Promoting food security, reducing poverty and protecting the environment
As the world population crosses 7 billion, feeding the teeming population is becoming a major concern. At times of diminishing land resources, and in an era of climate change, ensuring food security is the biggest challenge.
Food security is a complex sustainable development issue, linked to health through malnutrition, but also to sustainable economic development, environment and trade. The world faces multiple challenges to food security including under nutrition and overconsumption, rising food prices, population growth, rapid diet transitions, threats to agricultural production, inefficient production practices and supply chains, and declining investment in food system research. In addition to causing widespread human suffering, food insecurity contributes to degradation and depletion of natural resources, migration to urban areas and across borders, and political and economic instability.
What is food security?
Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. (FAO).
Food security for a household means access by all members at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food security includes at a minimum
(1) the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and
(2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (that is, without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies). (USDA)
The World Health Organization defines food security as having three facets
- Food availability: Sufficient quantities of food available on a consistent basis
- Food Access: Having sufficient resources to obtain appropriate foods for a nutritious diet.
- Food Use: Appropriate use based on knowledge of basic nutrition and care as well as adequate water and sanitation.
So the key drivers for food security are not only the availability of global supplies of food to meet the demands of a growing world population, but the possibilities of having access to that food (income) and the safety and nutrition value of food staples.
Addressing food security is a production versus distribution question. On the production side, droughts, significant yield gaps, poor natural resources management, post harvest loses and consumer waste all contribute to hunger. On the distribution side, social inequity, food prices, quality of infrastructure and food/aid policies all contribute to hunger.
The opposite to Food Security is Food Insecurity or Hunger.
Hunger does not generate statistics in an instant, like a war, tsunami or an earthquake, where the scale of death over a short period of time is enough to wake society into action. Hunger is systemic, a phenomenon that stalks us.
Hunger exists because food is either not available, or not accessible. Food is not available for those who need access to it due to a variety of different causes relating to natural disasters, conflict, poverty, poor agriculture, poor infrastructure and more.
Food that's in the market can also be made inaccessible because of high prices. We are seeing a time where price volatility impacts food prices, creating- for those who are most vulnerable - an inability to access food.
The two kinds of food insecurity are:
- Chronic food insecurity: Is a continuously inadequate diet caused by the inability to acquire food. It affects households that persistently lack the ability to buy enough food or to produce their own. Hence, poverty is considered to be the root cause of chronic food insecurity.
- Transitory food insecurity: is a temporary decline in a household’s access to enough food. They can result from several causes viz. wars, flood, famines, crop failure, market failures, high food prices and natural disasters.
What is the true scale of global hunger?
Experts estimate that there are about 925 million people who cannot access food on a regular basis. We call those people 'food insecure'. Often when you are food insecure, you are food insecure with hunger because of the unavailability or inaccessibility of food meaning you cannot meet your dietary caloric intake requirement and you or your children, go hungry.
The region with the most undernourished people continues to be Asia and the Pacific with 578 million and sub-Saharan Africa with 239 million. Even in cases of adequate food availability, it may provide insufficient intake of micronutrients such as vitamin A, iron, zinc and iodine, leading to disease, deficiencies and even death. This is referred to as malnutrition.
Agriculture and food security
Agriculture is facing today multiple and complex new challenges. We must not only expand production and productivity to feed a growing population estimated at 9 billion persons in 2050, but must meet the demands of changing diets as a result of rising incomes. We must do so with scarce natural resources: such as water and more competition for its uses; increasing land degradation and depletion of fish stocks. We have to cope with rising food price volatility; greater competition for food staples from the energy sector (biofuels); the spread of plant and animal infectious diseases and inappropriate food and agricultural policies that distort production and trade. Climate change will exacerbate an already adverse natural situation. Increases in temperature, changing patterns of rainfall, more extreme droughts and floods, shifting distribution of pests and diseases will change the face of farming and will have an impact on food production in the future. Finally, we are also facing a debt and financial crisis in major industrialized countries with its negative impact on agricultural investment.
