Understanding Food Security
This article explores the definition, significance, measures, and factors that affect food security and what can be done to counter food insecurity.
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This article explores the definition, significance, measures, and factors that affect food security and what can be done to counter food insecurity.
Food security refers to one’s ability to access safe, nutritious, and sufficient food at all times. It means having access to plenty of food sources for a well-balanced diet to achieve a healthy life. It covers all access points, from physical to social and economic access to food supplies. To achieve food security, one must produce enough food supplies, maintain a steady flow of food, and ensure those who are in need can access these supplies.
Food security is a pressing global problem that affects billions around the globe. The most recent data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shows that nearly one in three people don’t have access to sufficient food supplies. Because of this, food security became a vital component of Goal 2 (Zero Hunger) of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Moreover, food is a fundamental human right. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) includes food as one of the basic rights for “a standard of living adequate for health and well-being.”
Food security also results in better health outcomes. Good food strengthens the body, replenishes energy, and provides enough nutrients—contributing substantially to overall health and well-being.
Food security depends on these four pillars: availability, access, utilization, and stability:
Access: Covers the means to obtain enough food, ensures that food sources are within reach, and pertains to people having the tools and resources to produce and purchase food
Availability: Pertains to the food supply, focusing on the quantity, quality, and variety of food sources and involves several aspects, from production and storage to trade and food aid
Utilization: Seeks to understand how the body sustains itself through food, covering people’s food preferences and nutritional needs to meet their physiological needs
Stability: Refers to the length of time one can access enough food supply, even in case of emergencies
While most of them aren’t new, these factors worsen the existing inequalities in the global food systems in the following ways:
From production to processing, agriculture consumes a lot of energy from gas, electricity, and fuel to keep things running. Moreover, fertilizers, pesticides, and other chemicals needed for agriculture also require energy for production. Hence, energy security plays a key role in food security.
However, socio-economic conflicts can lead to energy price increase, especially when global market key players are involved.
Extreme weather events, drought, and seasonal changes reduce yield growth, productivity, and availability of food supplies. Thus, food production systems need measures to adapt to climate change.
Food production is also a major contributor to global warming. For one, this sector generates a quarter of the total Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGs). It also occupies 50 percent of the habitable lands.
The United Nations projects the world population to reach 8.5 billion by 2030. This projection requires an increase in food production by 70 percent, according to UN DESA. Given this, food systems must keep up with the demands of the growing population.
Efforts to contain health-related crises (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic) can affect physical access to food sources. For example, travel restrictions, quarantines, and lockdowns may make it difficult for people to buy food. Moreover, border closures disrupt food supply chains and turn economies upside-down.
Multiple factors—climate change and global health concerns, for example—have landed a tremendous blow on food production. In turn, they push up the costs of nutritious food sources.
The underprivileged suffer the brunt of the rising prices, making it more challenging to afford the costs of healthy meals. This puts them at risk of malnutrition and several diseases.
Water is essential to food security as it’s necessary for growing crops and raising livestock for food. Recent data show that agriculture is the largest water user on the globe. This sector consumes almost 70 percent of the freshwater reserves for human use. By 2050, its water consumption is expected to increase by 19 percent.
However, the world is running out of freshwater supplies. Contamination, extreme weather, and droughts plague the already limited water reserves. If this continues, it could further affect the global food production system, especially the fisheries sector.
From the Second World War to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, wars continue to harshly impact food production systems around the world.
For one, these two countries produce a quarter of the global wheat supply, making them the largest suppliers of grains around the world. Ukraine, for example, delivers 40 percent of wheat and corn to Africa and the Middle East. But because of the halt in grain supply, those regions face food shortages and food price hikes.
Aside from this, Russia is also a major producer of fertilizer. They contribute around 15 percent of the global nitrogenous fertilizer exports and 17 percent of the global potash fertilizer trades.
Food safety also has close links with food security. Safe food preparation, handling, and storage are key to ensuring good health for everyone.
Unsafe food can put people at risk of more than 200 diseases. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that each year, around 600 million people become sick after eating contaminated food.
Various organizations have devised methods for gauging food security on a global scale, including these two global standards for measuring food security and food insecurity:
Global Food Security Index
The Global Food Security Index (GFSI) evaluates and ranks countries based on their food security status. This model developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) measures the drivers of food security using 58 indicators across 113 countries.
The GFSI model consists of four core pillars: Affordability, Availability, Quality and Safety, and Natural Resources and Resilience. The latter was a recent addition to the index to acknowledge the devastating impacts of climate change on food security in recent years.
FAO developed the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) as an experience-based food insecurity metric. This scale investigates the constraints in obtaining food using people’s direct responses. This way, it can find which populations are severely food insecure and where they come from.
The FIES model below measures food insecurity at three levels:
Food Insecurity Experience Scale
Food Security to Mild Food Insecurity: little to no concerns about obtaining one’s food
Moderate Food Insecurity: struggles to acquire food, making one skip meals or eat readily available but unhealthy food
Severe Food Insecurity: has run out of food for a day or more, resulting in extreme hunger
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