Food Security in the Developing World

Chapter One

Introduction

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the boundaries and contours of food security and its link with nutrition security. The topics include key definitions: worldwide distribution of food insecurity and the number of people affected; short- and long-term food insecurity; flashpoint grain deficit areas compared with traditional grain surplus areas; investment as the apex solution to food and nutrition insecurity; hunger as a rights issue and UN organizations which directly address it; and, a brief history of feeding the world from 1945. These topics, together with others, will be covered in more detail in subsequent chapters and the companion website, http://booksite.elsevier.com/9780128015940.

Keywords

Scope; worldwide distribution; number of food-insecure; short-/long-term; grain deficit/surplus; rights issue; investment; UN organizations; feeding the world

1.1 General Scope of the Subject

1.1.1 Introduction

In 2014 the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that more than 800 million people are undernourished in terms of dietary energy intake. Another manifestation of undernourishment, micronutrient deficiencies, affects about 2 billion people. Each year more than 3 million children die of undernutrition before their fifth birthday.

Since the World Food Conference in Rome in 1974, the concept of food security has evolved, developed, multiplied, and diversified (Maxwell, 1996). Some 200 definitions of the term have been proposed, indicating a breadth of perspectives. However, the definition that has invariably been accepted now is that agreed at the World Food Summit (WFS) in November 1996, and this meaning is that endorsed in the current book, namely "Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life".

Conversely, the FAO definition of food insecurity is A situation that exists where people lack secure access for sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development and an active and healthy life. Food security, and its converse food insecurity, has rightly become a multidimensional index (Smith et al., 1993). The term food insecurity is not merely about the concepts of hunger and undernutrition, but the experience of these by those affected by or vulnerable to it, and the anguish of being unsure when one can next provide food for one’s family. Food insecurity also inflames the passion of humanitarian and development partners who engage with it around the clock.

In the 1970s, food insecurity was understood (by those who did not have to bear its burden on their backs) as simply a measure of availability of food, evidenced in the various food crises and famines of the times. The Green Revolution, which significantly impacted developing countries in South America and Asia by the 1960s, certainly increased the food supply, yet hunger continued in much of the world. The realization dawned that many of those affected were unable to access the supply of food. Amartya Sen epitomized this in the statement Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat (Sen, 1981).

1.1.2 The Multiple Dimensions of Food Security

The prevalence of undernourishment is a measure of dietary energy deprivation (hunger), though as a stand-alone indicator cannot capture the complexity and many dimensions of food security. The joint publication The State of Food Insecurity in the World in 2013¹ presented and analyzed a suite of indicators that address the four dimensions of food security: food availability, economic and physical access to food, food consumption/utilization and stability over time.

Food security is a term referring to the ability of a community, family or individual to be able to eat sufficiently, in terms of both quantity and quality, as prescribed by international standards of calorie, protein and vitamin intake. As indicated above, the term comprises several interrelated components (food availability, access and also quality/safety/consumption-utilization), all of which must be simultaneously achieved, to avoid the onset of food insecurity. More recently the important component of stability of food supply over time has also been stressed, related to managing the risks to all of the above components due to abrupt shocks of an economic, conflict or climatic nature.

Food needs to be available in order to be accessed, from the family farm, the granary, the kitchen, and the local store or market. As a whole, over the 20 years up to 2014, food supplies have grown faster than population in the developing world, resulting in rising food availability per person (FAO Statistics Division, 2014). This is in spite of global food supplies exhibiting larger-than-normal variability in recent years, reflecting the increased frequency of extreme events such as droughts and floods (see Section 5.5.1).

Yet, availability alone is not enough to confer food security, for sufficient access to available food is often denied. This may come about as a result of economic constraints (poverty), and therefore the inability of an individual to purchase the food needed (if not receiving humanitarian aid). Improvements in economic access to food are reflected by reduction in poverty rates, which fell from 47% to 24% between 1990 and 2008 in the developing world as a whole. However, economic access to food, based on food prices and people’s purchasing power, has fluctuated more recently.

Access to food may also be denied due to physical constraints, such as a road network which floods or gets washed away in the monsoon, cutting access to markets and raising the prices of food which can get through, or simply by living in a remote location. Also, the separation wall between Israel and Palestine, as a result of which people may be unable to access their resources (arable land to plant or harvest their crops, or the water for irrigation or livestock), so that both food self-sufficiency and agricultural income generation are hopelessly compromised. The separation wall, by restricting personal movement, keeps many would-be workers away from employment opportunities, so they cannot earn enough to enable them to buy the food they need for themselves and the family.

In many parts of the world, there is a social or political barrier, such as that which prevents access to jobs (through class or partisan conflict, lack of opportunity for a good education, cultural norms), this keeping a person and her/his family poor and hungry.

In addition to availability and access, a third component of food security is consumption/utilization. Food may be both available and accessible in a community, but if an individual does not properly use or consume it, then that person is food-insecure, unable to benefit properly from either its availability or having access to it. Reasons underlying this could be compliance with societal social/religious norms, ill health, inability to cook it or store it safely (so it does not rot or become attacked by pests), the food being nutritionally inadequate, or the person unable to absorb its nourishment sufficiently (due to diarrhea or intestinal worms caused by poor hygiene or contaminated water).

