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Food security
can be defined as the condition in which a
population has the physical, social, and economic access to safe and
nutritious
food over a given time period to meet dietary needs and preferences for
an
active life.
FAO, IFAD, and UNDP
focus
on food access and availability, while USAID includes food utilization
as part
of its definition of food security. Other
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) add the
concept of biological utilization. CCF
International follows the USAID
description of food security, which is defined as:
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 life.
Food
availability, food utilization, and food access are the
principle variables that define household food security and should
guide interventions:
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Food
Availability –
Sufficient quantities of appropriate, necessary types of
food from domestic production, commercial imports, or donors, are
consistently
available to individuals, are in reasonable proximity to them, or are
within
their reach.
Food
Access – Individuals
have adequate incomes or other resources
to purchase
or barter to obtain levels of appropriate food needed to maintain
consumption
of an adequate diet and nutritional level.
·
Food
Utilization –Food is
properly used; proper food processing
and storage
techniques are employed; adequate knowledge of nutrition and childcare
techniques exists and is applied; and adequate health and sanitation
services
exist.
Experience
indicates that a demographic transition leading to low birth and death
rates
takes place when an enabling environment, where children are born by
choice,
prevails. The major components of such an environment are now widely
recognized
as rising female
literacy and the status of women; decreased infant and maternal
mortality
rates; improved health, nutrition, livelihoods, and ecological security
for
all; and shared decision making by couples. The world population could
increase
from current figures of nearly 6 billion to 10 billion by 2050 (World
Bank
1992). About 97 percent of that increase will occur in developing
countries.
Since two-thirds of this growth is expected toTake
place in cities, the urban poor will need special attention.
THE
GLOBAL food security is in question today, with ever increasing food
prices
resulting from adverse climatic effects on agricultural production,
rise in oil
prices, increasing use of grains for biofuels, and almost a 50 per cent
reduction in public spending on agricultural sector over the last three
decades.
The environmental sustainability has also become more elusive due to
rapid
industrial and population growth, urbanization and with the lack of
public realization
about the sheer effects of environmental pollution. Asiatic countries
and their
economy largely depend upon agriculture. With the technological
breakthrough,
significant level of food grain production has been achieved and large
stocks
of food grains have been piled up to meet exigencies. Importantly, this
large stock of food grains is being infested with insects’
and
pests that have increased the cost of storage, besides deterioration in
the
quality of food grains. Secondly, the use of food grains for
manufacturing of
bio fuel to meet the energy need of industrial and transportation
sector has
resulted in diversion of main crop like corn, maize and beans.
Food
and safe drinking water are first among the hierarchical needs of human
beings.
This is why Thomas Malthus, in his “Essay on the Principle of
Population as It
Affects the Future Improvement of Society” (1798), wrote that
“the period when
the number of men surpasses their means of subsistence has long since
arrived.”
The global population is now nearly 6
billion,
yet
famines of the
kind Malthus predicted have been averted in recent decades, except in
regions
affected by ethnic or civil strife, prolonged drought, or other natural
calamities.
Globally, the problem of hunger is now more related to what Amartya
Sen, in the
paper entitled “Population and Reasoning”. Refers
to as
“entitlements,” not to
food production lagging behind population growth.
To eliminate
endemic hunger at the level of the individual,
it will be
necessary to
pay integrated and concurrent attention to:
-
Sensitize
and
mobilize public opinion through the mass media to generate appropriate
political action.
-
Achieve agricultural
intensification and diversification, so that
the income and employment potential of small-farm agriculture is
enhanced through economically and ecologically sustainable farm and
off-farm enterprises.
-
Ensure access to
food at affordable prices by both maintaining food security reserves
and operating an efficient public distribution system.
-
Ensure universal and
compulsory primary and secondary school education.
-
Develop an
integrated health security system that addresses sanitation, hygiene,
preventive and curative health measures, reproductive health, and
access to safe
and acceptable contraceptive
services.
-
Initiate public action to
provide: (a) protective social
security, such as an employment
guarantee and food for nutrition programs, for the assetless and
vulnerable sections of the population, and (b) promotional
social security, involving
access to information, technological
empowerment through training in new skills, credit, and remunerative
self-employment and marketing opportunities.
