Studies of business growth and performance in farming have found
successful agricultural businesses are cost-efficient internally and
operate in favorable economic, political, and physical-organic
environments. They are able to expand and make profits, improve the
productivity of land, labor, and capital, and keep their costs down to ensure market price competitiveness.[]
In some countries like the Philippines, creation and management of agribusiness enterprises require consultation with registered agriculturists above a certain level of operations, capitalization, land area, or number of animals in the farm.
Evolution of the agribusiness concept
The word "agribusiness" is a portmanteau of the words agriculture and business. The earliest known use of the word was in the Volume 155 of the Canadian Almanac & Directory published in 1847. Although most practitioners recognize that it was coined in 1957 by two Harvard Business School professors, John Davis and Ray Goldberg after they published the book "A Concept of Agribusiness." "Agribusiness is the sum total of
all operations involved in the manufacture and distribution of farm
supplies; production operations on the farm; and the storage,
processing, and distribution of farm commodities and items made from
them." (Davis and Goldberg, 1956)
"Agribusiness is a dynamic and
systemic endeavor that serves consumers globally and locally through
innovation and management of multiple value chains that deliver valued
goods and services derived from sustainable orchestration of food, fiber
and natural resources." (Edwards and Shultz, 2005)
In
2012, Thomas L. Sporleder and Michael A. Boland defined the unique
economic characteristics of agribusiness supply chains from industrial
manufacturing and service supply chains. They have identified seven main characteristics:
Risks emanating from the biological nature of agrifood supply chains
Relative market power shifts in agrifood supply chains away from food manufacturers downstream to food retailers
Globalization of agriculture and agrifood supply chains
In 2017, noting the rise of genetic engineering and biotechnology
in agriculture, Goldberg further expanded the definition of
agribusiness which covers all the interdependent aspects of the food
system including medicine, nutrition, and health. He also emphasized the responsibility of agribusiness to be environmentally and socially conscious towards sustainability.
"Agribusiness is the interrelated
and interdependent industries in agriculture that supply, process,
distribute, and support the products of agriculture." (Goldberg, 2017)
The term value chain was first popularized in a book published in 1985 by Michael Porter,
who used it to illustrate how companies could achieve what he called
“competitive advantage” by adding value within their organization.
Subsequently, the term was adopted for agricultural development purposes
and has now become very much in vogue among those working in this
field, with an increasing number of bilateral and multilateral aid
organisations using it to guide their development interventions.
At the heart of the agricultural value chain concept is the idea of
actors connected along a chain producing and delivering goods to
consumers through a sequence of activities.
However, this “vertical” chain cannot function in isolation and an
important aspect of the value chain approach is that it also considers
“horizontal” impacts on the chain, such as input and finance provision,
extension support and the general enabling environment. The approach has
been found useful, particularly by donors, in that it has resulted in a
consideration of all those factors impacting on the ability of farmers
to access markets profitably, leading to a broader range of chain
interventions. It is used both for upgrading existing chains and for
donors to identify market opportunities for small farmers.
Inputs Sector
Agricultural supplies
An agricultural supply store or agrocenter is an agriculturally-oriented shop where one sells agricultural supplies — inputs required for agricultural production such as pesticides, feed and fertilizers . Sometimes these stores are organized as cooperatives,
where store customers aggregate their resources to purchase
agricultural inputs. Agricultural supply and the stores that provide it
are part of the larger Agribusiness industry.
A farmworker,
farmhand or agricultural worker is someone employed for labor in
agriculture. In labor law, the term "farmworker" is sometimes used more
narrowly, applying only to a hired worker involved in agricultural
production, including harvesting, but not to a worker in other on-farm jobs, such as picking fruit.
Agricultural work varies widely depending on context, degree of mechanization
and crop. In countries like the United States where there is a
declining population of American citizens working on farms — temporary
or itinerant skilled labor from outside the country is recruited for
labor-intensive crops like vegetables and fruits.
Sudanese farmer reviews cantaloupe production, south of KhartoumA farm man at work
Agricultural labor is often the first community affected by the human health impacts of environmental issues related to agriculture, such as health effects of pesticides or exposure to other health challenges such as valley fever. To address these environmental concerns, immigration challenges and marginal working conditions, many labor rights, economic justice and environmental justice movements have been organized or supported by farmworkers.
Irrigation
Irrigation of agricultural fields in Andalusia, Spain. Irrigation canal on the left.
Irrigation (also referred to as watering) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture
for over 5,000 years and has been developed by many cultures around the
world. Irrigation helps to grow crops, maintain landscapes, and revegetate
disturbed soils in dry areas and during times of below-average
rainfall. In addition to these uses, irrigation is also employed to
protect crops from frost, suppress weed growth in grain fields, and prevent soil consolidation. It is also used to cool livestock, reduce dust, dispose of sewage, and support mining operations. Drainage,
which involves the removal of surface and sub-surface water from a
given location, is often studied in conjunction with irrigation.
There are several methods of irrigation that differ in how water is supplied to plants. Surface irrigation, also known as gravity irrigation, is the oldest form of irrigation and has been in use for thousands of years. In sprinkler irrigation, water is piped to one or more central locations within the field and distributed by overhead high-pressure water devices. Micro-irrigation
is a system that distributes water under low pressure through a piped
network and applies it as a small discharge to each plant.
Micro-irrigation uses less pressure and water flow than sprinkler
irrigation. Drip irrigation delivers water directly to the root zone of plants. Subirrigation
has been used in field crops in areas with high water tables for many
years. It involves artificially raising the water table to moisten the
soil below the root zone of plants.
Irrigation water can come from groundwater (extracted from springs or by using wells), from surface water (withdrawn from rivers, lakes or reservoirs) or from non-conventional sources like treated wastewater, desalinated water, drainage water, or fog collection. Irrigation can be supplementary to rainfall, which is common in many parts of the world as rainfed agriculture,
or it can be full irrigation, where crops rarely rely on any
contribution from rainfall. Full irrigation is less common and only
occurs in arid landscapes with very low rainfall or when crops are grown
in semi-arid areas outside of rainy seasons.
The environmental effects of irrigation relate to the changes in quantity and quality of soil and water as a result of irrigation and the subsequent effects on natural and social conditions in river basins and downstream of an irrigation scheme. The effects stem from the altered hydrological conditions caused by the installation and operation of the irrigation scheme. Amongst some of these problems is depletion of underground aquifers through overdrafting. Soil can be over-irrigated due to poor distribution uniformity or managementwastes water, chemicals, and may lead to water pollution. Over-irrigation can cause deep drainage from rising water tables that can lead to problems of irrigation salinity requiring watertable control by some form of subsurface land drainage.
Seed companies produce and sell seeds for flowers, fruits and vegetables to commercial growers and amateur gardeners.
The production of seed is a multibillion-dollar global business, which
uses growing facilities and growing locations worldwide. While most of
the seed is produced by large specialist growers, large amounts are also
produced by small growers who produce only one to a few crop types. The
larger companies supply seed both to commercial resellers and
wholesalers. The resellers and wholesalers sell to vegetable and fruit
growers, and to companies who package seed into packets and sell them on
to the amateur gardener.
