What Is Food Security?
Various organizations define food insecurity differently while explaining the same phenomenon. According to The World Food Summit held in October 1996, “Food security exist 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 lifestyle” (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2001, p. 4). It is important to note that the foregoing definition of food security focuses on the availability of food for everyone. This focus is because more people shifted from subsistence farming in favor of commercial farming thereby targeting industrial development. This shift has created considerable challenges, especially in the less developed and developing counties upon which the World Food Programme estimates that about 1.02 billion people are malnourished (World Food Programme, 2009). Some scholars believe that family planners have the responsibility of eradicating food insecurity by increasing the productivity of land. According to Brown, land productivity has slowed down since the 1990 given that despite the world population growth slowing for the past three decades, an estimated 76 million people continue to suffer food insecurity annually (Brown, 2005).
The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines food insecurity to mean a condition where people are living with hunger and constant fear of facing starvation (Alweendo, 2009). This means a condition where people are having difficulties accessing food for their daily sustenance. It is obvious that the perspective of FAO’s definition derives from security in terms of the supply, which would ensure that every person is able to access the basic foodstuffs through various means including ensuring price stability for the basic foodstuffs. As such, FAO considers the causes of food insecurity as rise in food prices, climate change, and Global water crisis.
In order to have a better understanding of the gist of food security, the World Food Programme (WFP) takes the perspective of the consequences of food insecurity. In particular, the WFP looks at the way constant hunger and malnutrition affect people and future generations throughout the world (Braun, 1992). For instance, the WFP believes that Malnutrition contributes immensely to diseases and that it mostly affects children and pregnant women (World Food Programme, 2009). By focusing on the consequences of food insecurity, the WFP is indirectly defining food security to mean the situation where there are no diseases due to hunger and malnutrition.
Most people consider the state as having the main responsibility of ensuring food security. For instance, intergovernmental policies and programs in the poor nations play an important role of creating awareness regarding food and agriculture with the able guidance of FAO (Hulse & National Research Council Canada, 1995). According to FAO, the main food security monitors are the nutritional surveillance systems, the market information systems, agricultural production monitoring, and social monitoring that focus on observing the vulnerable groups (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2001). Ultimately, access to food is at the core of food security as evidenced by The 1996 World Food Summit, the WFP, and FAO definitions of food security.
References
Alweendo, N. (2009). Namibia: Floods Reduce Food Security. Allafrica.com. Available from
http://allafrica.com/stories/200907230894.html
Braun, V. (1992). Improving food security of the poor: concept, policy, and programs.
International Food Policy Research Institute.
Brown, L. (2005). Outgrowing the Earth. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher
Education 6(3), pp 224.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). (2001). Issue 6 of Handbook
for Defining and Setting Up a Food Security Information and Early Warning System. FAO Rome, 2000. Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/nr/climpag/pub/Manual%20of%20FSIEWS.pdf
Hulse, H., & Canada, R. (1995). Science, agriculture and food security. NRC Research Press.
World Food Programme (2009). Our Work. World Food Programme Available from
http://www.wfp.org/our-work
