The state of food security and nutrition in Africa during the COVID-19 crisis goes beyond affordability, that’s just one factor. Food security means availability of nutritious food and ability for people to access it. This was agreed on during the World Food Summit, 1996 and still stand in 2020.
Food security and nutrition can only be defined when everyone has physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food at all times. This means that the food must also meet every citizen’s dietary needs and personal food preferences for an active and healthy life, for global food security and nutrition to be achieved by any country in Africa and the rest of the world.Investment in Agriculture can lift 85 million people out of extreme poverty by 2024, provide jobs and boost the continent’s economy. #FoodSecurity2020 Click To Tweet
Difference between Food Security and Food SafetyMost Africans make their living from agriculture – but not in a way that helps economies grow – 3 Facts that reveal Africa’s huge agriculture potential. #FoodSecurity2020 Click To Tweet
Presented by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, this is the widely-accepted meaning of an aspirational state of food security in the world. The shortest, simplest and most accurate definition of food security is probably this: Food security is the measure of food availability and peoples ability to access it.
Usually confused and wrongly interchanged, the main difference between food security and food safety lies in availability/access vs quality/handling. While food security focusses on the measure of food availability and peoples ability to access it, food safety is used as a scientific discipline describing handling, preparation, and storage of food in ways that prevent food-borne illness.Food security means availability of nutritious food and ability for people to access it. #FoodSecurity2020 Click To Tweet
Food security is related to hunger, malnutrition and dietary needs while food safety looks into physical, chemical and biological contamination, handling procedures, manufacturing control, consumer labelling and regulations by jurisdiction and agencies.
Criticism – Support and Opposition of Genetically Modified Crops:
The concept of Food security has been criticised for mostly focusing on food calories rather than the quality and nutrition of food.
We also have the issue around support and opposition of genetically modified crops.
Although many GM crop success stories exist, some scientists still question the safety and long term benefits of biotechnology.Although many GM crop success stories exist, some scientists still question the safety and long term benefits of biotechnology. Click To Tweet
What are the 5 components or pillars of food security?
Not everyone has the ability to reliably obtain, consume and metabolise sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious foods. The 5 components or pillars of food security help us understand how and why malnutrition arises, and what can be done to address and prevent it.
Generally, the concept of food security and nutrition has four key components or pillars:
- Food Availability
- Food Access
- Food Utilisation
- Food Stability
- Food Acceptability
WHO states that there are three components or pillars that determine food security: food availability, food access, and food use and misuse. The FAO adds a fourth component or 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 components or pillars of food security are availability, access, utilization, and stability”.
Enough nutritious food of sufficient quality needs to be available to people for their consumption. Availability can be affected by:
- Production: how much and what types of food are available through food that is produced and stored locally.
- Distribution: how is food made available (physically moved), in what form, when, and to whom.
- Exchange: how much of food that is available can be obtained through exchange mechanisms such as barter, trade, purchase, or loans.
Individuals and households must be able to acquire sufficient food to be able to eat a healthy, nutritious diet, or have access to sufficient resources needed to grow their own food (e.g. land). Access can be affected by:
- Affordability: the ability of individuals, households or communities to afford the price of food or land for producing food, relative to their incomes.
- Allocation: the economic, social and political mechanisms governing when, where, and how food can be accessed by consumers and on what terms. For example, food may be unequally allocated according to age and gender within households.
- Preference: social, religious, and cultural norms and values that influence consumer demand for certain types of food (e.g. religious prohibitions or the desire to follow a specific dietary pattern such as vegetarianism).
Food utilisation (use and misuse).
People must have access to a sufficient quantity and diversity of foods to meet their nutritional needs but must also be able to eat and properly metabolise such food. Utilisation can be affected by:
- Nutritional value: the nutritional value provided by the foods that are consumed, as measured in calories, vitamins, protein, and various micronutrients (e.g. iron, iodine, vitamin A).
- Health status: the effect of disease (e.g. HIV/AIDS or diarrhoea) on the ability to consume the food and absorb and metabolise its nutrients.
- Food safety: access to food free from food spoilage or from toxic contamination introduction during the producing, processing, packaging, distribution or marketing of food; and from food-borne diseases such as salmonella.