Most seed companies or resellers that sell to retail produce a
catalog, for seed to be sown the following spring, that is generally
published during early winter. These catalogs are eagerly awaited by the
amateur gardener, as during winter months there is little that can be
done in the garden so this time can be spent planning the following
year’s gardening. The largest collection of nursery and seed trade
catalogs in the U.S. is held at the National Agricultural Library where the earliest catalogs date from the late 18th century, with most published from the 1890s to the present.
Seed companies produce a huge range of seeds from highly developed F1 hybrids
to open pollinated wild species. They have extensive research
facilities to produce plants with genetic materials that result in
improved uniformity and appeal. These qualities might include
disease resistance, higher yields, dwarf habit and vibrant or new
colors. These improvements are often closely guarded to protect them
from being utilized by other producers, thus plant cultivars are often
sold under the company's own name and protected by international laws
from being grown for seed production by others. Along with the growth in
the allotment movement,
and the increasing popularity of gardening, there have emerged many
small independent seed companies. Many of these are active in seed conservation and encouraging diversity. They often offer organic and open pollinated
varieties of seeds as opposed to hybrids. Many of these varieties are
heirloom varieties. The use of old varieties maintains diversity in the horticulturalgene pool.
It may be more appropriate for amateur gardeners to use older
(heirloom) varieties as the modern seed types are often the same as
those grown by commercial producers, and so characteristics which are
useful to them (e.g. vegetables ripening at the same time) may be
unsuited to home growing.
A fertilizer (American English) or fertiliser (British English) is any material of natural or synthetic origin that is applied to soil or to plant tissues to supply plant nutrients. Fertilizers may be distinct from liming materials or other non-nutrient soil amendments. Many sources of fertilizer exist, both natural and industrially produced. For most modern agricultural practices, fertilization focuses on three main macro nutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) with occasional addition of supplements like rock flour
for micronutrients. Farmers apply these fertilizers in a variety of
ways: through dry or pelletized or liquid application processes, using
large agricultural equipment or hand-tool methods.
Nitrogen-fixing chemical processes, such as the Haber process
invented at the beginning of the 20th century, and amplified by
production capacity created during World War II, led to a boom in using
nitrogen fertilizers.
In the latter half of the 20th century, increased use of nitrogen
fertilizers (800% increase between 1961 and 2019) has been a crucial
component of the increased productivity of conventional food systems (more than 30% per capita) as part of the so-called "Green Revolution".
Farmland in the United States. The round fields are due to the use of center pivot irrigationTypical plan of a medieval English manor, showing the use of field strips
A farm
(also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted
primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of
producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food
production. The name is used for specialized units such as arable farms, vegetable farms, fruit farms, dairy, pig and poultry farms, and land used for the production of natural fiber, biofuel, and other commodities. It includes ranches, feedlots,
orchards, plantations and estates, smallholdings, and hobby farms, and
includes the farmhouse and agricultural buildings as well as the land.
In modern times, the term has been extended so as to include such
industrial operations as wind farms and fish farms, both of which can operate on land or at sea.
There are about 570 million farms in the world, most of which are
small and family-operated. Small farms with a land area of fewer than 2
hectares operate on about 12% of the world's agricultural land, and family farms comprise about 75% of the world's agricultural land.
Modern farms in developed countries are highly mechanized. In the United States, livestock may be raised on rangeland and finished in feedlots,
and the mechanization of crop production has brought about a great
decrease in the number of agricultural workers needed. In Europe,
traditional family farms are giving way to larger production units. In
Australia, some farms are very large because the land is unable to
support a high stocking density of livestock because of climatic
conditions. In less developed countries, small farms are the norm, and
the majority of rural residents are subsistence farmers, feeding their families and selling any surplus products in the local market.
An agricultural engineer is an engineer with an agriculture
background. Agricultural engineers make the engineering designs and
plans in an agricultural project, usually in partnership with an agriculturist who is more proficient in farming and agricultural science.
Processing Sector
Primary Processing
These whole, dried bananas in Thailand are an example of primary food processing.
Primary food processing turns agricultural products, such as raw wheat kernels
or livestock, into something that can eventually be eaten. This
category includes ingredients that are produced by ancient processes
such as drying, threshing, winnowing and milling grain, shelling nuts, and butchering animals for meat. It also includes deboning and cutting meat, freezing and smoking fish and meat, extracting and filtering oils, canning food, preserving food through food irradiation, and candling eggs, as well as homogenizing and pasteurizing milk.
Contamination and spoilage problems in primary food processing can lead to significant public health threats, as the resulting foods are used so widely. However, many forms of processing contribute to improved food safety and longer shelf life before the food spoils. Commercial food processing uses control systems such as hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP) and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) to reduce the risk of harm.
Secondary Processing
Baking bread is an example of secondary food processing.
Secondary food processing is the everyday process of creating food from ingredients that are ready to use. Baking bread,
regardless of whether it is made at home, in a small bakery, or in a
large factory, is an example of secondary food processing. Fermenting fish and making wine, beer, and other alcoholic products are traditional forms of secondary food processing. Sausages are a common form of secondary processed meat, formed by comminution (grinding) of meat that has already undergone primary processing. Most of the secondary food processing methods known to humankind are commonly described as cooking methods.
Marketing Sector
Market display in China Agricultural marketing covers the services involved in moving an agricultural product from the farm to the consumer.
These services involve the planning, organizing, directing and handling
of agricultural produce in such a way as to satisfy farmers,
intermediaries and consumers. Numerous interconnected activities are
involved in doing this, such as planning production, growing and harvesting, grading, packing and packaging, transport, storage, agro- and food processing, provision of market information, distribution, advertising
and sale. Effectively, the term encompasses the entire range of supply
chain operations for agricultural products, whether conducted through ad hoc sales or through a more integrated chain, such as one involving contract farming.
Farmers' Market
An autumn farmers' market in Farmington, MichiganA farmers' market at twilight in Layyah, PakistanBlueberries in late July 2023 at the Jean Talon Market in Montreal
A farmers' market (or farmers market according to the AP stylebook, also farmer's market in the Cambridge Dictionary) is a physical retail marketplace intended to sell foods directly by farmers
to consumers. Farmers' markets may be indoors or outdoors and typically
consist of booths, tables or stands where farmers sell their produce,
live animals and plants,
and sometimes prepared foods and beverages. Farmers' markets exist in
many countries worldwide and reflect the local culture and economy. The
size of the market may be just a few stalls or it may be as large as
several city blocks. Due to their nature, they tend to be less rigidly
regulated than retail produce shops.
They are distinguished from public markets,
which are generally housed in permanent structures, open year-round,
and offer a variety of non-farmer/non-producer vendors, packaged foods
and non-food products.
Extension practitioners can be found throughout the world,
usually working for government agencies. They are represented by several
professional organizations, networks and extension journals.
