Global Food Security

Vandana Cowley* discusses global food security in the light of increasing food prices, socio economic conditions and climate change; as well as the particular burden that falls on women.

Providing global food securities is one of the principal challenges for humanity in current times. The scale of the challenges is immense. A Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimate puts the number of people who suffer from hunger at over 1 billion. There are more people hungry today than at any time since 1970. Malnutrition has also been growing since the mid-1990s, and in 2008 was effecting approximately 915 million people. These trends are expected to worsen given high food prices, and structural issues relating to the recent downturn in the global economy.

Food prices

The FAO predicts that by 2013 the global share of food in average household expenditure will decline. Despite this prediction, for some commodities, food prices are increasing faster than incomes. Growing scarcities of water, land and fuel are likely to put increasing pressure on food prices even without factoring in the effect of climate change. The potential to cause significant changes in relative prices for different food items and an overall increase in cost of an average food basket for the consumer to exacerbated by:

1. Additional pressures on water, land and fuel due to climate change,
2. Introduction of practices that have the potential to create land use competition and

• The attribution of market value to environmental services to mitigate climate change.

What is food security?

According to the FAO, food security exist when all people al all times have physical or economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs for an active and healthy life. A food system is a set of dynamic interactions between and within bio-geophysical and human environments that influence that influence both activities and outcomes all along the food chain. Food systems encompass food availability, food access as well as food utilisation.

Food security is diminished when food systems are stressed by climate change and other agents of environmental change such as conflict and HIV/AIDS. Urbanisation and globalisation are causing rapid changes to food systems. To achieve food security, all of the constituents of food security, all of the constituents of food systems including stability must be adequate.

Globally the contention is that South Asian countries are more prone to food insecurity. People in this region are characterised by high population growth. Poverty and high dependency on agriculture to maintain their livelihood.

Woman’s burden

Studies have indicated that climate change inducted disasters and food security burdens fall the heaviest on woman’s shoulders. Woman suffer more than men from poverty, hunger, malnutrition, economic crises, environmental degradation, health related problems, insecurities and are prone to becoming victims of violence and political crises. They also have to deal with the additional work and changes in the environment brought on by a disaster.

It has been argued that the violation of woman’s rights increase during times of disaster. Though people have to depend on relief, it often does not reach those who need it most. In such situations, women’s adoptive techniques and initiatives become crucial for the sustenance of their family. Food security depends more on socio-economic conditions rather than on agro climate ones. Future food security will mainly depend on the interrelationships between a host of factors such as political and socio-economic stability, agricultural policies and prices, poverty reduction, woman’s education and trade and climate variability. Climate change can affect the physical availability of food thus global food security should be ensured through addressing climate change from a wide range of perspectives, of which, reducing its impact should be given high priority.