All efforts are aimed at increasing food production. Somehow an impression has been created that the world needs to increase crop production manifold if it has to meet the food requirement for the year 2050. The global population would then be 9 billion. What is however deliberately being glossed over is that there is at present no shortage of food. It is not production, but access and distribution that need immediate attention.
At present, the total quantity of food that is produced globally is good enough to meet the daily needs of 11.5 billion people. If every individual were to get his daily food requirement as per the WHO norms, there would be abundant food supplies. In terms of calories, against the average per capita requirement of 2,300, what is available is a little more than 4,500 calories. In other words, the world is already producing more food than what would be required in 2050. So where is the need to panic? The world has today and will continue to have in the future, the capacity and technologies to produce enough food to meet global demands. A food secure world does not only depend on the availability of food supplies but on having access to them.
Why then is the world faced with hunger?
The reasons / causes of food insecurity are very complex. This is not a local issue which can be solved at community level. The following are some of the reasons for it.
international Causes of Food Insecurity
1. World Trade Rules
Farming in developed countries is supported by colossal subsidies provided by their governments as a result they produce abundantly at cheaper rates. Domestic markets continue to be undercut by cheap food imports dumped by rich countries. Ambitions of the poorer countries of the modern world to copy this approach remain unfulfilled and they are bound by the system of open market rules adopted by the World Trade Organization in 1995. As a result, almost all the 48 Least Developed Countries are dependent on food imports, vulnerable to unpredictable world prices for 25% of their total consumption on average. The total support paid by the US, Europe and other members of the richer OECD countries to their agriculture producers in 2010 totalled $227 billion. This is more than five times the UN’s estimate of the annual cost of eradicating hunger by 2025.
During the recent years of crisis, WTO rules failed to prevent bans on food exports introduced by India, Russia and other countries – actions linked by most experts to subsequent price rises and panic measures.
2. Climate Change
Climate models predict that richer countries in temperate zones will benefit from higher crop yields within the two degree temperature rise envisaged in international climate change negotiations. By contrast, crop yields and grazing quality in tropical regions are already close to their limit of temperature sensitivity. With temperatures in many parts of Africa rising faster than the global average, maize yields may be affected even within the coming decade.
3. Biofuels
The US and the European Union have led other developed countries in providing state incentives for production of biofuels. Ambitious mandated targets are bolstered by global subsidies that totalled $22 billion in 2010, more than double the amount of foreign aid supporting agriculture. The European target for biofuels requires a land area twice the size of Belgium, self-evidently unavailable within Europe.
The lure of biofuels for these governments is lower dependence on fossil fuels, together with reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. However, the net saving in carbon dioxide emissions from maize-based ethanol has been exposed as less than 20%.
For 2012, about 40% of the anticipated US corn (maize) crop was earmarked for ethanol. This represents 15% of world maize production, sufficient to feed over 400 million people for a year.
4. Political Neglect
Until very recently, state intervention in food production and marketing was discouraged by the international financial institutions that advise poor countries. In support of this orthodoxy, the proportion of foreign aid allocated to agriculture fell from 18% in 1979 to 4% in 2009.
This trend has started to reverse but the consequence of such prolonged lack of investment is an inadequate infrastructure for rural economies.
5. Commodity Market Speculators
Food commodity prices are inherently volatile, thanks to fickle weather conditions and the sensitivity of operational costs of modern farming to the price of oil. The finger of suspicion has pointed especially at the influence of speculative trades whose volume has mushroomed over the last decade. Regulations have been lifted.
The Committee on Food Security (CFS), the world body responsible for coordinating global strategy, commissioned a High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) to investigate. The 2011 report, Price Volatility and Food Security, concedes that “the evidence on the impacts of increased speculative activities on prices is inconclusive.” However, wary of recent calamitous history of trading in complex financial instruments, it recommends that “tighter regulation is warranted, at least as a precautionary measure.”
Local Causes of Food Insecurity
1. Poverty
For individual households, poverty is the driver of food insecurity. Lack of money precludes the purchase of food, however plentiful its availability. Shortage of food is not the cause of global hunger.
Without determined intervention, poverty and hunger lock together in a downward spiral of cause and effect. Hunger and malnutrition reduce the natural capacity of families to escape poverty though physical work and learning.
