Food Security guide
» Trade and Poverty Guide
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| Cambodian organic rice © Oxfam America |
Almost one billion people experience the hardship that hunger imposes, a figure which continues to rise even amidst the riches of the 21st century. Engulfed within a vortex of energy shortage, price inflation and climate change, food security has become the most intractable challenge for development agencies. Having mobilised vast financial resources to rescue the discredited international banking sector, rich country governments are now under pressure to achieve similar coordination in dealing with a crisis which hits hardest at the poor.
» Hunger: Countries at Risk
updated April 2009
Millennium Development Goals and Hunger
Food security is defined by access to sufficient and affordable food; it can relate to a single household or to the global population. The first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) falls short of food security aspirations in seeking only to reduce by half the proportion of the world’s population experiencing hunger. Furthermore, governments signing the Millennium Declaration were overriding a tougher commitment made just 4 years earlier at the World Food Summit of 1996 which applied the same target to the number of people.
The first of two benchmarks for measuring progress is the “minimum dietary energy requirement” for each person as stipulated by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). This naturally varies by age and sex so that a weighted average is calculated for each country based on its population profile; typically this average is just below 2,000 kilocalories per day.
Despite the political commitment to reduce world hunger, the number of people lacking access to this minimum diet has risen from 824 million in the baseline year 1990 to 963 million in 2008. A further 750 million are assessed to be at risk. Only one third of developing countries have succeeded in reducing hunger during this period. Even on the less demanding MDG basis, hunger has fallen only from 20% to 17% of the population of developing countries. Prospects for achieving the 2015 Goal will be further diminished by the impact of the current economic crisis on poorer countries; the FAO has already warned that its latest figures may be conservative.
Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are the regions most affected. There are 15 countries in Africa where the incidence of hunger exceeds 35% of the population. Almost half of all young children in India are underweight. Malnutrition impairs the ability to learn or to work and reduces resistance to disease, these problems increasing in severity with the shortfall from the minimum dietary requirement. Hunger is therefore a cause as well as a consequence of poverty.
Children’s health and cognitive development are especially sensitive, to the extent that the majority of child mortality is attributed to malnutrition. The second MDG indicator is therefore the proportion of children under five years who are underweight in relation to their age. This figure has reduced only from 32% to 27% in the period 1990-2006. Unicef says that 51 countries are unlikely to reach this MDG target by 2015.
Climate Change and Food Security
Food security concerns illustrate how climate change has thrown policymakers into disarray. As recently as 2006, progress reports on malnutrition published by UN agencies made no reference to climate change. Yet the formal scientific reports published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 painted an alarming picture for Africa in which “for even small temperature increases of 1-2 degrees….. yields for rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50% by 2020”. Despite this warning, climate negotiators were soon presenting a 2 degree temperature rise as an acceptable threshold.
Climate change is also predicted to increase the intensity and frequency of drought and floods, already a serious short term cause of food insecurity. In South and East Asia, the retreat of Himalayan glaciers and disruption to the stable monsoon pattern threaten the critical water cycle around which rice production in particular has evolved. Further uncertainties surround the reaction of plant growth to the increased presence of carbon dioxide and changes in tropospheric ozone.
The UN supports the 50 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in preparation of National Adaptation Programmes of Actions (NAPAs) and the 2007 Bali Climate Change Conference launched an Adaptation Fund which may in time support these programmes. Recognising that funding is likely to be scarce, NAPAs limit their scope to community-based low-cost options for dealing with climate variability. Within the limited capacity of poor farmers to adapt, plans include the use of alternative seed varieties, improved soil management, maintenance of water management systems and reforestation.
Interpreting long term climate probability models is highly complex and seed scientists concede problems with the concept of climate adaptation even where research funding is available. Adding to the difficulties for policymakers is the knowledge that agriculture is itself a major contributor to global warming. In particular, methane is released by cattle and in paddy rice plantations, and nitrous oxide by the action of fertilisers.
