Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Nutrition Security
Outcomes
Immediate
Causes
Adequate dietary intake
Health
Care
Child feeding habits
Intra-household food
distribution
Education
Food processing
Health services
and healthy
environment
Household
Food Security
Underlying
Causes
Information Education Communication
Quality and quantity of family and community
resources and the way they are controlled
Basic
Causes
Political, cultural, social structure and context
Economic structure
Potential resources
Figure 1.
The UNICEF framework (modified, based on UNICEF, 1998)
the next few decades. The data underpin the well-known conclusion “that if all food
were equally distributed, no one would go hungry”. More recently, there is increasing
concern about new threats to global food supply - in the short-term due to growing
competition from feed production for the livestock sector and increasing petrol
prices and cultivation of competing crops for the bio-fuel industry, and, in the longer
term due to expected severe negative impacts of climate change on food supply (Parry
et al. 2004; IPCC 2007; IAASTD, www.agassessment.org) (see also Verhagen et al.
2007).
This picture is corroborated by data on declining growth of cereal yields in
developing countries (Table 1), and by recent trends in staple food prices and stocks
(as illustrated in Figure 2 for rice (Hossain 2007)). Currently, the major problem in
food security is access to food (Pingali et al. 2006); people lack the economic means
to buy food, or are insufficiently embedded within social networks to access food.
Food can, instead of being bought in the market, also be obtained through barter, in
social exchange or through help from relatives, neighbours or friends.
Continued urbanization increases the number of urban poor lacking the social
structures to fall back upon in times of need. Moreover, social safety nets provided
by (local) governments are out of reach for many countries in development. This
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