- Preparation and consumption: the resources (e.g. cooking tools and fuel), knowledge and ability to prepare and consume food in a healthy and hygienic way.
Food may be available and accessible to people who are able to utilise it effectively, but to avoid increases in malnutrition and in order for people not to feel insecure, this state of affairs needs to be enduring rather than temporary or subject to fluctuations.
Cultural acceptability is also a significant aspect when defining the food security concept. It recognises the role played by various social, religious, and cultural functions in people’s’ lives.
Top 10 Challenges and Factors affecting Global Food Security:
Food is a major global challenge that potentially affects everyone because by 2050, the world is expected to feed 9 billion people.
This impending global food security challenge poses a real threat that needs immediate sustainable solutions. We are not prepared to adapt and mitigate negative effects of issues like climate change and the increasing population.
The Six Threats to Global Food Security putout on 2015 October 16, 2015 on the World Food Day are: Genetic Modification and engineering, Soil erosion, Land “development”, Food Related Issues, Climate change, Aging farmers and Massive bee die-offs.6 Threats to Global Food Security: Genetic Modification + engineering, Soil erosion, Land “development”, Food Issues, Climate change, Aging farmers & Massive bee die-offs. #FoodSecurity2020 Click To Tweet
Today, here are the current Top 10 Challenges and Factors affecting Global Food Security:
- Climate change: The generation of farmers now on the land is the first to face manmade climate change. Agriculture as it exists today developed over 11,000 years of rather remarkable climate stability.
- More food-less days: In Nigeria, 27% of families experience food-less days. In India, it is 24%; in Peru, 14%. The world is in transition from an era dominated by surpluses to one defined by scarcity.
- Melting water reserves: At no time since agriculture began has the world faced such a predictably massive threat to food production as that posed by the melting mountain glaciers of Asia.
- Flattening yields: After several decades of raising grain yields, farmers in the more agriculturally advanced countries have recently hit a glass ceiling. That production ceiling is imposed by the limits of photosynthesis itself.
- Little time to prepare: To state the obvious, we are in a situation both difficult and dangerous. The world today desperately needs leadership on the food issues.
- Rising population: There will be 219,000 people at the dinner table tonight who were not there last night, many of them with empty plates.
- Rising incomes, changing diets: Today, with incomes rising fast in emerging economies, there are at least 3 billion people moving up the food chain toward Westernised diets.
- Falling water tables: In India some 190 million people are being fed with grain produced by over-pumping groundwater. For China, the number is 130 million.
- Slowing irrigation: Water supply is now the principal constraint on efforts to expand world food production. During the last half of the 20th century, the world’s irrigated area expanded from some 250 million acres in 1950 to roughly 700 million in 2000.
- Increasing soil erosion: Nearly a third of the world’s cropland is losing topsoil faster than new soil is forming. This reduces the land’s inherent fertility.
Levels and Types of food insecurity:
The state of food security varies over a range of scales, ranging from the individual to global.
Even where it is present at a particular individual or household level, it may not be so on a regional level.
Conversely, while a nation or region may be generally considered to be food secure, certain (groups of) individuals may still suffer from food insecurity.
Levels of Food (In)security
- National or Regional
- Contextual or Underlying Conditions
- Food consumption status
- Health status
- Nutrition status
- Care and feeding practices
- Household characteristics
- Health and Sanitation
National or Regional
- Food availability and stability
- Food supply chain
- Food access
Contextual or Underlying Conditions
- Demographic conditions
- Economic conditions
- Natural Resources and Environmental conditions
- Political conditions
- Social-cultural conditions
- Risk hazard and shock
Types of Food (In)security
Types of food insecurity can also be distinguished by their frequency or duration:
- Chronic food insecurity. A long-term and persistent condition of food insecurity. A population suffers from chronic food insecurity when it is unable to meet minimum food consumption requirements for extended periods of time (approximately six months of the year or longer).
- Transitory food insecurity. A short-term and temporary condition of food insecurity. A population suffers from transitory food insecurity when there is a sudden drop in the ability to produce or access sufficient food for a healthy nutritional status (e.g. after a period of drought or as a result of conflict).
