FOOD SECURITY

'Food security' describes a situation in which people do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. World-wide around 852 million men, women and children are chronically hungry due to extreme poverty; while up to 2 billion people lack food security intermittently due to varying degrees of poverty. (source: FAO, 2003).
A direct relationship exists between food consumption levels and poverty. Families with the financial resources to escape extreme poverty rarely suffer from chronic hunger; while poor families not only suffer the most from chronic hunger, but are also the segment of the population most at risk during food shortages and famines.
Two commonly used definitions of food security come from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA):

★ Food security exists when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. (FAO)

★ Food security for a household means access by all members at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food security includes at a minimum (1) the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and (2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (that is, without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies). (USDA)
The stages of 'food insecurity' range from food secure situations to full-scale famine. "Famine and hunger are both rooted in food insecurity. Food insecurity can be categorized as either chronic or transitory. Chronic food insecurity translates into a high degree of vulnerability to famine and hunger; ensuring food security presupposes elimination of that vulnerability. [Chronic] hunger is not famine. It is similar to undernourishment and is related to poverty. [It exists] mainly in poor countries." Melaku Ayalew – What is Food Security and Famine and Hunger?

Contents

Food insecurity

Risks to Food Security

Fossil fuel dependence

See also

References

External links

Food insecurity

Food insecurity has been described as "a condition in which people lack basic food intake to provide them with the energy and nutrients for fully productive lives." Hunger Task Force
Food insecurity is defined as not having access to enough food every day of the year. The U.S. federal government collects statistics on this based on surveys.Household Food Security in the United States, 2004
Thus a "food insecure household" is one in which any member experienced one or more days in a given year when they didn't have enough food because of poverty or a lack of resources. This poverty measure takes into account participation in food assistance programs such as school breakfast, school lunch and Food Stamps.

Risks to Food Security

Fossil fuel dependence

While agricultural output increased as a result of the Green Revolution, the energy input into the process (that is, the energy that must be expended to produce a crop) has also increased at a greater rate, so that the ratio of crops produced to energy input has decreased over time. Green Revolution techniques also heavily rely on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, some of which must be developed from fossil fuels, making agriculture increasingly reliant on petroleum products.
Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation.^[1]
David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, and Mario Giampietro, senior researcher at the National Research Institute on Food and Nutrition (INRAN), place in theirs study ''Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy'' the maximum U.S. population for a sustainable economy at 200 million. To achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the United States must reduce its population by at least one-third, and world population will have to be reduced by two-thirds, says study.^[2]
The authors of this study believe that the mentioned agricultural crisis will only begin to impact us after 2020, and will not become critical until 2050. The oncoming peaking of global oil production (and subsequent decline of production), along with the peak of North American natural gas production will very likely precipitate this agricultural crisis much sooner than expected. Geologist Dale Allen Pfeiffer claims that coming decades could see spiraling food prices without relief and massive starvation on a global level such as never experienced before.^[3]

See also

★ 2020 Vision Initiative

★ Agriculture

★ Allotment gardens

★ Community Food Security Coalition

★ Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

★ Countries by fertility rate

★ Ecological sanitation

★ Famine

★ Food safety

★ Green Revolution

★ International development

★ International Food Policy Research Institute

★ Land reform

★ Norman Borlaug

★ Overpopulation

★ Peak oil

★ Urban agriculture

★ World population

References

1. Eating Fossil Fuels | EnergyBulletin.net
2. Peak Oil: the threat to our food security
3. Agriculture Meets Peak Oil



★ Cox, P. G., S. Mak, G. C. Jahn, and S. Mot. 2001. Impact of technologies on food security and poverty alleviation in Cambodia: designing research processes. pp. 677-684 In S. Peng and B. Hardy [eds.] “Rice Research for Food Security and Poverty Alleviation.” Proceeding the International Rice Research Conference, 31 March – 3 April 2000, Los Baños, Philippines. Los Baños (Philippines): International Rice Research Institute. 692 p.

★ Singer, H. W. (1997). A global view of food security. ''Agriculture + Rural Development'', 4: 3-6. Technical Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CTA).

★ von Braun, Joachim; Swaminathan, M. S.; Rosegrant, Mark W. 2004. Agriculture, food security, nutrition and the Millennium Development Goals (Annual Report Essay) Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

External links

★ FAO Food Security Statistics

★ The World Food Summit

★ e-learning about Food Security

★ CTA

★ IFPRI Food Security Outlook in Africa to 2025

★ Food Security dgCommunity

★ Food Security and Ag-Biotech News

★ Intact Consult - Independent Consultancy and Software for Food Safety

★ Video: Food Security and Its Impact on International Development and HIV Reduction (October 16, 2006) A Woodrow Wilson Center event featuring Jordan Dey, UNFP; William Noble, Africare; and Suneetha Kadiyala, IFPRI