FOOD SECURITY, FOOD PRICES AND CLIMATE VARIABILITY - Food Security, Food Prices and Climate Variability - page 2

decades. Climate variability can affect agricultural growing conditions both positively and
negatively. As our climate changes, farmers will experience increased variability, with a
heightened risk of both floods and droughts (Wetherald and Manabe, 2002; IPCC, 2007).
Both positive and negative extreme events may affect agricultural production and therefore
food security. Large-scale reductions in rainfall and food production across semi-arid regions
of Africa were a proximate driver of the extreme food security crises of the 1970s and 1980s
(von Braun et al ., 1998). Dramatic increases in food production over short periods without
simultaneous improvements in transportation or market outlets may cause wholesale drops in
food prices and rotting of excess grain in storage facilities, causing reductions in the income
of small farmers (Sharma, 2013). Without anticipation of climate extremes, poor planning and
inadequate policy response by governments in developing countries could exacerbate house-
hold food insecurity over large areas.
The World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing when “all people at all
times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life” (UN,
1996). Four conditions must be fulfilled simultaneously to ensure food security: food must be
available, each person must have access to it, the food consumed must fulfill nutritional
requirements, and access must be stable enough throughout the life of the person to ensure
health. These elements are hierarchical and build on one another. Having food stocks in a
region is not enough to ensure universal access to that food, and even if a household has access
to available food, its members may be too sick to use the food effectively to attain an active
and healthy life. Finally, availability, access and utilization of food must be maintained
throughout the life of each person for food security to be achieved (Barrett, 2010).
Access to the food that is present in a community depends on the range of choices available
to an individual or household, given the prevailing price of food, their income and the exist-
ing formal or informal safety net arrangements (Sen, 1981). When demand for food is stable,
then access to food reflects the society's distribution of wealth and access to resources. When
prices are high or change rapidly, the poor suffer the most since they spend most of their
income on food and have no cushion against rising prices. The urban poor, who buy all their
food, are particularly vulnerable. Food price spikes, or a rapid increase in the price of food
over a few months, can have large and potentially irreversible impacts on social welfare,
including impacts on health, nutrition, schooling, child labor and savings (Grosh et al ., 2008).
Maintaining adequate consumption and defending assets in the face of rapid price increases
can be enormously challenging for all except the most well off, particularly in countries
whose populations already spend over half their income on food.
The price of food in a local market is determined by the supply of food as well as demand.
Since everyone needs to eat every day, demand is fairly constant whereas supply can be
widely variable, particularly in developing countries whose food production struggles to keep
pace with demand. Since countries with large food insecure populations also are characterized
by economies with large numbers of semi-subsistence farmers and small field sizes, widespread
weather shocks to production can have a significant effect on the amount of food a country
has to feed its population. Weather shocks impact the income of these farming households as
well as their expenditures, increasing the demand for food in small local markets during a time
of restricted supply. Even in normal years, local markets are susceptible to seasonality of the
cereal supply (abundant after harvest, scarce during the growing season) and in the price of
food (high during the growing season, low after harvest) reducing food security every year
when farmers are using the most energy and need the most food.