- Seasonal food insecurity. A condition of food insecurity that reoccurs predictably, following the cyclical pattern of seasons.
Measuring Food Insecurity
No single tool can account for all dimensions of food security.
However one useful method for measuring food insecurity on an individual level is the FAO’s Food Insecurity Experience Scale, which is based around the following 8 questions.
Are you experiencing food insecurity right now?
Use this tool to find out:
During the last 12 months, was there a time when, because of lack of money or other resources:
- You were worried you would not have enough food to eat?
- You were unable to eat healthy and nutritious food?
- You ate only a few kinds of foods?
- You had to skip a meal?
- You ate less than you thought you should?
- Your household ran out of food?
- You were hungry but did not eat?
- You went without eating for a whole day?
These questions compose a scale that covers a range of severity of food insecurity from mild to severe.
State of food security and nutrition annual report:
Each year, a joint report is issued with the latest estimates for food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition at global and regional levels.
This annual food security report is compiled by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, UNICEF, the World Food Programme and the World Health Organization.
Besides that, the annual food security report also seeks to guarantee funding of social safety nets that make sure universal access to health and education, which is important to food security and nutrition, a main consideration. All this is geared to avert food insecurity and malnutrition.
Safeguarding against economic slowdowns and downturns:
An in-depth analysis of the impact of economic slowdowns and downturns on food (in)security and nutrition is presented by The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World Annual Report.
One major goal of the annual report is to push for action to safeguard food security and nutrition. They plan to do this through economic and social policies that help counteract the effects of such slowdowns and downturns. A good example of such a slowdowns and downturns is the novel coronavirus epidemic.
The report strives to document all the latest estimates on food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition at the global and regional levels. The 2019 edition continues to signal that significant challenges remain in the fight against food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms.
Malnutrition, or the risk of it, is a universal human problem: while some people’s diets lack sufficient nutrients for an active and healthy life (e.g. undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies), others consume excess food energy (overnutrition), and this also leads to negative health consequences.
A person may consume energy excess to requirements and so be overweight, while also suffering from micronutrient deficiencies.
Effective action to address malnutrition in all its forms requires an understanding of the various mechanisms that can affect it.
It is this nuanced understanding, developed over decades of research, which is captured in the concept of food security.Most Africans make their living from agriculture – but not in a way that helps economies grow – Facts that reveal Africa’s huge agriculture potential. #FoodSecurity202 Click To Tweet
Highlights from The state of food (in)security and nutrition in the world annual report 2019:
- More than 820 million people in the world were still hungry in 2018, underscoring the immense challenge of achieving the Zero Hunger target by 2030.
- Hunger is on the rise in almost all African subregions, making Africa the region with the highest prevalence of undernourishment. Hunger is also slowly rising in Latin America and the Caribbean, while Western Asia shows a continuous increase since 2010, with more than 12 percent of its population undernourished today.
- A greater focus on overweight and obesity, including child overweight and adult obesity, is needed to better understand the different dimensions of these nutrition challenges.
Agriculture and Food Security:
Agriculture & Food Security is a friend explored open access diary that tends to the test of global food security. Significance of agribusiness in the Food supply can’t be made light of.
Farming produces vegetables, proteins, and oils. The sugars give every single living being vitality. These are delivered as grains that develop in ranches, for example, rice, wheat, and potatoes. It’s useful to manufacture our body with proteins.Over 800 million individuals worldwide hit the day hungry consistently, the majority of them smallholder ranchers who rely upon farming to get by and feed their families. #FoodSecurity2020 Click To Tweet
At the worldwide level, agriculture contributes to environmental change through emanation of ozone depleting substances and decrease of carbon stockpiling in vegetation and soil.
Locally, agriculture reduces biodiversity and affects natural living spaces through land transformation, eutrophication, pesticide data sources, water system and seepage.
Today, in excess of 800 million individuals over the globe hit the hay hungry consistently, the majority of them smallholder ranchers who rely upon farming to get by and feed their families.
In spite of a blast in the development of urban ghettos throughout the most recent decade, almost 75 percent of needy individuals in creating nations live in country territories.