A broad typology of agricultural cooperatives distinguishes
between agricultural service cooperatives, which provide various
services to their individually-farming members, and agricultural
production cooperatives in which production resources (land, machinery)
are pooled and members farm jointly.
Notable examples of agricultural cooperatives include Dairy Farmers Of America, the largest dairy company in the US, Amul, the largest food product marketing organization in India and Zen-Noah, a federation of agricultural cooperatives that handles 70% of the sales of chemical fertilizers in Japan.
The default meaning of "agricultural cooperative" in English is usually
an agricultural service cooperative, the numerically dominant form in
the world. There are two primary types of agricultural service
cooperatives: supply cooperatives and marketing cooperatives. Supply
cooperatives supply their members with inputs for agricultural
production, including seeds, fertilizers, fuel, and machinery services.
Marketing cooperatives are established by farmers to undertake
transportation, packaging, pricing, distribution, sales and promotion of
farm products (both crop and livestock). Farmers also widely rely on credit cooperatives as a source of financing for both working capital and investments.
Governments
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Food Price Index 1961–2021. Years 2014–2016 is 100.
The FAO comprises 195 members, including 194 countries and the European Union. Its headquarters is in Rome, Italy, and it maintains regional and field offices worldwide, operating in over 130 countries. It helps governments and development agencies coordinate their activities to improve and develop agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and land and water resources.
It also conducts research, provides technical assistance to projects,
operates educational and training programs, and collects agricultural
output, production, and development data.
The FAO is governed by a biennial conference representing each member country and the European Union, which elects a 49-member executive council. The Director-General, as of 2019 Qu Dongyu of China, serves as the chief administrative officer. Various committees govern matters such as finance, programs, agriculture, and fisheries.
Obverse: Young woman with braid facing left. Surrounded by Repubblica Italiana [Italian Republic].
Reverse: Cow nursing calf, face value & date. FAO at bottom and Nutrire il Mondo [Feed the world] at top.
Coined minted by Italy in 1970s to celebrate and promote Food and Agriculture Organization.
Professionals
An agriculturist doing routine check-up of agronomic crops
An agriculturist, agriculturalist, agrologist, or agronomist (abbreviated as agr.), is a professional in the science, practice, and management of agriculture and agribusiness.
It is a regulated profession in Canada, India, the Philippines, the
United States, and the European Union. Other names used to designate the
profession include agricultural scientist, agricultural manager,
agricultural planner, agriculture researcher, or agriculture policy
maker.
The primary role of agriculturists are in leading agricultural projects and programs, usually in agribusiness planning or research for the benefit of farms, food, and agribusiness-related organizations.
Agriculturists usually are designated in the government as public
agriculturists serving as agriculture policymakers or technical advisors
for policy making. Agriculturists can also provide technical advice for farmers and farm workers such as in making crop calendars and workflows to optimize farm production, tracing agricultural market channels, prescribing fertilizers and pesticides to avoid misuse, and in aligning for organic accreditation or the national agricultural quality standards.
The Federation of International Trade Associations publishes
studies and reports by FAS and AAFC, as well as other non-governmental
organizations on its website.
In their book A Concept of Agribusiness,
Ray Goldberg and John Davis provided a rigorous economic framework for
the field. They traced a complex value-added chain that begins with the
farmer's purchase of seed and livestock and ends with a product fit for
the consumer's table. Agribusiness boundary expansion is driven by a
variety of transaction costs.
Food security is the availability of food in a country (or a geographic region)
and the ability of individuals within that country (region) to access,
afford, and source adequate foodstuff. The availability of food
irrespective of class, gender or region is another element of food
security. Similarly, household food security is considered to exist when all the members of a family, at all times, have access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Individuals who are food secure do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Food insecurity,
on the other hand, is defined as a situation of " limited or uncertain
availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or
uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable
ways."
Food security incorporates a measure of resilience to future disruption
or unavailability of critical food supply due to various risk factors
including droughts, shipping disruptions, fuel shortages, economic
instability, and wars.
The four pillars of food security include: availability, access, utilization, and stability.
The concept of food security has evolved to recognize the centrality
of agency and sustainability, along with the four other dimensions of
availability, access, utilization, and stability. These six dimensions
of food security are reinforced in conceptual and legal understandings
of the right to food. The 1996 World Summit on Food Security declared that "food should not be used as an instrument for political and economic pressure."
The International Monetary Fund cautioned in September 2022 that "the impact of increasing import costs for food and fertilizer
for those extremely vulnerable to food insecurity will add $9 billion
to their balance of payments pressures – in 2022 and 2023." This would
deplete countries' foreign reserves as well as their capacity to pay for
food and fertilizer imports."
Definition
Food
security is defined as "when all people, at all times, have physical
and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets
their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life"
by the World Food Summit in 1996.
Food insecurity, on the other hand, is defined by the United States Department of Agriculture
(USDA) as a situation of "limited or uncertain availability of
nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to
acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways."
At the 1974 World Food Conference,
the term "food security" was defined with an emphasis on supply; food
security was defined as the "availability at all times of adequate,
nourishing, diverse, balanced and moderate world food supplies of basic
foodstuff to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to
offset the fluctuations in production and prices."
Later definitions added demand and access issues to the definition. The
first World Food Summit, held in 1996, stated that food security
"exists 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."
Chronic (or permanent) food insecurity is defined as the long-term, persistent lack of adequate food.
In this case, households are constantly at risk of being unable to
acquire food to meet the needs of all members. Chronic and transitory
food insecurity are linked since the reoccurrence of transitory food
security can make households more vulnerable to chronic food insecurity.
As of 2015, the concept of food security has mostly focused on food calories rather than the quality and nutrition of food. The concept of nutrition security or nutritional security
evolved as a broader concept. In 1995, it has been defined as "adequate
nutritional status in terms of protein, energy, vitamins, and minerals
for all household members at all times."
It is also related to the concepts of nutrition education and nutritional deficiency.
Measurement
Globally and in every region, the prevalence of food insecurity is higher among women than among men
Food security can be measured by calories to digest to intake per person per day, available on a household budget.
In general, the objective of food security indicators and measurements
is to capture some or all of the main components of food security in
terms of food availability, accessibility, and utilization/adequacy.
While availability (production and supply) and utilization/adequacy
(nutritional status/ anthropometric measurement) are easier to estimate
and therefore, more popular, accessibility (the ability to acquire a
sufficient quantity and quality of food) remains largely elusive. The factors influencing household food accessibility are often context-specific.
FAO has developed the Food Insecurity Experience Scale
(FIES) as a universally applicable experience-based food security
measurement scale derived from the scale used in the United States.
Thanks to the establishment of a global reference scale and the
procedure needed to calibrate measures obtained in different countries,
it is possible to use the FIES to produce cross-country comparable
estimates of the prevalence of food insecurity in the population.
Since 2015, the FIES has been adopted as the basis to compile one of
the indicators included in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)
monitoring framework.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) collaborate every year to produce The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, or SOFI report (known as The State of Food Insecurity in the World until 2015).
