Although the term food security was coined
only 16 years ago, humanity has been striving against famine and hunger since
ancient times. Agreement at the 1996 World Food Summit, based on the concept
that food security exists “when all people at all times have access to
sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”, gave
a new vision to efforts against hunger and malnutrition. According to this
definition, food insecurity is multidimensional, and affects people at the
global, regional, national, sub-national and household levels. It presents
itself in various forms, such as chronic, acute, and transient. In addition, in
order to be food secure, there are different requirements for men, women,
children and the elderly.
A new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of
time-bound targets with a deadline of 2015, known as the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs), was expected to give new impetus to the cause of food security.
However, 12 years down the road, the progress on target 1.C of MDG 1—to halve
between 1990 and 2015 the proportion of people who suffer from hunger—is still
bleak and stymied in most regions. Stunting and wasting prevails in developing
countries, where one in four children are underweight.
The causes behind this alarming phenomenon vary in each case. There are three
prerequisites that determine whether food security exists: the physical
availability of food through production, import, aid, intra-country transfer;
socio-economic and cultural access to food; and food assimilation.
Physical availability to food at both the macro and micro levels can become
affected negatively due to a lack of local production, natural and man-made
disasters, seasonal variations, water shortage, weak infrastructure,
insufficient storage capacities, hoarding, or even legal problems.
Socio-economic access to food, however, can be affected adversely due to
poverty, lack of resources, climate change, disasters, political instability,
and loss of livelihood opportunities. Furthermore, a lack of a consistent
supply of subsidized food items, due to a reduced fiscal cushion, low literacy
rates, social norms such as gender discrimination, and a lack of awareness
about the benefits of maintaining a balanced diet, can impact negatively the
distribution of resources within the family.
The factors that hamper food assimilation, on the other hand, include a lack of
clean drinking water, inadequate health, hygiene, and sanitation facilities, a
low rate of literacy, and a lack of fiscal cushion for Governments to spend on
public sector development programmes, which would help ensure basic service
delivery. Various other overlapping factors also contribute to the burgeoning
world food crisis.
Humanitarian and/or Production Issues
One of the reasons for the slow progress on achieving the goal of halving world
hunger is that most of our policy and decision makers consider food insecurity
either a humanitarian issue and/or a production issue. Treating food insecurity
as a humanitarian issue, however, necessitates ensuring food security through
emergency appeals for pledges, charity, food aid, emergency food supplies, and
other such measures. While all of these measures may be important in certain
circumstances, they cannot tackle future food security requirements, nor can
they ensure sustainable food security.
Likewise, treating food insecurity only as a production issue would again cater
to only one aspect of food security—physical availability. Hunger,
malnutrition, and food insecurity have increased over the years in surplus
producer countries such as India, Pakistan, and many Latin American countries.
According to the World Food Programme, due to the eroded purchasing power of consumers
in 2010, in Pakistan, there was a 10 per cent decrease in the consumption of
wheat, which is considered a staple food.
Trying to tackle the food insecurity issue merely by increasing production
sometimes raises questions as to whether food is being produced in a
sustainable manner by making use of available resources. The debate against
agricultural production subsidies in the North and the realization of the
negative effects of the green revolution on the South’s environment point to
how principles of sustainability may be compromised in a quest to produce more.
Increased production is not the problem as long as it is achieved through
principles of sustainability. What is of concern, however, is that very little
is being done to ensure socio-economic access to available food for everyone,
at all times. This is the most ignored aspect of food (in)security.
Governance and International Partnerships
There are many reasons for the lack of economic access to food. On the supply
side, the primary reason for food price volatility is inefficient governance
and market distortion practices. Inefficient markets in poorly governed
countries, an increase in prices of agricultural inputs, the increased cost of
transportation due to fuel price inflation, damage to physical infrastructure
limiting the supply of food products, hoarding, and cartelization, especially
in the case of staple food items, and the smuggling of food grains and live
animals to neighbouring countries are some of the factors that lead to food inflation.
All of these issues could be tackled through better governance at the local
level.
In most of the developing countries, where the incidence of hunger and food
insecurity is also high, restricted or uncertain, physical food supplies
trigger panic buying. Those who can afford to pay try to buy beyond their
immediate requirement, even at higher prices. This further encourages hoarders
to sell at higher prices and the vicious cycle continues until the supply
stabilizes.
Looking at progress reports on the MDGs by Member States, it is obvious that
while at the macro level many efforts are being made through international
partnerships to produce more food, provide better drinking water (not
necessarily safe drinking water for most developing countries), control fatal
diseases, and improve food absorption, there is no meaningful international
partnership to improve socio-economic access to food.
This is the weakest link in our efforts to eradicate hunger, which, in turn,
has larger implications for achieving security. All four levels of
security—individual, national, regional, and global—are mutually non-exclusive
and necessary for the survival of the others. More than a billion people on
this earth who are lacking food and experience individual insecurity on a daily
basis tend to resort to extreme and extraordinary behaviour. Various United
Nations agencies have documented how people in developing countries have
reduced their meal sizes and shifted to a less preferred diet. One may read any
newspaper from any developing country to understand the extreme and
extraordinary behaviour of people with individual insecurities. Some of them
protest for basic amenities such as an uninterrupted supply of electricity, gas
and water, and may resort to actions which can turn violent. Or they are forced
to sell their kidneys, or even their children, while a few resort to various
other anti-social activities such as theft, burglary, robbery and kidnapping
for ransom. Some force their women into prostitution and children into child
labour, and some even commit suicide and/or kill their family members. In
Pakistan and Afghanistan, a few also become prey to militant groups and blow
themselves up as suicide bombers. These behaviours not only promote intolerance
and violence, but also lead to socio-political instability, which affects
economic growth and prosperity and threatens national, regional, and global
securities thereby necessitating an increase in defence and military spending.
At this stage, food insecurity jeopardizes sustainable development by
threatening peace, social justice, and economic well being.
So what is the way forward? First, the situation requires a change in paradigm
where individual hunger is perceived as a national security threat. Such a
paradigm shift would result in greater resources being channelled to improve
food security. It would also result in the reprioritization of public spending,
so that social development would be given priority over national defence, and
the benefits of such spending would accrue to individuals and not only to the
State.
Second, increased food production should not be achieved by non-sustainable
measures, such as the use of natural resources. There is a need to maintain a
balance among food production and environmental sustainability.
Third, our national policymakers need to come out of denial and accept that
there is the issue of food insecurity. They then need to strengthen the social
protection system to provide targeted relief, especially for children, pregnant
women, and breastfeeding mothers. They should also introduce special schemes
for those who are deprived of access to food, either in the form of cash for
work or food for work programmes.
Finally, the lesson to be learned from countries that produce surplus food is
that until there is an improvement in governance at the local and national
levels, international partnership and global governing bodies will not be of
much help in ensuring food security.
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