Biofuels and Food Security
Petrol additives such as ethanol and biodiesel are manufactured from plant crops as a means of reducing dependence on fossil fuels and potentially cutting carbon dioxide emissions. Under pressure both from rising oil prices, politicians resorted to knee-jerk policymaking. Ambitious long term targets were agreed in the EU and US, whilst Brazil maintained its investment in the more efficient production technologies based on sugar cane.
By 2008 one third of the US maize crop was diverted to biofuel production, encouraged by subsidies of $7 billion pa. Over 5% of global cereal production is allocated to biofuels, a rising proportion which has accounted for 30% of the increase in the price of corn in the period 2000-2007.
These policies have provoked outrage amongst groups campaigning for poverty reduction. Not only is land and food being consumed for rich motorists at a time of global food insecurity, but also the net saving in carbon dioxide emissions from maize-based ethanol has been exposed as moderate. The EU parliament has extensively modified its targets but the new US president has so far expressed support for biofuel producers.
The Right to Food
Promotion of biofuels has been cited as a breach of the right to sufficient food enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, has urged the UN to respond to the food crisis as a human rights emergency and called for a freeze on new investment in converting food into fuel.
In contrast to the half-speed MDG vision, a human rights approach to food security places immediate and inclusive obligations on governments to create capacity for their people to feed themselves. All countries have accepted the FAO’s voluntary guidelines for implementing their obligations but only 22 have so far enshrined the right to food in their constitutions, with undertakings of non-discriminatory and non-political strategies.
Many of the world’s food security problems stem from the absence of an overriding goal to honour the right to sustainable food resources. For example, the aim of world trade rules is to increase absolute volumes of trade; the aim of agribusiness corporations increasingly active in poor countries is to make profit for their shareholders. Insatiable greed of the world's fishing industries has reduced 75% of the ocean's resources to the verge of collapse. These aims would become secondary to food security in a rights-based approach to hunger.
Causes of Food Insecurity
This primacy of market economics over the last 20-30 years, often imposed on developing countries by international financial institutions, is arguably the major cause of current food insecurity. The micro-profile of agriculture - there are 450 million farms of less than 2 hectares in developing countries – has been deemed unsuitable for investment. The proportion of foreign aid allocated to agriculture has fallen from 18% in 1979 to less than 3%. African governments have therefore struggled to meet their 2003 Maputo Declaration commitment which called for 10% of national budgets to be dedicated to agriculture by 2008.
The consequence of this prolonged lack of investment is an inadequate infrastructure to support local distribution and market knowledge. Poor roads, irrigation and storage facilities impede efficiencies. Insecure tenure and exclusion from affordable credit limit the aspirations of small farmers. Despite the generally poor soil quality of the continent, only 5% of cultivable land in Africa is supported by irrigation. In such an environment, planting for a mix of household subsistence and surplus for market is a model chronically vulnerable to fluctuating prices or unfavourable weather.
Whilst overall population growth creates pressure on food security, it is secondary to the failure of equitable distribution and consumption. Since 1961 world production of food has outpaced population growth. Feeding over a third of the world’s grain production to animals is the more significant indicator. As 7kg of grain is required to produce 1kg of beef, there is an argument that meat production on this scale impedes the goal of global food security. Projections that demand for food will double by 2050 far outpace estimated population growth of about 40% in that period.
Another human weakness - for violent conflict - invariably leads to extreme food insecurity. The 2007 Global Hunger Index reports that “almost all” of its worst ranking countries have been involved in violent conflict in the last decade. Collapsed economies such as North Korea and Zimbabwe also generate food crises.
World Trade Rules
As a result of their weak infrastructure for agriculture, the majority of developing countries have food deficits, exposing them to the vagaries of global markets. Ironically, the shortcomings of trade in agriculture have their roots in the desire to support the pattern of small family farms which were dominant in Europe and US in the aftermath of the Second World War. Determined to achieve food security, the European Common Agricultural Policy and the US Farm Bill combined subsidies and tariffs to support the sector. These policies proved successful, generating colossal internal food surpluses.
