stories of success as well as failures in their efforts. China, Brazil and India, as well as less developed countries in Africa and Asia, such as Malawi, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Myanmar, Bangladesh and the Philippines. The authors pay special attention to the environmental and socio-economic challenges in the respective chapters and how they contribute to food insecurity. Each of the case studies identifies and analyzes which factors or drivers (environmental, economic, policy, technology, markets) have been the most powerful shapers of the food system and their future impact.

The case studies identify interventions at regional, national and local level that contribute positively to food security, highlighting solutions that are effective and easy to implement for all levels of decision makers, from farmers to policy makers. Overall, the book provides insights in order to foster a greater understanding of the issues surrounding food security and support progress towards the goal of a sustainable food system for all.

1 Food security in the context of global environmental and economic change

Ingela T. Flatin and Udaya Sekhar Nagothu

Introduction

According to The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012, almost 870 million people, or about 12.5 per cent of the global population, were chronically undernourished in 2010–12. The vast majority of these, about 852 million, live in developing countries. Up to 2 billion people intermittently lack food security owing to varying degrees of poverty (FAO, WFP and IFAD, 2012). In addition, micronutrient deficiencies, in particular vitamin A, iron and iodine deficiency, often referred to as ‘hidden hunger’, also affects up to 2 billion people worldwide (WHO, 2002).

While undernourishment has declined in South-Eastern Asia, Eastern Asia and Latin America in the period from 1990/92 to 2010/12, the share of undernourished, however, increased in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa from 32.7 to 35 per cent and 17 to 27 per cent, respectively. Of the 870 million chronically undernourished people, 304 million live in Southern Asia and 234 million live in sub-Saharan Africa (FAO, WFP and IFAD, 2012). These two most vulnerable regions face different challenges. In Southern Asia, although self-sufficient in food, the major challenges are poor access, distribution and malnourishment. In sub-Saharan Africa, where the current population of one billion is projected to double by 2050, increased food production is an additional challenge (UNDP, 2012). The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates suggest that undernourishment has evolved in line with global and regional poverty estimates. In developing countries as a whole, undernourishment declined from 23.2 to 14.9 per cent from 1990–92 to 2010–12, while poverty declined from 47.5 to 22.4 per cent (FAO, WFP and IFAD, 2012).

Despite global development and economic growth, the share of undernourished people is still alarmingly high. At the same time, for the first time in history, there are more people that are overweight (around 1.4 billion) than undernourished. The majority of the global population (65 per cent of world population) live in countries where obesity and being overweight kills more people than underweight (WHO, 2013). Overweight people can also face problems of malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies (Eckhardt, 2006). According to a recent comprehensive global study, obesity is a bigger health crisis globally than hunger and the leading cause of disabilities around the world, with obesity increasing by 82 per cent globally in the past two decades (The Lancet, 2012). The stark contrast between global levels of overweight and under- or malnutrition suggests there are overall, systemic problems with the global food system as a whole. In his book Stuffed and Starved, Raj Patel suggests that global undernourishment and obesity are interrelated (Patel, 2007). One important shift in the food security discourse over the years has been from a focus on sufficient calorie intake to nutritional quality (Welch and Graham, 1999; Lang and Heasman, 2003; Carolan, 2013).

FAO projects that by 2050 the global population will increase by over 30 per cent, to 9.1 billion. Nearly all of the population growth will occur in developing countries, many of which are food insecure. In addition, urbanization will continue and income levels will rise. In order to feed this larger, richer, urbanized human population, some experts estimate that global agricultural output must increase by 70 per cent from 2009 to 2050 (FAO, 2009a). Others claim that a focus on increased production is misled as there is currently enough food to feed more than the projected 2050 global population, and that instead the focus should be on creating just and efficient food systems that are sustainable and secure for all people (IAASTD, 2008; Holt-Giménez, 2012; UNCTAD, 2013).

With almost a billion people chronically hungry, growing populations, increasing economic inequity, global warming, environmental degradation, and massive biodiversity loss, securing a food system that works for all is a tall order. It demands nothing short of a new approach to food security.

Food security – the concept

In 1941, the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt held a speech where he spoke of the four freedoms all people in the world should have: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear (FDR library, 2013). In 1943, Roosevelt called a United Nations Conference on Food and Agriculture, and in 1945 the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was established. Roosevelt’s ‘freedom from want’ was translated to mean ‘a secure, adequate and suitable supply of food for every man’ (Shaw, 2007).

Food security as a concept emerged in the mid-1970s in a context of several incidences of large-scale hunger, which prompted discussions on food supply and sufficiency at the aggregate level (global and national level). The discussion that emerged from the World Food Conference in 1974 had the ambitious goal to eradicate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition within a decade (FAO, 1999). However, the debate focused on food production and supply, resulting in grand schemes such as the Green Revolution, and neglected sufficiency at the household or individual level, let alone nutritional quality and environmental sustainability. Since then, food security has evolved to incorporate new thinking and perceptions surrounding the causes, including Amartya Sen’s analysis of food security as an issue of entitlements and distribution more than merely an issue of production and availability. According to Sen, food security depends on income and political and social power (Sen, 1981).

The World Food Summit in 1996 formulated a definition that is now widely accepted in the discourse:

Food security exists 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.

(FAO, 2006a)

This definition later developed to include dimensions of availability, access, utilization and stability (FAO, 2006a), popularly translated into the 3As: accessibility, affordability and availability.