2. Land and Gender
An important obstacle to rural economic development is insecure tenure, a fact of life for the majority of poor farmers. Less than 10% of the land in Africa is covered by title documents. This deters investment and increases vulnerability to eviction by state or corporate interests.
Weak tenure has become more acute with the feminization of agriculture brought about by men migrating for urban work. Women now produce 60%-80% of food in developing countries, despite owning only 10% - 20% of the farms. Discrimination limits availability of credit, advisory support and access to local economic decision-making.
3. War, Conflict and Governance
Since 1992, the proportion of short and long-term food crises that can be attributed to human causes has more than doubled, rising from 15 percent to more than 35 percent. All too often, these emergencies are triggered by conflicts.
From Asia to Africa to Latin America, fighting displaces millions of people from their homes, leading to some of the world's worst hunger emergencies. Since 2004, conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan has uprooted more than a million people, precipitating a major food crisis - in an area that had generally enjoyed good rains and crops.
In war, food sometimes becomes a weapon. Soldiers will starve opponents into submission by seizing or destroying food and livestock and systematically wrecking local markets. Fields and water wells are often mined or contaminated, forcing farmers to abandon their land.
When conflict threw Central Africa into confusion in the 1990s, the proportion of hungry people rose from 53 percent to 58 percent. By comparison, malnutrition is on the retreat in more peaceful parts of Africa such as Ghana and Malawi
The 2010 edition of The State of Food Insecurity in the World draws attention to the concentration of about 20% of the world’s hunger in 22 countries described as in “protracted crisis.” The majority of these countries are fragile states, associated either with periods of conflict or very low standards of governance.
Fifteen African countries have been in unbroken food crisis for eight or more years, giving rise to the most chronic profiles of hunger and malnutrition.
4. Environmental Degradation
The productivity of modern industrial farming has been phenomenal. Global grain production increased by 150% between 1961 and 2009, a period in which the area under cultivation expanded by only 12%. The dynamic performance of food production in Asia over the last 40 years has been described as the “green revolution”.
But this productivity has been achieved at the expense of the natural environment on which agriculture depends. Modern crops require heavy inputs of chemicals and water. The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture published by the FAO in 2011 warns that one quarter of the world’s land resources are “highly degraded”.
For example, in Africa the fragile topsoil is losing vital nutrients through unbroken cycles of planting and overgrazing. And the rapid in modern farming is such that 60% of the world’s dietary energy from plants is now concentrated in just three staple crops.
Poor farming practices, deforestation, over cropping and overgrazing are exhausting the Earth's fertility and spreading the roots of hunger. Increasingly, the world's fertile farmland is under threat from erosion, salination and desertification
5. Food habit transitions
Simply put, one part of the world is eating more and the other is left to starve.
Consider this. An average American consumes about 125 kg of meat, including 46 kg of poultry meat. While the Indians are still lagging behind, the Chinese are fast catching up with the American lifestyle. The Chinese consume about 70 kg of meat on average each year, inclusive of 8.7 kg of poultry meat. The Indian average is around 3.5 kg of meat, much of it (2.1 kg) coming from poultry. If you put all this together, the Chinese are the biggest meat eaters, and for obvious reasons - devouring close to 100 million tonnes every year. America is not far behind, consuming about 35 million tonnes of meat in a year.
Six times more grain is required to provide the proteins that are consumed by the meat-eaters (i.e.) 6kgs of cereals are required to produce 1 kg of protein. Changing the dietary habits therefore assumes importance
6. Wastage of food
But still worse, Americans throw away as much as 30 percent of their food, worth $ 48.3 billion. Why only blame the Americans, walk into any marriage ceremony in India and you would be aghast to see the quantity of food that goes waste. Food wastage has therefore become our right.
In America, for instance, hunger has broken a 14-year record and one in every ten Americans lives in hunger. In Europe, 40 million people are hungry, almost equivalent to the population of Spain. In India, nearly 320 million people live in hunger.
7. Nature
Natural disasters such as floods, tropical storms and long periods of drought are on the increase - with calamitous consequences for food security in poor, developing countries.