Not surprisingly, the poorer countries of the modern world are keen to copy this approach. Such ambitions remain unfulfilled largely because in 1995 the richer countries were successful in their efforts to include agriculture in the system of open market rules governed by the World Trade Organisation. At the same time, they refused to unravel their own protectionist model.
This hypocrisy remains a fundamental barrier to development and food security. Developing countries find their domestic markets undercut by cheap food imports dumped by rich countries. Exporters encounter trade barriers erected in Europe and US.
The Search for Solutions to Food Insecurity
Disagreement over trade rules reflects the two opposing philosophies for addressing the structural weaknesses in agriculture. The neo-liberal model advocates that food should be subject to the same market forces as manufactured goods with minimum state involvement. Small farms should be consolidated and alternative livelihoods found for surplus labour. Larger farms can then raise capital for the expensive products of modern biotechnology and compete in export markets.
The alternative philosophy of “food sovereignty” restores the absolute priority for food security. This model favours local ownership and control of the full chain of resources. It accepts small farms for what they are, encouraging their sustainability through subsidised inputs and credit. Advocates point to research showing that small farms are capable of gearing up productivity through intense husbandry and family motivation. Small farms are also better equipped for the lower input models relevant to climate change mitigation.
Backed by a World Bank estimate that growth of rural economies accelerates poverty reduction four times faster than other sectors, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, has appealed for funds of $20 billion pa to restore food security. This figure is a tiny fraction of the cost of agriculture subsidies in Europe and US. However, the G20 London Summit in April 2009 made no promises of direct aid, nor held out any real prospect of reviving trade negotiations.
World Food Prices and Food Security
Competing prescriptions for food security have undergone intense scrutiny in reaction to the wild oscillation in world food prices since 2007. Prices do have inherent sensitivity; the amount of food available for export is small in relation to total production whilst global reserves are believed to be less than 20% of annual consumption, the lowest level for three decades. Prices are also very sensitive to the volatile price of oil, due to the contribution of chemicals, fertiliser and transport to production costs. This volatility is exploited by speculative market traders, further exaggerating price movements.
Inherent price sensitivity is one thing, but when the FAO Cereal Index doubled in the year to April 2008, food security became the most pressing concern of the global community. As the world’s poorest households spend 60%-100% of their incomes on food, they have no mechanism to cope with rising prices other than to reduce the volume or nutritional quality of their consumption. The crisis reintroduced hunger to borderline rural households, created a new class of urban poor and led to food riots in 30 countries.
Despite a subsequent global market correction, food prices in developing countries have not fallen as sharply. The pattern of high price inflation since 2005 coincides with the period of greatest increase in hunger. The 2008 State of Food Insecurity in the World unequivocally blames rising food prices rather than supply.
The panic of 2008 left behind an unsettling aftermath. National interests dominated the response to a crisis which required coordinated global action. Many countries resorted to stockpiling food and blocking exports in order to keep down domestic prices. Most commentators feel that these actions made the shortages worse. Despite food summits and a new UN task force, there is little sign of a coherent global strategy for long term food security.
Instead, there are signs that major food importers have lost confidence in the market, and hence their own food security. In consequence, rich food deficit countries such as the Gulf States and South Korea are negotiating the purchase of extensive farmland in developing countries in order to secure food supplies. This disconcerting trend has been condemned as “neo-colonialism”.
Food Aid
Rising prices create a pincer movement on food aid programmes by increasing the numbers in need whilst reducing the amount of food that can be purchased with fixed budgets. Although food aid alone is not a sustainable solution to hunger, it has a vital humanitarian role to play in the most critical circumstances. Monitoring the balance of food supply and demand throughout the world is the core mandate of the FAO, delivered by its Global Information and Early Warning System.