The SOFI report measures chronic hunger (or undernourishment) using two main indicators, the Number of undernourished (NoU) and the Prevalence of undernourishment
(PoU). Beginning in the early 2010s, FAO incorporated more complex
metrics into its calculations, including estimates of food losses in
retail distribution for each country and the volatility in agri-food
systems. Since 2016, it also reports the Prevalence of moderate or
severe food insecurity based on the FIES.
Several measurements have been developed to capture the access
component of food security, with some notable examples developed by the
USAID-funded Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA) project. These include:
Household Food Insecurity Access Scale – measures the degree of food insecurity (inaccessibility) in the household in the previous month on a discrete ordinal scale.
Household Dietary Diversity Scale – measures the number of different food groups consumed over a specific reference period (24hrs/48hrs/7days).
Household Hunger Scale – measures the experience of household
food deprivation based on a set of predictable reactions, captured
through a survey and summarized in a scale.
Coping Strategies Index (CSI) – assesses household behaviors
and rates them based on a set of varied established behaviors on how
households cope with food shortages. The methodology for this research
is based on collecting data on a single question: "What do you do when
you do not have enough food, and do not have enough money to buy food?"
Prevalence of food insecurity
Number of people affected by undernourishment in 2010–12 (by region, in millions)Number of severely food insecure people by region (2014–2018)Food insecurity levels by region and sex (2022)
Close to 12 percent of the global population was severely food
insecure in 2020, representing 928 million people – 148 million more
than in 2019.
A variety of reasons lies behind the increase in hunger over the past
few years. Slowdowns and downturns since the 2008-9 financial crisis
have conspired to degrade social conditions, making undernourishment
more prevalent. Structural imbalances and a lack of inclusive policies
have combined with extreme weather events; altered environmental
conditions; and the spread of pests and diseases, such as the COVID-19
pandemic, triggering stubborn cycles of poverty and hunger. In 2019, the
high cost of healthy diets together with persistently high levels of
income inequality put healthy diets out of reach for around 3 billion
people, especially the poor, in every region of the world.
Inequality in the distributions of assets, resources and income,
compounded by the absence or scarcity of welfare provisions in the
poorest of countries, is further undermining access to food. Nearly a
tenth of the world population still lives on US$1.90 or less a day, with
sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia the regions most affected.
High import and export dependence ratios are meanwhile making many countries more vulnerable to external shocks. In many low-income economies, debt has swollen to levels far exceeding GDP, eroding growth prospects.
Finally, there are increasing risks to institutional stability,
persistent violence, and large-scale population relocation as a
consequence of the conflicts. With the majority of them being hosted in
developing nations, the number of displaced individuals between 2010 and
2018 increased by 70% between 2010 and 2018 to reach 70.8 million.
Recent editions of the SOFI report (The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World)
present evidence that the decades-long decline in hunger in the world,
as measured by the number of undernourished (NoU), has ended. In the
2020 report, FAO used newly accessible data from China to revise the
global NoU downwards to nearly 690 million, or 8.9 percent of the world
population – but having recalculated the historic hunger series
accordingly, it confirmed that the number of hungry people in the world,
albeit lower than previously thought, had been slowly increasing since
2014. On broader measures, the SOFI report found that far more people
suffered some form of food insecurity, with 3 billion or more unable to
afford even the cheapest healthy diet. Nearly 2.37 billion people did not have access to adequate food in 2020 – an increase of 320 million people compared to 2019.
FAO's 2021 edition of The State of Food and Agriculture
(SOFA) further estimates that an additional 1 billion people (mostly in
lower- and upper-middle-income countries) are at risk of not affording a
healthy diet if a shock were to reduce their income by a third.
The 2021 edition of the SOFI report estimated the hunger excess linked to the COVID-19 pandemic at 30 million people by the end of the decade – FAO had earlier warned that even without the pandemic, the world was off track to achieve Zero Hunger or Goal 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals
– it further found that already in the first year of the pandemic, the
prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) had increased 1.5 percentage
points, reaching a level of around 9.9 percent. This is the mid-point of
an estimate of 720 to 811 million people facing hunger in 2020 – as many as 161 million more than in 2019. The number had jumped by some 446 million in Africa, 57 million in Asia, and about 14 million in Latin America and the Caribbean.
At the global level, the prevalence of food insecurity at a
moderate or severe level, and severe level only, is higher among women
than men, magnified in rural areas.
Vulnerable groups most affected
Children
Food
insecurity in children can lead to developmental impairments and long
term consequences such as weakened physical, intellectual and emotional
development.
By way of comparison, in one of the largest food producing
countries in the world, the United States, approximately one out of six
people are "food insecure," including 17 million children, according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2009. A 2012 study in the Journal of Applied Research on Children
found that rates of food security varied significantly by race, class
and education. In both kindergarten and third grade, 8% of the children
were classified as food insecure, but only 5% of white children were
food insecure, while 12% and 15% of black and Hispanic children were
food insecure, respectively. In third grade, 13% of black and 11% of
Hispanic children were food insecure compared to 5% of white children.
At the global level, the gender gap in the prevalence of moderate
or severe food insecurity grew even larger in the year of COVID-19
pandemic. The 2021 SOFI report finds that in 2019 an estimated 29.9
percent of women aged between 15 and 49 years around the world were
affected by anemia – now a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator
(2.2.3).
The gap in food insecurity between men and women widened from 1.7 percentage points in 2019 to 4.3 percentage points in 2021.
Women play key roles in maintaining all four pillars of food
security: as food producers and agricultural entrepreneurs; as
decision-makers for the food and nutritional security of their
households and communities and as "managers" of the stability of food
supplies in times of economic hardship.
The gender gap in accessing food increased from 2018 to 2019, particularly at moderate or severe levels.
Bengali famine, 1943. The Japanese conquest of Burma cut off India's main supply of rice imports.
Famines
have been frequent in world history. Some have killed millions and
substantially diminished the population of a large area. The most common
causes have been drought and war, but the greatest famines in history were caused by economic policy. One economic policy example of famine was the Holodomor (Great Famine) induced by the Soviet Union's communist economic policy resulting in 7–10 million deaths.
Growth in food production has been greater than population growth. Food per person increased since 1961. Data source: Food and Agriculture Organization.Growth of World Food Supply (caloric base) per capita
The WHO states that three pillars that determine food security: food availability, food access, and food use and misuse. The FAO added a fourth pillar: the stability of the first three dimensions of food security over time.
In 2009, the World Summit on Food Security stated that the "four
pillars of food security are availability, access, utilization, and
stability."
Two additional pillars of food security were recommended in 2020 by the
High-Level Panel of Experts for the Committee on World Food Security:
agency and sustainability.