Drought is now the single most common cause of food shortages in the world. In 2006, recurrent drought caused crop failures and heavy livestock losses in parts of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya.
In many countries, climate change is exacerbating already adverse natural conditions. For example, poor farmers in Ethiopia or Guatemala traditionally deal with rain failure by selling off livestock to cover their losses and pay for food. But successive years of drought, increasingly common in the Horn of Africa and Central America, are exhausting their resources.
8. Agricultural infrastructure
In the long-term, improved agricultural output offers the quickest fix for poverty and hunger. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2004 Food Insecurity Report, all the countries that are on track to reach the first Millennium Development Goal have something in common - significantly better than average agricultural growth.
Yet too many developing countries lack key agricultural infrastructure, such as enough roads, warehouses and irrigation. The results are high transport costs, lack of storage facilities and unreliable water supplies. All conspire to limit agricultural yields and access to food.
But, although the majority of developing countries depend on agriculture, their governments economic planning often emphasises urban development.
Divisive Solutions
1. Emphasis on Aggregate Supply and Demand
Solutions to long term global food security are often framed within a narrow analysis of future supply and demand for food.
The most commonly quoted projection is the FAO conclusion that global food production must rise by 70% by 2050 to cater for growth in world population of more than 30%. About 80% of this increased production must be sourced from existing arable land through higher yields.
Whilst such projections of global supply and demand offer insight into the challenge of food insecurity, they encourage solutions which presume that higher food production reduces hunger. The necessary note of caution lies in the fact that current global per capita food production already comfortably exceeds the FAO hunger threshold.
2. Industrial Agriculture
Presenting food insecurity solely in terms of aggregate production and yield also prompts solutions which superimpose the model of industrial agriculture on "peasant" farms of Africa and South Asia.
There are two fundamental concerns with this vision.
- The first is the risk of importing an environmentally unsustainable model. As well as land degradation, industrial farming is a significant contributor to climate change, accounting directly for 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, the real contribution of agriculture to emissions is between 30% and 50%, depending on the assessment of indirect factors such as land use change, food transportation and packaging.
- The second issue of concern is the tendency for control of industrial agriculture to be concentrated in a small number of global corporations whose interests are aligned with shareholder value rather than the elimination of hunger. For example, 70% of global sales of crop seeds are already achieved by just three companies – Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta.
The potential control of agribusiness is illustrated by its attempts to introduce genetically-modified (GM) crops to developing countries. Claiming higher yields and lower chemical inputs, GM crops feature prominently in macro-solutions to the global food crisis.
However, the technology depends on capital intensive farming whilst the intellectual property rights are held by a small nucleus of corporations dominated by Monsanto. These characteristics have limited appeal in the poorest countries whose farmers are accustomed to the right to save their own seeds. Only three countries in Africa have adopted GM crops.
3. Land Grabbing
A perfect storm of demand has unleashed a scramble for agricultural land in developing countries. Major food importers, such as the Gulf States and South Korea, seek secure food supplies, having lost confidence in export markets.
Mandates for biofuels, especially in Europe, compel local producers into overseas activity. Investment and hedge funds acting on behalf of savers have upgraded their ratings of agricultural land assets, in anticipation of rising monetary yields and capital growth.
Estimates of the scale of land investment in 2009 alone vary from 15 million to 80 million hectares, about two-thirds being in Africa. The higher figure in this range represents “more than the area of farmland of Britain, France, Germany and Italy combined,” according to The Economist. About 75% of farm acquisitions are believed to be for biofuel production.
Several detailed studies have confirmed fears of one-sided non-transparent deals between global purchasers and indulgent local or national elites. Weak land tenure is being exploited to their advantage and local rights compromised by neglecting the principle of “free, prior and informed consent.” Environmental impact assessments are rare, especially in the context of water.
This evidence that solutions to the food and energy insecurity of rich countries are being pursued at the expense of the poor has provoked accusations of “neo-colonialism” and “land grabbing”
Foreign investment in land is not a new phenomenon and such strong demand could be exploited by host governments to deliver much-needed transfers of skills and technology , develop rural infrastructure and generate tax revenue. However, the HLPE Chair, Professor M S Swaminathan, has reported that “we found little evidence that such large-scale acquisitions have helped to provide food and jobs to the local population.”