Development in the horticulture area – from ranch to fork – has been demonstrated to be in any event twice as compelling in lessening neediness as development in different segments.Development in the horticulture area – from ranch to fork – has been demonstrated to be in any event twice as compelling in lessening neediness as development in different segments. #FoodSecurity2020 Click To Tweet
Putting resources into these smallholder ranchers—a large number of whom are ladies—and in the business sectors around them is a higher priority than at any other time. So as to take care of a populace expected to develop to 9 billion individuals by 2050, the world should twofold its present nourishment creation.
Given shortage of regular assets and different difficulties, the world should be increasingly effective by they way it satisfies this need. To guarantee that individuals have adequate nourishment, adjusting transient help with a drawn out improvement methodology can assist nations with taking care of their own kin.
Food Security Report by Kenya Agricultural Research Institute:
The agricultural sector is the mainstay of the Kenya’s economy. The sector directly contributes 24% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 27% of GDP indirectly through linkages with manufacturing, distribution and other service related sectors.
Approximately 45% of Government revenue is derived from agriculture and the sector contributes over 75% of industrial raw materials and more than 50% of the export earnings.
In 2008, the GoK launched Kenya Vision 2030 as the new long-term development blueprint for the country whose focus is to create a “Globally competitive and prosperous country with a high quality of life by 2030”.
The Vision also aims at transforming Kenya into “a newly industrializing, middle income country providing a high quality of life to all its citizens in a clean and secure environment”.
The current food insecurity problems are attributed to several factors, including:
- frequent droughts in most parts of the country,
- high costs of domestic food production due to high costs of inputs especially fertilizer,
- displacement of a large number of farmers in the high potential agricultural areas following the post-election violence which occurred in early 2008,
- high global food prices and low purchasing power for large proportion of the population due to high level of poverty.
3 Main Policy responses to the recent food crisis in Kenya
As with other countries, the Government of Kenya responded to the food crises through three major policy intervention: Supply, prices and income related policies.
- Supply related policies
- Price related policies
- Income related policies
Under the Vision 2030, the Government has identified the following seven flagship projects for implementation during the next 5 years:
- Agricultural policy reforms
- Three-tiered fertilizer cost reduction
- Branding Kenya farm produce
- Establishment of livestock disease free zones and processing facilities
- Creation of publicly accessible land registries
- Development of agricultural land use master plan
- Development of irrigation schemes.
Conclusion to regional and Global Food Security
International cooperation is significant in the quest to achieve food (in)security. If we improving key social sectors like: agriculture, business, health and supplement this with nutrition education, we will be able to achieve food security.
However, this is not the end. It is an ongoing conversation which also started many years back. Below is a digital footprint and PDF links to of some of the key Policy Briefs and Documents on Concepts of Food Security, and how they have changed over the years:
Further Reading on the Changing Policy Briefs and Concepts of Food Security
- Devereux, S. and Maxwell, S. (eds) (2001). Food security in subSaharan Africa, London: ITDG
- McClain-Nhlapo (2004) Implementing a Human Rights Approach to Food Security. 2020 Africa Conference IFPRI, Policy Brief 13
- FAO, AHP (2002) Anti Hunger Programme: Reducing hunger through agriculture and rural development and wider access to food, FAO, Rome.
- FAO (1983). World Food Security: a Reappraisal of the Concepts and Approaches. Director Generals Report, Rome
- World Bank. 1986. Poverty and Hunger: Issues and Options for Food Security in Developing Countries. Washington DC.
- Heidhues, F., Atsain, A., Nyangito, H. Padilla, M., Ghersi, G. & J. Le Vallée (2004) Development Strategies and Food and Nutrition Security in Africa: An Assessment. 2020 Discussion Paper No. 38.
- Pingali, P., Alinovi, L. & Sutton,J. (2005) Food Security in complex emergencies: enhancing food system resilience. Disasters, Volume 29, June 2005
- Sen, A. (1981) Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Clarendon Press, Oxford
- Stamoulis, K., Zezza, A. (2003) A Conceptual Framework for National Agricultural, Rural Development, and Food Strategies and Policies. ESA Working Paper No. 03-17
- World Food Summit 1996, Rome Declaration on World Food Security.
If interested in contributing to any of the above Policy Briefs, please reach out to [email protected]