Availability
Food availability relates to the supply of food through production, distribution, and exchange. Food production is determined by a variety of factors including land ownership and use; soil management; crop selection, breeding, and management; livestock breeding and management; and harvesting. Crop production can be affected by changes in rainfall and temperatures. The use of land, water, and energy to grow food often compete with other uses, which can affect food production. Land used for agriculture can be used for urbanization or lost to desertification, salinization or soil erosion due to unsustainable agricultural practices.
Crop production is not required for a country to achieve food security.
Nations do not have to have the natural resources required to produce
crops to achieve food security, as seen in the examples of Japan and Singapore.
Because food consumers outnumber producers in every country, food must be distributed to different regions or nations.
Food distribution involves the storage, processing, transport, packaging, and marketing of food.
Food-chain infrastructure and storage technologies on farms can also
affect the amount of food wasted in the distribution process.
Poor transport infrastructure can increase the price of supplying water
and fertilizer as well as the price of moving food to national and
global markets.
Around the world, few individuals or households are continuously
self-reliant on food. This creates the need for a bartering, exchange,
or cash economy to acquire food. The exchange of food requires efficient trading systems and market institutions, which can affect food security.
Per capita world food supplies are more than adequate to provide food
security to all, and thus food accessibility is a greater barrier to
achieving food security.
Access
Goats
are an important part of the solution to global food security because
they are fairly low-maintenance and easy to raise and farm.
Food access refers to the affordability and allocation of food, as well as the preferences of individuals and households. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
noted that the causes of hunger and malnutrition are often not a
scarcity of food but an inability to access available food, usually due
to poverty. Poverty can limit access to food, and can also increase how vulnerable an individual or household is to food price spikes.
Access depends on whether the household has enough income to purchase
food at prevailing prices or has sufficient land and other resources to
grow its food. Households with enough resources can overcome unstable harvests and local food shortages and maintain their access to food.
There are two distinct types of access to food: direct access, in
which a household produces food using human and material resources, and
economic access, in which a household purchases food produced
elsewhere. Location can affect access to food and which type of access a family will rely on.
The assets of a household, including income, land, products of labor,
inheritances, and gifts can determine a household's access to food. However, the ability to access sufficient food may not lead to the purchase of food over other materials and services.
Demographics and education levels of members of the household as well
as the gender of the household head determine the preferences of the
household, which influences the type of food that is purchased.
A household's access to adequate nutritious food may not assure
adequate food intake for all household members, as intrahousehold food
allocation may not sufficiently meet the requirements of each member of
the household. The USDA
adds that access to food must be available in socially acceptable ways,
without, for example, resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging,
stealing, or other coping strategies.
The monetary value of global food exports multiplied by 4.4 in
nominal terms between 2000 and 2021, from USD 380 billion in 2000 to USD
1.66 trillion in 2021.
Utilization
The next pillar of food security is food utilization, which refers to the metabolism of food by individuals.
Once the food is obtained by a household, a variety of factors affect
the quantity and quality of food that reaches members of the household.
To achieve food security, the food ingested must be safe and must be
enough to meet the physiological requirements of each individual. Food safety affects food utilization, and can be affected by the preparation, processing, and cooking of food in the community and household.
Nutritional values of the household determine food choice, and whether food meets cultural preferences is important to utilization in terms of psychological and social well-being.
Access to healthcare is another determinant of food utilization since
the health of individuals controls how the food is metabolized. For example, intestinal parasites can take nutrients from the body and decrease food utilization. Sanitation can also decrease the occurrence and spread of diseases that can affect food utilization. Education about nutrition and food preparation can affect food utilization and improve this pillar of food security.
Stability
Food stability refers to the ability to obtain food over time. Food insecurity can be transitory, seasonal, or chronic. In transitory food insecurity, food may be unavailable during certain periods of time. At the food production level, natural disasters and drought result in crop failure and decreased food availability. Civil conflicts can also decrease access to food.
Instability in markets resulting in food-price spikes can cause
transitory food insecurity. Other factors that can temporarily cause
food insecurity are loss of employment or productivity, which can be
caused by illness. Seasonal food insecurity can result from the regular pattern of growing seasons in food production.
Agency
Agency
refers to the capacity of individuals or groups to make their own
decisions about what foods they eat, what foods they produce, how that
food is produced, processed, and distributed within food systems, and
their ability to engage in processes that shape food system policies and
governance.
Sustainability
Sustainability
refers to the long-term ability of food systems to provide food
security and nutrition in a way that does not compromise the economic,
social, and environmental bases that generate food security and
nutrition for future generations.
Effects of food insecurity
Famine
and hunger are both rooted in food insecurity. Chronic food insecurity
translates into a high degree of vulnerability to famine and hunger;
ensuring food security presupposes the elimination of that
vulnerability.
Food insecurity can force individuals to undertake risky economic activities such as prostitution.
Food insecurity is also related to obesity for people living in – "food deserts"
– neighborhoods where nutritious foods are unavailable or unaffordable.
People living in these neighborhoods often have to turn to more
accessible but less nutritious food which puts them at greater risk of
health issues like obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
Many countries experience ongoing food shortages and distribution
problems. These result in chronic and often widespread hunger amongst
significant numbers of people. Human populations can respond to chronic hunger and malnutrition by decreasing body size, known in medical terms as stunting or stunted growth. This process starts in utero
if the mother is malnourished and continues through approximately the
third year of life. It leads to higher infant and child mortality, but
at rates far lower than during famines.
Once stunting has occurred, improved nutritional intake after the age
of about two years is unable to reverse the damage. Severe malnutrition
in early childhood often leads to defects in cognitive development. It, therefore, creates a disparity a between children who did not experience severe malnutrition and those who experience it.
Worldwide, the prevalence of child stunting was 21.3 percent in
2019, or 144 million children. Central Asia, Eastern Asia, and the
Caribbean have the largest rates of reduction in the prevalence of
stunting and are the only subregions on track to achieve the 2025 and
2030 stunting targets. Between 2000 and 2019, the global prevalence of child stunting declined by one-third.
Data from the 2021 FAO SOFI showed that in 2020, 22.0 percent
(149.2 million) of children under 5 years of age were affected by
stunting, 6.7 percent (45.4 million) were suffering from wasting and 5.7
percent (38.9 million) were overweight. FAO warned that the figures
could be even higher due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Africa and Asia account for more than nine out of ten of all
children with stunting, more than nine out of ten children with wasting,
and more than seven out of ten children who are affected by being
overweight worldwide.
Mental health outcomes
Food insecurity is one of the social determinants of mental health. A recent comprehensive systematic review
showed that over 50 studies have shown that food insecurity is strongly
associated with a higher risk of depression, anxiety, and sleep
disorders.
For depression and anxiety, food-insecure individuals have almost a
threefold risk increase compared to food-secure individuals. Research has also found that food insecurity is linked to an increased risk of disordered eating behaviors.
Irrigation canals have opened dry desert areas of Egypt to agriculture.
Regionally, Sub-Saharan Africa
has the largest number of water-stressed countries of any place on the
globe, as of an estimated 800 million people who live in Africa, 300
million live in a water-stressed environment. It is estimated that by 2030, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa
will be living in areas of high water stress, which will likely
displace anywhere between 24 million and 700 million people as
conditions become increasingly unlivable.