Inclusive Solutions
1. Small-scale Farming
Food insecurity is one element of a composite global crisis prompted by extreme inequality and the proximity of environmental limits. Solutions to hunger can therefore succeed only if they reinforce broader strategies for sustainable development.
This perspective sees the 500 million smallholder farmers in more positive light. The World Bank estimates that growth of rural economies accelerates poverty reduction four times faster than other sectors. Small farmers have modest footprints on the environment.
Although the optimum model for managing small farms in poor countries remains the subject of much debate, their potential to be part of the solution is increasingly accepted.
An alternative view seeks to build on the existing model of low input farming, developing cultivation skills in soil regeneration, nitrogen fixation, natural pest control and agro-forestry. Described as “agro-ecology” or “eco-farming”, this approach has the potential to raise yields substantially, according to UN research.
The cause of agro-ecology is greatly reinforced by its affinity with the low cost mitigation and adaptation measures urgently sought in response to climate change. Agro-ecological methods offer a more promising platform for “climate-smart agriculture” than the industrial model.
2. Infrastructure and Risk Management
There is general agreement that upgrading rural infrastructure in developing countries is a critical condition for food security. Roads and storage facilities are necessary to link produce to local markets and to urban consumers. Access to electricity and efficient irrigation facilities potentially transform all aspects of farm management.
The risk of variable weather conditions can be addressed by introducing tools which are commonplace in modern farming. For example, meteorological stations and local weather forecasting are rarely found in the poorest countries. Innovative products of micro-finance are being developed to improve the availability of credit and crop insurance to small farmers.
3. Social Protection
Risk management tools cannot eliminate the misfortune that strikes at local communities and individual households. Whilst embryonic in most developing countries, the provision of a social safety net fulfils the obligations implicit in the right to food and should feature in national food security plans.
4. Food Sovereignty
The concept of food sovereignty envisages the restoration of strong national strategic hegemony, legitimized by the democratic input of farmers and consumers. Food sovereignty aims to insulate a country from the vagaries of world food prices and the self-serving motives of foreign corporations.
The approach has natural empathy with small-scale farming, respect for the right to food and secure ownership of land and seed assets. It favours protection against food shortages through national food reserves rather than trade.
5. International intervention
At the 1996 World Food Summit, political leaders had pledged to pull out half the world's hungry (at that time the figure was somewhere around 840 million) by the years 2015. By 2010, the world should have removed at least 300 million people from the hunger list. It has however added another 85 million to raise the tally to 925 million.
In response to the 2007/08 food crisis, leaders of the major donor countries unveiled the 2009 L’Aquila Food Security Initiative which promised $22 billion spread over the period 2010-2012.
For their part, African governments have committed to the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme which aims to achieve growth in the sector of 6% per annum through increasing investment to the level of the Maputo Declaration. In February 2011 the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change was organised.
No successor of comparable scale to the L’Aquila Initiative has emerged for the post-2012 period. Oxfam has estimated a cost of $75 billion per annum up to 2015 to achieve the hunger-related MDG, suggesting that about half should be contributed by the major donors.
Recent statements emerging from G20 summits and the 2012 Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development reflect some softening of attitudes towards state intervention in food security together with recognition of the importance of small-scale and low input farming.
Such sentiments have not yet evolved into robust policy or support. And the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition announced by President Obama in parallel with the 2012 G20 summit in Mexico invites international agribusiness corporations to participate in programmes within some of Africa’s poorest countries. The debate on the preferred model for small farm development is far from over.
6. Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land
A promising output of the reformed CFS was approved in 2012 - the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security. The Committee had resolved that the controversial issue of land grabbing could not be addressed without first considering the difficulties of land tenure in poor countries.
The Guidelines suggest how undocumented traditional land tenure can be recognised, respecting principles of human rights, gender sensitivities and sustainable development. Although the Guidelines are voluntary, there is optimism that the inclusive CFS process has marshalled a critical threshold of international support.