-
Mobilize the voluntary and
private sectors to promote literacy, ensure health security, and foster
a job-led economic growth strategy.
Such
a program for achieving freedom from endemic hunger
will succeed only where there is public commitment to political (i.e.
democracy
and independent judiciary and mass media), social (such as group
action), and
technological empowerment of all citizens, particularly the
economically and
socially disadvantaged sections of the population. The early
achievement of
this goal will be possible if, in addition to the needed public action,
the
private sector enters into a social contract with the economically and
socially
disadvantaged sections of the
population to improve the
livelihood security
of the poor. In recent
decades, several sources have predicted a
growing imbalance between our ability to produce food from diminishing
land and
water resources and expanding biotic and abiotic stresses. If these
predictions
are correct, serious famines will result if efforts in the area of
population
stabilization do not bear fruit.Even
if food is available on the
market, however, the poor
will have no access to it unless they have opportunities for
remunerative
employment. Hence, sustainable foodProduction and consumption need
integrated attention in
national and international food policie
Bridging
the gap between potential and actual
yields with the technologies that are currently available. In
most
farming
systems in developing countries, there is a large gap between potential
and
actual yields, even with currently available technologies. In India,
for
example, the average yield of rice from about 40 million hectares is
only a
little more than 2 tons per hectare. This yield can be at least
doubled.
Through a combination of location-specific technologies,
timely
delivery of appropriate
inputs, public policies in land reform, input-output pricing, and
marketing, it
will be possible to tap the untapped yield reservoir that
exists
in most farming systems.
·
Upgrading
the biological
potential of wasted lands. This
effort is of the highest priority.
Globally, more than
15 percent of
good farmland is now degraded from a variety of human-induced causes
(Table 3).
In
the population-rich
but land hungry countries of
South and Southeast Asia, nearly 20
percent of farmland
remains
unproductive due to a variety of causes such as salinity, alkalinity,
water logging,
and loss of topsoil from erosion. The Desertification Convention can
provide an
opportunity for launching a mass movement to protect and improve soil
health.
·
Introduction
of
ecologically sound practices
in agriculture and in capture and culture fisheries. Here,
Mahatma
Gandhi’s
dictum, “Nature pro-vides
for everybody’s need
but not for everybody’s greed,” will need to be
kept in
view in the
exploitation of land, Inland
River,
reservoir, and
ocean resources. Programs that are environmentally destructive and
socially
disruptive should be avoided.
·
Promotion
of group cooperation among
families with smallholdings to empower them with the economic and
ecological
advantages of scale in farm operations. This
strategy will be
particularly important
in water harvesting and the efficient on farm management of water,
inland and
coastal aquaculture, integrated pest management, and improved post
harvest
technology. I t will enable families to benefit from producer-oriented
marketing arrangements so that
a fair share of the
consumer’s money goes
to the producer.
·
A
new trade
ethic that leads the industrial nations to buy agricultural commodities
from the developing world at fair
prices and on a long-term basis.
Without
such an ethic, several features of the recently concluded world trade
agreement, under
the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade [GATT),
particularly those involving trade-related intellectual property
rights, will
work against the interests of the poor. Today, industrial nations have
capital
and technology-driven advantages in both
agriculture and industry. They also enjoy
leadership in the services sector. This is why
the gulf
between rich and poor
continues to
increase
year after year. Developing countries, which
are predominantly agricultural in terms of economy and livelihood,
should
improve their agriculture and not depend on imports. Only then will
rural
employment and prosperity improve.
·
A “New
Deal” for the
self-employed through credit, technology, training,
technoinfrastructure. and
trade. This
approach
calls for public
and private action that will
result in
harmony
between public good and private profit. Non-governmental
organizations and the private
sector can play a pivotal
role in this area.
At present,
the
number of people living on 1 ton of food grain per year
varies from one to six. If the food is efficiently
used and if health foods are encouraged,
about four
people can
live on 1 ton of food grain per year.