Because the majority of Africa remains dependent on an agricultural
lifestyle and 80 to 90 percent of all families in rural Africa rely upon
producing their food, water scarcity translates to a loss of food security.
Wood chips and other green wastes are inexpensive resources that enhance soil fertility.
Intensive farming often leads to a vicious cycle of exhaustion of soil fertility and a decline of agricultural yields. Other causes of land degradation include deforestation, overgrazing, over-exploitation of vegetation for use. Approximately 40 percent of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded.
Climate change
Projected changes in average food availability (represented as calorie consumption per capita), population at risk of hunger and disability-adjusted life years under two Shared Socioeconomic Pathways:
the baseline, SSP2, and SSP3, scenario of high global rivalry and
conflict. The red and the orange lines show projections for SSP3
assuming high and low intensity of future emissions and the associated
climate change.
Climate change will affect agriculture and food production around the world. The reasons include the effects of elevated CO2 in the atmosphere. Higher temperatures and altered precipitation and transpiration regimes are also factors. Increased frequency of extreme events and modified weed, pest, and pathogen pressure are other factors. Droughts result in crop failures and the loss of pasture for livestock. Loss and poor growth of livestock cause milk yield and meat production to decrease. The rate of soil erosion is 10–20 times higher than the rate of soil accumulation in agricultural areas that use no-till farming. In areas with tilling it is 100 times higher. Climate change worsens this type of land degradation and desertification.
Climate change is projected to negatively affect all four pillars
of food security. It will affect how much food is available. It will
also affect how easy food is to access through prices, food quality, and
how stable the food system is. Climate change is already affecting the productivity of wheat and other staples.
In many areas, fishery catches are already decreasing because of global warming and changes in biochemical cycles. In combination with overfishing, warming waters decrease the amount of fish in the ocean. Per degree of warming, ocean biomass
is expected to decrease by about 5%. Tropical and subtropical oceans
are most affected, while there may be more fish in polar waters.
Scientific understanding of how climate change would impact global food security has evolved over time. The latest IPCC Sixth Assessment Report
in 2022 suggested that by 2050, the number of people at risk of hunger
will increase under all scenarios by between 8 and 80 million people,
with nearly all of them in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Central America.
However, this comparison was done relative to a world where no climate
change had occurred, and so it does not rule out the possibility of an
overall reduction in hunger risk when compared to present-day
conditions.
The earlier Special Report on Climate Change and Land
suggested that under a relatively high emission scenario (RCP6.0),
cereals may become 1–29% more expensive in 2050 depending on the
socioeconomic pathway.
Compared to a scenario where climate change is absent, this would put
between 1–181 million people with low income at risk of hunger.
Agricultural diseases
Diseases
affecting livestock or crops can have devastating effects on food
availability especially if there are no contingency plans in place.
For example, Ug99, a lineage of wheat stem rust, which can cause up to 100% crop losses, is present in wheat fields in several countries in Africa and the Middle East
and is predicted to spread rapidly through these regions and possibly
further afield, potentially causing a wheat production disaster that
would affect food security worldwide.
Farmland and other agricultural resources have long been used to produce non-food crops including industrial materials such as cotton, flax, and rubber; drug crops such as tobacco and opium, and biofuels such as firewood,
etc. In the 21st century, the production of fuel crops has increased,
adding to this diversion. However, technologies are also developed to
commercially produce food from energy such as natural gas and electrical energy with tiny water and land footprint.
Food loss and waste
Food recovered by food waste critic Robin Greenfield in Madison, Wisconsin, from two days of recovery from dumpsters
Food waste may be diverted for alternative human consumption when
economic variables allow for it. In the 2019 edition of the State of
Food and Agriculture, FAO asserted that food loss and waste
have potential effects on the four pillars of food security. However,
the links between food loss and waste reduction and food security are
complex, and positive outcomes are not always certain. Reaching
acceptable levels of food security and nutrition inevitably implies
certain levels of food loss and waste. Maintaining buffers to ensure
food stability requires a certain amount of food to be lost or wasted.
At the same time, ensuring food safety involves discarding unsafe food,
which then is counted as lost or wasted, while higher-quality diets tend
to include more highly perishable foods.
How the impacts on the different dimensions of food security play
out and affect the food security of different population groups depends
on where in the food supply chain the reduction in losses or waste
takes place as well as on where nutritionally vulnerable and
food-insecure people are located geographically.
The overexploitation of fish stocks can pose serious risks to food
security. Risks can be posed both directly by overexploitation of food
fish and indirectly through overexploitation of the fish that those food
fish depend on for survival. In 2022 the United Nations called attention "considerably negative impact" on food security of the fish oil and fishmeal industries in West Africa.
Fossil fuel dependence
World population supported with and without synthetic nitrogen fertilizers
Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution
transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production
increased by 250%. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon-fueled irrigation.
Natural gas is a major feedstock for the production of ammonia, via the Haber process, for use in fertilizer production.
The development of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has significantly
supported global population growth — it has been estimated that almost
half the people on Earth are currently fed as a result of synthetic
nitrogen fertilizer use.
Disruption in global food supplies due to war
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has disrupted global food supplies which had already been hit hard by the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic
and the growing impact of climate change. The conflict has severely
impacted food supply chains with noteworthy effects on production,
sourcing, manufacturing, processing, logistics, and significant shifts
in demand between nations reliant on imports from Ukraine.
In Asia and the Pacific, many of the region's countries depend on the
importation of basic food staples such as wheat and fertilizer with
nearly 1.1 billion lacking a healthy diet caused by poverty and
ever-increasing food prices.
During 2022 and 2023 there were food crises in several regions as indicated by rising food prices. In 2022, the world experienced significant food price inflation along with major food shortages in several regions. Sub-Saharan Africa, Iran, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Iraq were most affected. Prices of wheat, maize, oil seeds, bread, pasta, flour, cooking oil, sugar, egg, chickpea and meat increased. The causes were disruption in supply chains from the COVID–19 pandemic, an energy crisis (2021–2023 global energy crisis), the Russian invasion of Ukraine and some
Significant floods and heatwaves in 2021 destroyed key crops in the Americas and Europe. Spain and Portugal experienced droughts in early 2022 losing 60-80% of the crops in some areas.
Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, food prices were already
record high. 82 million East Africans and 42 million West Africans faced
acute food insecurity in 2021. By the end of 2022, more than 8 million Somalis were in need of food assistance. The Food and Agriculture Organization had reported 20% yearly food price increases in February 2022. The war further pushed this increase to 40% in March 2022 but was reduced to 18% by January 2023. Nevertheless, FAO warns of double-digit food inflation persisting in many countries.