Based on this information the World Food Programme (WFP) prioritises regions where the depth of hunger is most serious, typically delivering food aid for school children, expectant mothers, work-for-food programmes and refugee camps. The agency aims to support 100 million people in 2009, requiring a budget of $6 billion, more than double that of 2007. About the same number is assisted by international aid agencies, leaving over 750 million beneath the hunger threshold dependent on highly variable or non-existent domestic safety net arrangements.
The US remains the largest food donor but is the only country which insists that aid should be disbursed as surplus grain from its own stocks - and that the chain of delivery must be handled entirely by US contractors. Development agencies prefer donors to purchase food direct from surplus areas within the beneficiary country. Attempts in the 2008 Farm Bill to reform the US approach were largely blocked by Congress.
Biotechnology and GM Crops
The current crisis in food security will strengthen the hand of those who believe that biotechnology is the way forward. The great advances in crop yields since the 1970s, described as the “green revolution”, have to be weighed against their ecological consequences. The FAO says that 75% of food biodiversity was lost in the 20th century whilst 80% of the world’s dietary energy is now supplied by just 12 industrial crops. The green revolution has not only now lost momentum but has also been responsible for significant soil erosion, salinity and depletion of water resources, a worrying loss of environmental capital.
Genetically-modified (GM) crops, in which a gene of desired characteristic is transposed from one plant to another, are the most extreme and controversial output of the biotechnology companies. Claiming higher yields, lower chemical inputs and higher nutritional value, GM crops sound like the panacea to food insecurity. Despite the enthusiasm of Brazil, South Africa, China and India, only three countries in Africa have adopted GM crops.
There are reservations over the capacity to establish regulatory frameworks needed to manage inevitable conflicts of interests between the local stakeholders (farmers, consumers, and governments) and global shareholders who control the intellectual property rights. GM varieties have so far concentrated on overcoming weeds and pests rather than the impact of climate change. Long lead times of research and development will delay the availability of seeds to counter drought and salinity.
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| Girls waiting for food in Burundi © International Committee of the Red Cross |
The first of two benchmarks for measuring progress is the “minimum dietary energy requirement” for each person as stipulated by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). This naturally varies by age and sex so that a weighted average is calculated for each country based on its population profile; typically this average is just below 2,000 kilocalories per day.
Despite the political commitment to reduce world hunger, the number of people lacking access to this minimum diet has risen from 824 million in the baseline year 1990 to 963 million in 2008. A further 750 million are assessed to be at risk. Only one third of developing countries have succeeded in reducing hunger during this period. Even on the less demanding MDG basis, hunger has fallen only from 20% to 17% of the population of developing countries. Prospects for achieving the 2015 Goal will be further diminished by the impact of the current economic crisis on poorer countries; the FAO has already warned that its latest figures may be conservative.
|
| Red Cross volunteer weighs a young girl to check for malnutrition © John Haskew / International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies |
Children’s health and cognitive development are especially sensitive, to the extent that the majority of child mortality is attributed to malnutrition. The second MDG indicator is therefore the proportion of children under five years who are underweight in relation to their age. This figure has reduced only from 32% to 27% in the period 1990-2006. Unicef says that 51 countries are unlikely to reach this MDG target by 2015.
Climate Change and Food Security
Food security concerns illustrate how climate change has thrown policymakers into disarray. As recently as 2006, progress reports on malnutrition published by UN agencies made no reference to climate change. Yet the formal scientific reports published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 painted an alarming picture for Africa in which “for even small temperature increases of 1-2 degrees….. yields for rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50% by 2020”. Despite this warning, climate negotiators were soon presenting a 2 degree temperature rise as an acceptable threshold.
|
| Oxfam relief workers distribute food in Ethiopia © Crispin Hughes / Oxfam Great Britain |
The UN supports the 50 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in preparation of National Adaptation Programmes of Actions (NAPAs) and the 2007 Bali Climate Change Conference launched an Adaptation Fund which may in time support these programmes. Recognising that funding is likely to be scarce, NAPAs limit their scope to community-based low-cost options for dealing with climate variability. Within the limited capacity of poor farmers to adapt, plans include the use of alternative seed varieties, improved soil management, maintenance of water management systems and reforestation.