Therefore, to
feed a population of
about 10 billion-the
Earth’s estimated
population by 2050-we will need about
3,500 million tons of food grain. This figure includes provision for
seeds and
spoilage. Producing this amount should be possible if we
step up
research and development efforts on sustainable
intensification
and diversification of farming systems. Diversification of foods
consumed will further improve the nutritional status of children and
adults.
In the ultimate analysis, the efforts of the
development community should not be merely to explore how to limit
population
growth or to promote food and environmental security. They should be to
consider how to achieve what the Marquis de Condorcet, the French
mathematician-cum-social scientist, emphasized in his paper of 1795: “Population
growth can be limited if people have a duty
towards those who are not yet born, that duty is not
to give
them existence but to give them happiness.” To make
Condorcet’s
aspirations come true,
we need a global movement for
integrated population and
social development. We
need a Global Trust Fund for
Population and Social
Development that will help
all women, men, and children, wherever they are, to
meet their minimum needs of food,
education, health care, employment, and housing. Only then will we
witness the
desired global demographic transition as well
as harmony between humankind and nature. If urgent
steps are not taken to curb the unsustainable lifestyles and
consumption of the
world’s billion rich and to mitigate the poverty and
deprivation
experienced by
another billion children, women, and men,
we will be living
in a world of
social, economic, and technological apartheid far worse in its
human implications than the skin color based apartheid that has
just
ended.
Traditionally
the concern
over food security was looked upon as a  simple relationship
between quantities
of food
produced vis-à-vis the world population. Rev Thomas Robert
Malthus, way back in
1798, was one of the first people to study the relation between world
population and food. According to Malthus, human population, if left
unchecked,
grows in geometric progression, while food supply grows only in
arithmetic
progression. Thus according to the Malthusian thinking, population
growth will
sooner or later outgrow the food supply.
To
predict future
availability of food it is not just enough to project
population to forecast demand. One also needs to know the rate of
income growth
and have good estimates of evolution over time of how food expenditure
changes
as income rises. The modern definition of food security not only
includes food
availability, but also has additional elements such as economic access
to food
and the biological absorption of food in the body. Food security is
“...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 life…”
The
United Nations 2001
report indicates that the world population will grow
from 7.2 billion (2015) to 9.3 billion (2050). In India, the projections
indicate
that population will be 1.5 billion by 2050 which will only increase
the demand
for an already stressed food production. The population explosion has
also
affected the per capita availability of agricultural area. This has far
reaching impact on agricultural productivity and thus food security.
Food
availability is an
important component of food security. The composition
of food consumption is estimated to remain unchanged and continue to
depend on
a relatively few number of traditional food commodities such as cereals
and
grains, has been stagnating over the past few years. Food availability
is also
dependent to a large extent on the regional flow of food supply. The
global
distribution of population is not even — nearly 51% of the
global
population is
concentrated in the developing and underdeveloped countries.
Unfortunately, the
distributions of global food does not correspond to the global
distribution of
population.
Access
to the available
food is also an important aspect of the demand side of
food availability. Accessibility to food is another term for the
capacity of
people to purchase the available food. It is directly dependent on the
level of
income and prosperity of nations. Greater food security, however, is
not just
about cost, choice and access to supplies; it also is about the ability
to pay.
Worldwide, some one billion people in 70 of the lower income countries
are hungry,
and the situation could grow worse in the poorest countries. Reducing
poverty
is a major key to food security. Today, about half the
world’s
population —
three billion people — live in abject poverty. Roughly
three-fourth of these
poor people live in rural areas dependent upon agriculture. No country
that has
raised the majority of its people out of poverty has done so without
attacking
the causes of rural poverty.
Food
consumption patterns
constantly undergo changes, primarily driven by
income levels. It is generally observed that as the per capita income
increases
in countries, the general food consumption pattern also undergoes a
change. In
low-income countries, the daily consumption of food is about 2000
calories on
average, with around 70-75% of food consumed being cereals and pulses.
As the
per capital income rises, higher protein items such as milk, eggs and
meat
increasingly enter the food consumption profile. This shift also needs
to be
taken into account to ensure food security.
The
major challenge to food
security in the world is its underdeveloped
agricultural sector, characterized by several environmental problems
through
over exploitation of natural resources like soil, water, forest,
atmosphere and
the genetic base, which put together has led to a fragile ecosystem.
