TRENDS IN NATIONAL FOOD SECURITY AND THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE - Food Security, Food Prices and Climate Variability - page 87

balance model has significant limitations, it permits explorations of the issues of structural
food insecurity.
Purchasing power is the amount of goods and services that can be purchased with a unit
of currency. Having money gives one the ability to command others' labor, thus purchasing
locally grown food enables households to trade their labor for more food than if they were
purchasing food grown in areas with stronger currencies, higher income levels, larger govern-
ment or other factors that increase costs. As incomes rise, the demand for imported food from
outside the region, such as wheat for bread in tropical countries, also rises. The ability to pay
for these imported goods depends on the integration of the local economy into the global
marketplace. In places like Dakar, Senegal, for example, annual wages of households with
office workers are often ten times or more of the annual income of households in rural areas.
Although this drives demand for food in Dakar, often the food available for purchase in the
city is supplied by the global marketplace due to the change of taste from the grains available
in the interior and preferred by rural populations (millet, sorghum) to those available from
elsewhere (wheat, rice). The larger the income disparity, the more likely that there is an
urban-rural divide in goods consumed (Ruel et al ., 2010). Thus within a country there can
be considerable heterogeneity among locations - even within a country (and perhaps even
within an agro-ecological zone) - regarding the effect of weather on food security, due to the
different sources of food for different areas within the country.
Thus to really understand food insecurity and the effect of weather on food prices and food
availability, the analysis must not be at the country level. It must focus on individual cities,
towns and villages and be set within a particular context. Agricultural products are in reality
extremely specific. White corn, grown in Southern Africa, is often lumped with sweet corn
from the United States, but the taste, consistency, nutrient balance, protein levels and most
importantly consumers of the varieties are extremely different. Although in theory urban
consumers in Gaborone can choose between locally grown corn and imported corn on the
basis of price, in reality the two products are completely different in the eyes of the
consumer.
Food sources and globalization
The role of development in ensuring that all members of a community have enough food for
an active and healthy life has long been recognized. The Nelson et al . (2010) analysis showed
that without both increased agricultural productivity and economic development, little pro-
gress can be made in improving the food security of the world's poorest people. Trade is a
critical element for food security, one which is difficult to incorporate into food security
assessments at the national scale because so little accurate information on trade is available that
is relevant to the food insecure. The impact of local climate variability on the food security of
a household depends on whether local communities source their food from local production
or from national, regional or global commodity markets.
Globalization of food markets is a significant trend that needs to be considered in any
assessment of the impact of food prices on food security. Production for domestic use consti-
tutes the largest component of agriculture in developing countries (Von Braun and Diaz-
Bonilla, 2008), however some regions are importing a greater share of their food from the
international market than ever before. Table 4.4 shows the agricultural trade in terms of total
production, with significant trends towards increases in imports and declines in exports.