Pandemics and disease outbreaks
Global hunger remained virtually unchanged from 2021 to 2022 but is still far above pre-Covid-19-pandemic levels
The World Food Programme has stated that pandemics such as the COVID-19 pandemic risk undermining the efforts of humanitarian and food security organizations to maintain food security. The International Food Policy Research Institute
expressed concerns that the increased connections between markets and
the complexity of food and economic systems could cause disruptions to
food systems during the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically affecting the
poor. The Ebola outbreak in 2014 led to increases in the prices of staple foods in West Africa.
Over
the last decade, FAO has proposed a "twin track" approach to fight food
insecurity that combines sustainable development and short-term hunger
relief. Development approaches include investing in rural markets and
rural infrastructure.
In general, FAO proposes the use of public policies and programs that
promote long-term economic growth that will benefit the poor. To obtain
short-term food security, vouchers for seeds, fertilizer,
or access to services could promote agricultural production. The use of
conditional or unconditional food or cash transfers is another approach
promoted by FAO. Conditional transfers may include school feeding programs, while unconditional transfers could include general food distribution, emergency food aid or cash transfers. A third approach is the use of subsidies
as safety nets to increase the purchasing power of households. FAO has
stated that "approaches should be human rights-based, target the poor,
promote gender equality, enhance long-term resilience and allow
sustainable graduation out of poverty."
FAO has noted that some countries have been successful in
fighting food insecurity and decreasing the number of people suffering
from undernourishment. Bangladesh is an example of a country that has
met the Millennium Development Goal hunger target. The FAO credited
growth in agricultural productivity and macroeconomic stability for the
rapid economic growth in the 1990s that resulted in an increase in food
security. Irrigation systems were established through infrastructure development programs.
In 2020, FAO deployed intense advocacy to make healthy diets
affordable as a way to reduce global food insecurity and save vast sums
in the process. The agency said that if healthy diets were to become the
norm, almost all of the health costs that can currently be blamed on
unhealthy diets (estimated to reach US$1.3 trillion a year in 2030)
could be offset; and that on the social costs of greenhouse gas
emissions that are linked to unhealthy diets, the savings would be even
greater (US$1.7 trillion, or over 70 percent of the total estimated for
2030).
FAO urged governments to make nutrition a central plank of their
agricultural policies, investment policies and social protection
systems. It also called for measures to tackle food loss and waste, and
to lower costs at every stage of food production, storage, transport,
distribution and marketing. Another FAO priority is for governments to
secure better access to markets for small-scale producers of nutritious
foods.
The World Summit on Food Security, held in Rome in 1996, aimed to
renew a global commitment to the fight against hunger. The conference
produced two key documents, the Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the World Food Summit Plan of Action.
The Rome Declaration called for the members of the United Nations to
work to halve the number of chronically undernourished people on the
Earth by 2015. The Plan of Action set several targets for government and
non-governmental organizations for achieving food security, at the
individual, household, national, regional, and global levels.
Another World Summit on Food Security took place at the FAO's headquarters in Rome between November 16 and 18, 2009.
FAO has also created a partnership that will act through the African Union's
CAADP framework aiming to end hunger in Africa by 2025. It includes
different interventions including support for improved food production, a
strengthening of social protection and integration of the Right to Food
into national legislation.
World Food Programme
Fight Hunger: Walk the World campaign is a United Nations World Food Programme initiative.
The World Food Programme (WFP) is an agency of the United Nations that uses food aid
to promote food security and eradicate hunger and poverty. In
particular, the WFP provides food aid to refugees and to others
experiencing food emergencies. It also seeks to improve nutrition and
quality of life to the most vulnerable populations and promote
self-reliance.
An example of a WFP program is the "Food For Assets" program in which
participants work on new infrastructure, or learn new skills, that will
increase food security, in exchange for food.
Global partnerships to achieve food security and end hunger
In April 2012, the Food Assistance Convention was signed, the world's first legally binding international agreement on food aid. The May 2012 Copenhagen Consensus
recommended that efforts to combat hunger and malnutrition should be
the first priority for politicians and private sector philanthropists
looking to maximize the effectiveness of aid spending. They put this
ahead of other priorities, like the fight against malaria and AIDS.
By the United States Agency for International Development
Boosting agricultural science
and technology. Current agricultural yields are insufficient to feed
the growing populations. Eventually, the rising agricultural
productivity drives economic growth.
Enhancing human capital through education and improved health
Conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms and democracy and
governance based on principles of accountability and transparency in
public institutions and the rule of law are basic to reducing vulnerable
members of society.
In September 2022, the United States announced a $2.9 billion contribution to aid efforts of global food security at the UN General Assembly in New York. $2 billion will go to the U.S. Agency for International Development for its humanitarian assistance efforts around the world, along with $140 million for the agency's Feed the Future Initiative. The United States Department of Agriculture
will receive $220 million to fund eight new projects, all of which is
expected to benefit nearly a million children residing in food-insecure
countries in Africa and East Asia. The USDA will also receive another
$178 million for seven international development projects to support
U.S. government priorities on four continents.
Agrifood systems resilience
According to FAO, resilient agrifood systems
achieve food security. The resilience of agrifood systems refers to the
capacity over time of agrifood systems, in the face of any disruption,
to sustainably ensure availability of and access to sufficient, safe and
nutritious food for all, and sustain the livelihoods of agrifood
systems' actors. Truly resilient agrifood systems must have a robust
capacity to prevent, anticipate, absorb, adapt and transform in the face
of any disruption, with the functional goal of ensuring food security
and nutrition for all and decent livelihoods and incomes for agrifood
systems' actors. Such resilience addresses all dimensions of food
security, but focuses specifically on stability of access and
sustainability, which ensure food security in both the short and the
long term.
Resilience-building involves preparing for disruptions, particularly
those that cannot be anticipated, in particular through: diversity in
domestic production, in imports, and in supply chains; robust food transport networks; and guaranteed continued access to food for all.
The FAO finds that there are six pathways to follow towards food systems transformation:
integrating humanitarian, development and peacebuilding policies in conflict-affected areas;
scaling up climate resilience across food systems;
strengthening resilience of the most vulnerable to economic adversity;
intervening along the food supply chains to lower the cost of nutritious foods;
tackling poverty and structural inequalities, ensuring interventions are pro-poor and inclusive; and
strengthening food environments and changing consumer behaviour to
promote dietary patterns with positive impacts on human health and the
environment.
Improving agricultural productivity to benefit the rural poor
A farmer on the outskirts of Lilongwe (Malawi) prepares a field for planting.A farmer holding up onions he has grown on his farm near Gilgil, Kenya
According to the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, a major study led by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), managing rainwater and soil moisture
more effectively, and using supplemental and small-scale irrigation,
hold the key to helping the greatest number of poor people. It has
called for a new era of water investments and policies for upgrading
rainfed agriculture that would go beyond controlling field-level soil
and water to bring new freshwater sources through better local
management of rainfall and runoff.
Increased agricultural productivity enables farmers to grow more food,
which translates into better diets and, under market conditions that
offer a level playing field, into higher farm incomes.