The CFS hopes to build on this progress by negotiating guidelines for responsible international investment in agriculture with a view to agreement by the end of 2013
7. Regulations and Coordinated Action
Voluntary guidelines and comforting words in G20 communiqués are insufficient to tackle the underlying causes of global food insecurity. Recommendations on biofuels, food price volatility, export restrictions and food reserves require regulations and determined coordinated action.
Although the recommendations have emerged through the recognised international process, world leaders have so far failed to implement them. The current deficit of multilateral political will extends even to action on global hunger.
The only concrete global response on these issues is the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) for which countries have agreed to submit market-sensitive information about their stocks of the four main staple crops. However, participation is voluntary for the corporate sector.
Regulations to limit speculative activity on food commodities in the US have been prepared in the Dodd-Frank Act. However, these have been watered down by vested corporate interests – in Europe the process is even further behind.
8. Food Aid
Food aid is not a sustainable solution to hunger but it has a vital humanitarian role to play in countries which require assistance.
Monitoring food security 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 the distribution of food aid. The agency aims to support 85 million people in 74 countries in 2012, requiring a budget of $5.5 billion. About the same number receives assistance from international aid agencies.
Locating surplus food for cost effective and efficient humanitarian distribution is a recurring challenge for WFP and other aid agencies. The preferred option is to purchase food from any surplus areas within the beneficiary country, not just on grounds of cost and delivery time but also to inject activity into the domestic economy.
Remaining requirements must be sourced from international markets. The G20 2011 summit promised that purchases for humanitarian purposes will not be impeded by export bans or taxes.
To further address the uncertainties of availability, a new Food Assistance Convention has been negotiated with a view to becoming effective in 2013. Donor parties to the Convention will make annual commitments to global food assistance.
The US provides approximately 50% of all food aid, valued at about $2 billion, but insists that most of its aid should be disbursed as surplus grain from US national stocks - and that the chain of delivery must be handled largely by US shippers and contractors. Although the US is likely to ratify the new Convention, its core approach will continue.
How can Research help food security
1. Integrate food security and sustainable agriculture into global and national policies
As a first step to inclusion of agriculture in the mainstream of international climate change policy, negotiators should establish a work program on mitigation and adaptation in agriculture.
The global food system is managed through a complex mix of public and private-sector action, across local to global scales. Collectively, the policy choices within national governments, United Nations bodies, global treaties and conventions, regional economic communities, political forums (for example, G8, G20) and standard-setting bodies shape the way food is produced, distributed and consumed.
The scientific community can support evidence-based policy-making by quantifying vulnerability of agriculture to climate change and forecasting outcomes under a broad range of potential mechanisms for agricultural adaptation and mitigation. By working across disciplinary boundaries, researchers can develop a pragmatic, multi-disciplinary understanding of what it means to reduce poverty and food insecurity within the context of the planet’s boundaries. Scientists can help to mobilize increased investment by detailing how multiple benefits can be achieved through sustainable farming practices and by clarifying geographic and sectoral potential for greenhouse gas mitigation.
2. Significantly raise the level of global investment in sustainable agriculture and food systems in the next decade
Donor governments should implement and strengthen the G8 L’Aquila commitments to sustainable agriculture and food security and enable UNFCCC Fast Start funding, major development banks and other global finance mechanisms to prioritize sustainable agriculture programs that improve infrastructure and rehabilitate land. To reflect the significance of sustainable agriculture in economic growth, poverty reduction and long-term environmental sustainability, governments should increase national research and development budgets, build integrated scientific capacity and support revitalized extension services, technology transfer and communities of practice to increase knowledge of best practices and access to innovation.
By demonstrating the outcomes of alternative farming practices in different regions, farming systems and landscapes and by clarifying the conditions under which local agricultural production systems integrate innovative technologies or approaches, researchers can help to effectively direct investments in agriculture.