It is unlikely that this definition includes full nutritional needs, because, if it does, the FAO estimate of 870 million food insecure people should grow to include the 2 billion people suffering from micronutrient deficiencies (Pinstrup-Andersen, 2009). One might argue that the global obesity epidemic is another case of food insecurity – although in a different vein. Out of the 1.4 billion overweight people, 500 million are obese (WHO, 2013). As an interesting case in point, Townsend et al. (2001) found food insecurity and obesity to be positively related in the United States.

An influential paper by Maxwell (1996) outlined three main shifts in the debate on food security since the World Food Conference in 1974: from the global and the national to the household and the individual; from a food first perspective to a livelihood perspective; and from objective indicators to subjective perception. For instance, a household may have the means to acquire the necessary food, but some members of the household might be underfed (for various reasons), or the members may lack knowledge of dietary changes. A simple thing such as lack of nutritional knowledge can lead to deficiencies, as happened in post Green Revolution countries when people changed their staple diets from traditional food grains (millets) and pulses to refined wheat and rice, causing a steep decline in the diet’s micronutrient content (Welch and Graham, 1999; Welch, 2002; Graham et al., 2012).

What about people who are ‘food secure’, but only have access to unclean water and poor sanitation? If food security is supposed to ensure good health and nutrition, policymakers should design interventions to achieve nutritional security, guided by measurements of health (Pinstrup-Andersen, 2009). This has broadened the debate on food security to include nutritional security. According to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), food security is a necessary but insufficient condition for nutritional security. Nutritional security requires not only access to food but also health care, a hygienic environment, knowledge of personal hygiene and other requirements for a healthy life (IFAD, 2013a).

Maxwell (1996) suggests that there should be no overarching theory of food security, applicable to all situations; rather, policy should recognize the diversity of food insecurity causes, situations and strategies, and relate to particular circumstances. He further states that the character of food insecurity, state capacity and political circumstances are important factors to take into account.

Lang and Barling (2012) conclude that the notion of food security may not be useful or even viable in the new, complex context, quite different to that from which the concept emerged; and not least, because food security can have too many different meanings. They also criticize the accepted FAO definition for lacking any dimension of sustainability, writing: ‘a basic truth remains that the only food system to be secure is that which is sustainable, and the route to food security is by addressing sustainability’.

Food security and sustainability

Since Our Common Future was published in 1987 (Brundtland, 1987), ‘sustainability’ has been a key term in the development discourse. The term ‘sustainable diets’ was introduced in the 1980s, but feeding a hungry world continues to override issues of sustainability (FAO, 2012a). In 2008, the final report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), an independent, multi-stakeholder international assessment of agriculture, concluded that ‘business-as-usual in agriculture is not an option’, and prescribes an increasing shift towards agroecology and organic practices (IAASTD, 2008). The more recent Trade and Environment Review 2013 concurs, subtitling the report ‘Wake up before it is too late: Make agriculture truly sustainable now for food security in a changing climate’ (UNCTAD, 2013).

In 2010, FAO arranged a symposium on biodiversity and sustainable diets. The symposium accepted the growing academic recognition of the relationship between current agricultural practices in many parts of the world and environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity, and defined sustainable diets as:

diets with low environmental impacts which contribute to food and nutrition security and to healthy life for present and future generations. Sustainable diets are protective and respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems, culturally acceptable, accessible, economically fair and affordable; nutritionally adequate, safe and healthy; while optimizing natural and human resources.

(FAO, 2012a)

The symposium concluded that more nutritious diets may reduce dietary impacts on the environment and that a shift to more sustainable diets may trigger upstream effects on the food production (e.g. diversification), processing chain and food consumption patterns (FAO, 2012a). Based on criteria for sustainability, Lang and Barling (2012) suggest that food security as a concept may fade into obscurity, replaced by a more all-encompassing term, such as sustainable food systems.

In 2009, the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission proposed that the government adopt a new definition of food security in terms of genuinely sustainable food systems, the main goal being to ‘feed everyone sustainably, equitably and healthily; which addresses needs for availability, affordability and accessibility; which is diverse, ecologically-sound and resilient; and which builds the capabilities and skills necessary for future generations’ (SDC, 2009). This recommendation is part of the emerging human rights and livelihood approaches to food security.

The livelihood, right to food and food sovereignty approaches to food security

Maxwell and Smith note that food insecure groups balance competing needs in a complex way: people may go hungry, up to a point, to meet some other objective. Livelihood approaches place food security in a wider web of human development, justice and environmental issues. The focus is on enhancing people’s own abilities to secure their own livelihood in a sustainable manner (Maxwell and Smith, 1992).

Human rights approaches to food security are increasingly becoming common, formulated as a Right to Food. The right to food was already recognized in the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but the 1996 World Food Summit called for these rights to be more concrete and operational. In 2000, the UN establ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• List of contributors
• Preface
• 1 Food security in the context of global environmental and economic change
• 2 Food security in China: past, present and the future
• 3 Technological and institutional challenges to food security in the Philippines
• 4 A country in rapid transition: can Myanmar achieve food security?
• 5 Implications of climate change, population and resource scarcity for food security in Bangladesh
• 6 Food security in India: the need for sustainable food systems
• 7 Status and trends of food security in Ethiopia
• 8 Tanzania’s food security: seeking sustainable agricultural intensification and dietary diversity
• 9 Food security in Malawi: disputed diagnoses, different prescriptions
• 10 Making the agri-food system work for the poor: the construction of food and nutrition security in Brazil
• 11 The future of food security: summary and recommendations
• Index