The use of genetically modified (GM) crops
could make some contributions to food security in certain cases. The
genome of these crops can be altered to address one or more aspects of
the plant that may be preventing it from being grown in various regions
under certain conditions. Many of these alterations can address the
challenges that were previously mentioned above, including the water crisis, land degradation, and the climate change.
In agriculture and animal husbandry, the Green Revolution popularized the use of conventional hybridization to increase yield by creating high-yielding varieties.
Often, the handful of hybridized breeds originated in developed
countries and was further hybridized with local varieties in the rest of
the developing world to create high-yield strains resistant to local
climate and diseases.
Some scientists question the safety of biotechnology as a panacea; agroecologistsMiguel Altieri
and Peter Rosset have enumerated ten reasons why biotechnology will not
ensure food security, protect the environment, or reduce poverty.
Reasons include for example:
There is no relationship between the prevalence of hunger in a given country and its population
Most innovations in agricultural biotechnology have been profit-driven rather than need-driven
Ecological theory predicts that the large-scale landscape
homogenization with transgenic crops will exacerbate the ecological
problems already associated with monoculture agriculture
And, that much of the needed food can be produced by small farmers
located throughout the world using existing agroecological technologies.
Alternative diets
Food
security could be increased by integrating alternative foods that can
be grown in compact environments, that are resilient to pests and
disease, and that do not require complex supply chains. Foods meeting
these criteria include algae, mealworm, and fungi-derived mycoprotein. While unpalatable on their own to most people, such raw ingredients might be processed into more palatable foods.
The Food Justice Movement has been seen as a unique and multifaceted
movement with relevance to the issue of food security. It has been
described as a movement about social-economic and political problems in
connection to environmental justice,
improved nutrition and health, and activism. Today, a growing number of
individuals and minority groups are embracing the Food Justice due to
the perceived increase in hunger within nations such as the United
States as well as the amplified effect of food insecurity on many
minority communities, particularly the Black and Latino communities.
A possible way to learn about nutrition, and provide community activities and access to food is community gardening.
In
Afghanistan, about 35.5% of households are food insecure (as of 2018).
The prevalence of underweight, stunting, and wasting in children under
five years of age is also very high. In October 2021, more than half of Afghanistan's 39 million people faced an acute food shortage. On 11 November 2021, Human Rights Watch reported that Afghanistan is facing widespread famine due to collapsed economy and broken banking system. The UN World Food Program has also issued multiple warnings of worsening food insecurity.
Australia
In
2012, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) conducted a survey
measuring nutrition, which included food security. It was reported that
4% of Australian households were food insecure. 1.5% of those households were severely food insecure.
Additionally, the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS),
reported that certain demographics are more vulnerable to being food
insecure; such as indigenous, elderly, regional, and single-parent
households. Financial issues were cited as the main cause of food insecurity.
Climate change may present future challenges
for Australia regarding food security, as Australia already experiences
extreme weather. Australia's history in biofuel production and use of
fertilizers has reduced the quality of the land. Increased extreme weather is projected to affect crops, livestock, and soil quality. Wheat production, one of Australia's main food exports, is projected to decrease by 9.2% by 2030. Beef production is also expected to fall by 9.6%.
China
The persistence of wet markets has been described as "critical for ensuring urban food security," particularly in Chinese cities. The influence of wet markets on urban food security includes food pricing and physical accessibility.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, about 33% of households are food insecure; it is 60% in eastern provinces. A study showed the correlation of food insecurity negatively affecting at-risk HIV adults in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hunger is frequent in the country, but sometimes it is to the extreme that many families cannot afford to eat every day. Bushmeat
trade was used to measure the trend of food security. Urban areas
mainly consume bushmeat because they cannot afford other types of meat.
Mexico
Mexico
has sought to ensure food security through its history. Yet, despite
various efforts, Mexico continues to lack national food and nutrition
strategies that secure food security for the people. As a large country
of more than 100 million people, planning and executing social policies
are complex tasks. Although Mexico has been expanding its food and
nutrition programs that have been expected, and to some degree, have
contributed to increases in health and nutrition, food security,
particularly as it relates to obesity and malnutrition, still remains a
relevant public health problem. Although food availability is not the issue, severe deficiencies in the accessibility of food contribute to insecurity.
Singapore
In 2019 the Singapore government launched the "30 by 30" program which aims to drastically reduce food insecurity through hydroponic farms and aquaculture farms.
National Food Security Surveys are the main survey tool used by the
USDA to measure food security in the United States. Based on
respondents' answers to survey questions, the household can be placed on
a continuum of food security defined by the USDA. This continuum has
four categories: high food security, marginal food security, low food
security, and very low food security.
The continuum of food security ranges from households that consistently
have access to nutritious food to households where at least one or more
members routinely go without food due to economic reasons. Economic Research Service
report number 155 (ERS-155) estimates that 14.5 percent (17.6 million)
of US households were food insecure at some point in 2012.
Data from 2018 about food security in the U.S. shows:
11.1 percent (14.3 million) of U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2018.
In 6.8 percent of households with children, only adults were food insecure in 2018.
Both children and adults were food insecure in 7.1 percent of households with children (2.7 million households) in 2018.
Food insecurity is measured in the United States by questions in the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey.
The questions asked are about anxiety that the household budget is
inadequate to buy enough food, inadequacy in the quantity or quality of
food eaten by adults and children in the household, and instances of
reduced food intake or consequences of reduced food intake for adults
and children. A National Academy of Sciences
study commissioned by the USDA criticized this measurement and the
relationship of "food security" to hunger, adding "it is not clear
whether hunger is appropriately identified as the end of the food
security scale."
Food insecurity is recognized as a social determinant of health,
or a condition in the environment where people are born, live, learn,
work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health,
functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks.
Poverty is closely associated with food insecurity but this
relationship is not foolproof, in that not all people living below the
poverty line experience food insecurity, and people who live above the
poverty line can also experience food insecurity. Underlying factors of food insecurity relates to economic factors such as income.
Uganda
In 2022, 28% of Ugandan households experienced food insecurity. This insecurity has negative effects on HIV transmission and household stability.
Society and culture
Food security related UN days
October 16 has been chosen as World Food Day,
in honour of the date FAO was founded in 1945. On this day, FAO hosts a
variety of events at its headquarters in Rome and around the world, as
well as seminars with UN officials.
The UN Millennium Development Goals
were one of the initiatives aimed at achieving food security in the
world. The first Millennium Development Goal states that the UN "is to
eradicate extreme hunger and poverty" by 2015. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food,
advocates for a multidimensional approach to food security challenges.
This approach emphasizes the physical availability of food; the social,
economic and physical access people have to food; and the nutrition,
safety and cultural appropriateness or adequacy of food.
Multiple different international agreements and mechanisms have
been developed to address food security. The main global policy to
reduce hunger and poverty is in the Sustainable Development Goals. In particular Goal 2: Zero Hunger sets globally agreed targets to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030.
Although there has been some progress, the world is not on track to
achieve the global nutrition targets, including those on child stunting,
wasting and overweight by 2030.
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