Outcome indicators of food utilization convey the impact of inadequate food intake and poor health. Wasting, for instance, is the result of short-term inadequacy of food intake, an illness or an infection, whereas stunting is often caused by prolonged inadequacy of food intake, repeated episodes of infections and/or repeated episodes of acute undernutrition. Prevalence rates for stunting and underweight (a weight 15–20% below the norm for the age and height group) in children under 5 years of age have declined in all regions of the developing world since 1990, indicating improved nutrition resulting from enhanced access to and availability of food, although progress has varied across regions.

The fourth component of food security is stability over time of the food source, which relates to availability, access and predictability. Food price spikes can result from local, regional or international events, over which a given community has little or no control (see Case Study 9 on the book’s companion website, http://booksite.elsevier.com/9780128015940) and clearly influence the stability of affordable food supply. Another cause of supply instability is cyclic seasonal events (such as alternating seasons of bumper and poor olive harvests in the West Bank of Palestine).

Where and when food insecurity is in evidence, at the levels of region, nation, community, households and/or individuals, not only is there an immediate human and social cost of incipient hunger and undernutrition but also detrimental long-term economics comes into play. A population can be seriously damaged through being ill-fed, in terms of irreversible loss of cognitive function in children, a discouraged and unemployed youth, vulnerability to disease and the cost of this to the health service and productive sectors. Causality is bidirectional—the food-insecure get sick, and the sick get food-insecure as they have not the energy to work, or look for work, to relieve that food insecurity. A nation’s human health is a strong predictor of the health of its economy. It follows that there is a huge macroeconomic cost to taking no action to relieve food insecurity in a sustainable manner—we, the world community, cannot afford to do nothing about it.

It may be seen from the above discussion that the term nutrition frequently occurs in the narrative. The concept of nutrition security is closely related to food security, the former being partly dependent on the latter. Without food security, it is impossible to have sustained nutrition security (see Section 2.1.3). Undernutrition of children under 5 years of age is especially concerning, particularly of children under 2 years of age, who are so completely dependent for their well-being on the mother (or caregiver in the absence of the mother). The United Nations Children’s Fund stresses that the most irreversible damage caused by undernutrition globally happens during gestation and in the first 24 months of life (the first 1000 days), and this is the focus window addressed by many development partners (UNICEF, 2009). Beyond that, the period from 2 until 5 years is also regarded as a crucial window. As expressed to the current author in northern Nigeria Once a child is five, he can beg, steal, scavenge and use a catapult (to achieve a degree of food and nutrition security).

One in every five children in the developing world is undernourished, and poor nutrition is associated with half of all child deaths worldwide. Undernutrition in early childhood can lead to cognitive and physical deficits, and may cause similar deficits in future generations as undernourished mothers give birth to low birthweight babies. Undernutrition, through weakening the body, also increases susceptibility to and incidence of infections, and diminished response to vaccines. Undernutrition and infectious diseases are bi-causal and synergistic—undernutrition reduces immunological resistance and diseases deplete the body of essential nutrients.

One aspect of food insecurity which is taking hold in both developed and developing countries, for individuals and communities where food and wealth are readily available, is that of obesity. Such individuals are consuming more than sufficiently (as per the definition above) and are malnourished in the sense that their health is at risk from conditions such as heart and vascular disease, and diabetes. The frequent inactive and sedentary life style of such people means that excess calories are not burnt off, through laboring or exercise.

1.1.3 The Causes of Undernutrition

Nutritional problems in developing countries are normally caused by deficiencies or imbalances in dietary intake. These are conditioned by poverty, near-exclusive reliance on plant sources of nutrients, and high rates of infections. Undernutrition and infectious diseases further exacerbate poverty through lost wages, increased healthcare costs and impaired intellectual development that can reduce earning potential (Caulfield et al., 2006). Population subgroups at particular risk are the children and women of poor families. The root of undernutrition in early childhood is complex with a variety of direct and underlying contributors related to lack of balanced food, including insufficient breastfeeding and inadequate complementary foods; nutrient loss from gastrointestinal infections; chronic immune stimulation due to persistent parasitic intestinal infections; and, inadequate hygiene and sanitation, and contaminated drinking water (Psaki et al., 2012) (see Chapter 3: Causes of Food Insecurity).

1.1.4 Measurement of Food Insecurity

Of the three hierarchical components (availability, access, and utilization), availability is often measured through proxies at the population level, such as national agricultural output, while access and utilization are more often measured at the household and individual levels, respectively. While direct measures of food utilization exist, such as food frequency questionnaires, household food access has often been measured indirectly, through child anthropometry or agricultural productivity. Measurement of all three aspects of food insecurity has posed persistent challenges, such as the difficulty of measuring the impact of short-term shocks on household food access. Recent research, however, shows promise in the area of food access measurement, with the construction of simple household survey measures such as the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale. Low-cost and valid measures of household food insecurity are necessary to accurately predict the prevalence of food insecurity in response to changing conditions. Such measurements can then inform targeted interventions to diminish childhood morbidity and mortality (Psaki et al., 2012) (see Section 4.7).

Before proceeding with more detail in this book, it is important to realize that the term food security is not well articulated by the general public (see Box 1.1).

Box 1.1

Widespread Unawareness of the Term Food Security

Having briefly described above the scope of the term food security, it is nevertheless a term not encompassed in the lexicon of the general public. The current author has frequently been asked what it means, and if it refers to terrorists or cash transit vans? Some 200 definitions of the term occur in the literature, so perhaps the confusion is not surprising. Rather more surprising is the incomplete grasp of the term by some development agency