Interpreting long term climate probability models is highly complex and seed scientists concede problems with the concept of climate adaptation even where research funding is available. Adding to the difficulties for policymakers is the knowledge that agriculture is itself a major contributor to global warming. In particular, methane is released by cattle and in paddy rice plantations, and nitrous oxide by the action of fertilisers.
Biofuels and Food Security
|
| Corn, the raw material used to produce ethanol © Network for New Energy Choices |
By 2008 one third of the US maize crop was diverted to biofuel production, encouraged by subsidies of $7 billion pa. Over 5% of global cereal production is allocated to biofuels, a rising proportion which has accounted for 30% of the increase in the price of corn in the period 2000-2007.
These policies have provoked outrage amongst groups campaigning for poverty reduction. Not only is land and food being consumed for rich motorists at a time of global food insecurity, but also the net saving in carbon dioxide emissions from maize-based ethanol has been exposed as moderate. The EU parliament has extensively modified its targets but the new US president has so far expressed support for biofuel producers.
The Right to Food
|
| ActionAid's HungerFree campaign |
In contrast to the half-speed MDG vision, a human rights approach to food security places immediate and inclusive obligations on governments to create capacity for their people to feed themselves. All countries have accepted the FAO’s voluntary guidelines for implementing their obligations but only 22 have so far enshrined the right to food in their constitutions, with undertakings of non-discriminatory and non-political strategies.
Many of the world’s food security problems stem from the absence of an overriding goal to honour the right to sustainable food resources. For example, the aim of world trade rules is to increase absolute volumes of trade; the aim of agribusiness corporations increasingly active in poor countries is to make profit for their shareholders. Insatiable greed of the world's fishing industries has reduced 75% of the ocean's resources to the verge of collapse. These aims would become secondary to food security in a rights-based approach to hunger.
Causes of Food Insecurity
|
| The 21st century search for food © ActionAid UK |
The consequence of this prolonged lack of investment is an inadequate infrastructure to support local distribution and market knowledge. Poor roads, irrigation and storage facilities impede efficiencies. Insecure tenure and exclusion from affordable credit limit the aspirations of small farmers. Despite the generally poor soil quality of the continent, only 5% of cultivable land in Africa is supported by irrigation. In such an environment, planting for a mix of household subsistence and surplus for market is a model chronically vulnerable to fluctuating prices or unfavourable weather.
|
| UNICEF feeding centre, Bakol Region, Somalia © Derk Segaar/IRIN |
Another human weakness - for violent conflict - invariably leads to extreme food insecurity. The 2007 Global Hunger Index reports that “almost all” of its worst ranking countries have been involved in violent conflict in the last decade. Collapsed economies such as North Korea and Zimbabwe also generate food crises.
World Trade Rules
|
| The trade trap © Television Trust for the Environment |
Not surprisingly, the poorer countries of the modern world are keen to copy this approach. Such ambitions remain unfulfilled largely because in 1995 the richer countries were successful in their efforts to include agriculture in the system of open market rules governed by the World Trade Organisation. At the same time, they refused to unravel their own protectionist model.
This hypocrisy remains a fundamental barrier to development and food security. Developing countries find their domestic markets undercut by cheap food imports dumped by rich countries. Exporters encounter trade barriers erected in Europe and US.