3. Sustainably intensify agricultural production while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other negative environmental impacts of agriculture
To enable more productive and resilient livelihoods and ecosystems, with emphasis on closing yield gaps and improving nutrition, multi-benefit farming systems should be developed and rewarded. This includes introducing strategies for minimizing ecosystem degradation and rehabilitating degraded environments, with emphasis on community-designed programs. To empower marginalized food producers and increase crop productivity, improvements are needed in land and water rights, access to markets, finance and insurance, and local capacity. Subsidies that provide incentives for farmers to deplete water supplies or destroy native ecosystems should be modified. To prevent further loss of forests, wetlands and grasslands, the economic incentives for sustainable intensification of agriculture should be coupled with stronger governance of land tenure and land zoning.
There is great variety in the pattern of agricultural productivity and land use in different regions. Strategic investments can make an important difference. The agricultural potential in Africa is substantial and existing technologies can be used to create the necessary transformations in increasing productivity.
Through international, regional, national and local collaborations, researchers have a critical role to play in defining the practical meaning of sustainable intensification and elucidating forms of low-emissions agriculture that support long-term productivity and resilience (that is, decoupling increase in yield from emissions).
4. Develop specific programs and policies to assist populations and sectors that are most vulnerable to climate changes and food insecurity
To provide rapid relief when extreme weather events affect communities, funds that respond to climate shocks should be developed (for example, index-linked funds). To moderate excessive food price fluctuations by promoting open and responsive trade systems, country information on production forecasts and stocks should be shared, and early warning systems should be established. Safety nets and other programs to help vulnerable populations become food secure can include cash and in-kind transfers, employment guarantee schemes and education. Humanitarian responses to vulnerable populations threatened by food crises should be rapidly delivered through robust emergency food reserves. Global donor programs, policies and activities should be harmonized, paying particular attention to systematically integrating climate change risk management, adaptation and mitigation co-benefits, and improved local nutritional outcomes.
Research initiatives may be directed toward local-level strategies for risk management, preparedness, institutional capacity-building and household and community food systems.
5. Reshape food access and consumption patterns to ensure basic nutritional needs are met and to foster healthy and sustainable eating patterns worldwide
Chronic undernutrition and hunger should be addressed by harmonizing development policy and coordinating regional programs to improve livelihoods and access to services among food-insecure rural and urban communities. Positive changes in the variety and quantity of diets should be promoted through innovative education campaigns and through economic incentives that align the marketing practices of retailers and processors with public health and environmental goals.
The research community can deliver better knowledge about the variety of food combinations that can deliver a nutritionally appropriate and environmentally low-impact diet. To improve overall food supply, scientists should investigate opportunities to improve agricultural productivity and resilience to climate change through effective deployment of existing and new technologies for producing, processing and distributing food.
6. Reduce loss and waste in food systems, targeting infrastructure, farming practices, processing, distribution and household habits
In all sustainable agriculture development programs, research and investment components focusing on reducing waste, from production to consumption, by improving harvest and postharvest management and food storage and transport should be included. Integrated policies and programs should be developed to reduce waste in food supply chains (for example, economic innovation to enable low-income producers to store food during periods of excess supply).
Raising awareness of food waste and promoting the use of efficiency strategies among food businesses, retailers and consumers will probably need to be targeted at specific economic and cultural characteristics.
7. Create comprehensive, shared, integrated information systems that encompass human and ecological dimensions
Increased, sustained investment in regular monitoring, on the ground and by public-domain remote-sensing networks, is essential to track changes in land use, food production, climate, the environment, human health and well-being worldwide. Spatially explicit data and decision-support systems that integrate biophysical and socioeconomic information and that enable policy-makers to navigate tradeoffs among agricultural intensification, nutritional security and environmental consequences should be developed, validated and implemented. To address food price volatility, improved transparency and access to information in global food markets as well as investment in interlinked information systems are needed.
Is it so difficult to remove hunger? The answer is No.
A simple act of saving and sharing food is the best way to fight hunger. It can begin at the household level, at the community level and of course at the regional and national levels. If every household were to ensure that no food is wasted, and then organise the left over to be delivered to the poor and needy, much of the hunger that we see around can be taken care of.
Courtesy: devinder-sharma.blogspot.com/
Vikas Shah, Thought Economics, August 2012
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