Water and
air pollution due to indiscriminate use of agrochemicals such as
inorganic
fertilizers and pesticides, soil degradation, depletion of soil
fertility and
extinction of plant species are among the glaring problems that raise
question
about the feasibility of the technology being currently pursued to meet
the
challenges of current and future food demand, which are the foundations
for
both food security and environmental sustainability.
The
constant increase in
the demand of the burgeoning population for food,
fodder, fuel and shelter puts a tremendous pressure on our land
resources,
always resulting in a continuous decline of the cultivable land area at
a very
fast rate. Among the different processes responsible for land
degradation,
erosion of soil (through water and wind) is the most destructive.
Efficient
land resource management needs to be given adequate attention to
increase the
productive capacity of land and to prevent it from deterioration.
Shifting
cultivation that
involves clearing a patch of forest land, cultivating
it for two to three years and then abandoning it for 10-20 years to
allow the
natural forest to grow back and the soil to regain its fertility, helps
in
retaining useful trees and plant varieties. The jhum cycle, as it is
called,
practises conservation, taking care of the ecological balance. However,
with
the population pressure, communities wanting to grow more food have
cleared
greater chunks of forestland and returned to the fallow plots much
sooner,
resulting in soil degradation, fall in yield, lower returns, and
reduction of
green cover.
Agriculture
singularly
remains the dominant user of water resources and the gap
between population growth and demand for water has also increased: as
the world
becomes richer and more industrialized, each person in it has been
using more
water. The measures that can be adopted for recommended production
technology
and crop planning is to increase water use efficiency, crop
diversification,
integrated watershed development, artificial recharge of ground water,
etc.
Despite
the fact that an
extensive use of fertilizers and effective control of
pests and insects through pesticides has been largely responsible for a
quantum
jump in agricultural production, their injudicious use has given rise
to a
number of environmental issues. Increased pesticide use has been
seriously
endangering the environmental sustainability and hence, an integrated
approach
to pest management is needed to make the agriculture eco-friendly. With
increasing
awareness on the ill effects of pesticides however, and the increasing
popularity of genetically modified food, a decreasing trend in the
extent of
pesticide use has been gradually observed.
Genetically
modified (GM)
foods promise to meet the growing need of the
population, which may help in improving food availability, nutritional
quality
and shelf life of harvested produce, and in developing plants resistant
to
insects, pests, disease pathogens and herbicides. However, as is true
with all
innovations and changes involving complex systems, there will always be
trade-offs. GM crops have attracted many critics because of their
potential
impacts on biodiversity, toxicity to non-target organisms,
cross-resistance in
pests, the higher price of seeds and foods, monopoly of companies,
patent and
regulatory approval, and safety to consumers. The debate about its
advantages
and disadvantages continues.
Existence
of the strains
with vast genetic diversity within the same crop
species provides basis for crop improvement. According to agricultural
scientists at least 166 food crops have originated in India,
including rice, pigeon pea, turmeric, ginger, pepper, etc. However,
enormous
exploitation of the forest resources for human activity has given rise
to loss
of valuable gene pools of different crop species including their wild
relatives.
This
erosion of
agricultural biodiversity threatens the long-term stability and
sustainability of agriculture itself in many ways. Firstly, it erodes
the
genetic base on which scientists depend for continuous improvement of
crops.
Secondly, by opting for high yield varieties, farmers become
increasingly
dependent on the industry dominated market and the government.
For
every human being,
today is a reality and tomorrow is a possibility meaning
the hungry need food today and not just promises for tomorrow. To
overcome this
problem we have to produce more crops but produce it differently in a
manner
that high yields can be obtained in perpetuity without associated
ecological or
social form. Awareness for food security has to be spread and there is
a need
for greater research in the field of breeding crop varieties.
The
biggest question
remains to be answered is: Can we feed a growing
population with biologically diverse agriculture? And can farmers
achieve
livelihood security through diversity? It is evident that there is
great
potential to increase and sustain food production through a mix of
strategies
to revive diversity. Hence it is not a question of ‘feeding
the
world’ but
‘keeping the world fed’ wherein lies true food
security.
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