The Search for Solutions to Food Insecurity
|
| grains of hope? © Greenpeace UK |
The alternative philosophy of “food sovereignty” restores the absolute priority for food security. This model favours local ownership and control of the full chain of resources. It accepts small farms for what they are, encouraging their sustainability through subsidised inputs and credit. Advocates point to research showing that small farms are capable of gearing up productivity through intense husbandry and family motivation. Small farms are also better equipped for the lower input models relevant to climate change mitigation.
Backed by a World Bank estimate that growth of rural economies accelerates poverty reduction four times faster than other sectors, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, has appealed for funds of $20 billion pa to restore food security. This figure is a tiny fraction of the cost of agriculture subsidies in Europe and US. However, the G20 London Summit in April 2009 made no promises of direct aid, nor held out any real prospect of reviving trade negotiations.
World Food Prices and Food Security
Competing prescriptions for food security have undergone intense scrutiny in reaction to the wild oscillation in world food prices since 2007. Prices do have inherent sensitivity; the amount of food available for export is small in relation to total production whilst global reserves are believed to be less than 20% of annual consumption, the lowest level for three decades. Prices are also very sensitive to the volatile price of oil, due to the contribution of chemicals, fertiliser and transport to production costs. This volatility is exploited by speculative market traders, further exaggerating price movements.
|
| 2008 food price riots in Burkina Faso © Brahima Ouedraogo / IRIN News |
Despite a subsequent global market correction, food prices in developing countries have not fallen as sharply. The pattern of high price inflation since 2005 coincides with the period of greatest increase in hunger. The 2008 State of Food Insecurity in the World unequivocally blames rising food prices rather than supply.
The panic of 2008 left behind an unsettling aftermath. National interests dominated the response to a crisis which required coordinated global action. Many countries resorted to stockpiling food and blocking exports in order to keep down domestic prices. Most commentators feel that these actions made the shortages worse. Despite food summits and a new UN task force, there is little sign of a coherent global strategy for long term food security.
Instead, there are signs that major food importers have lost confidence in the market, and hence their own food security. In consequence, rich food deficit countries such as the Gulf States and South Korea are negotiating the purchase of extensive farmland in developing countries in order to secure food supplies. This disconcerting trend has been condemned as “neo-colonialism”.
Food Aid
|
| Emergency food in Western Kenya © Peter Armstrong |
Based on this information the World Food Programme (WFP) prioritises regions where the depth of hunger is most serious, typically delivering food aid for school children, expectant mothers, work-for-food programmes and refugee camps. The agency aims to support 100 million people in 2009, requiring a budget of $6 billion, more than double that of 2007. About the same number is assisted by international aid agencies, leaving over 750 million beneath the hunger threshold dependent on highly variable or non-existent domestic safety net arrangements.
The US remains the largest food donor but is the only country which insists that aid should be disbursed as surplus grain from its own stocks - and that the chain of delivery must be handled entirely by US contractors. Development agencies prefer donors to purchase food direct from surplus areas within the beneficiary country. Attempts in the 2008 Farm Bill to reform the US approach were largely blocked by Congress.
Biotechnology and GM Crops
|
| Indian farmers burn genetically modified crop © Intercontinental Caravan (ICC) |
|
| Genetically modified soya bean? © Centre for Science and Environment |
There are reservations over the capacity to establish regulatory frameworks needed to manage inevitable conflicts of interests between the local stakeholders (farmers, consumers, and governments) and global shareholders who control the intellectual property rights. GM varieties have so far concentrated on overcoming weeds and pests rather than the impact of climate change. Long lead times of research and development will delay the availability of seeds to counter drought and salinity.
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Many important development issues are missing from our range of Guides. OneWorld wants to fill these gaps as part of our efforts to improve understanding of the issues faced by developing countries. We receive no funding for the production of our educational resources. Every small contribution helps!
Many important development issues are missing from our range of Guides. OneWorld wants to fill these gaps as part of our efforts to improve understanding of the issues faced by developing countries. We receive no funding for the production of our educational resources. Every small contribution helps!
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