FOOD SECURITY AND MONITORING SYSTEMS - Food Security, Food Prices and Climate Variability - page 23

FOOD SECURITY AND MONITORING
SYSTEMS
Chapter objectives
This chapter's objectives are to define food security and describe how food security crises are
identified and anticipated. Trends in food production and food security are discussed at the
community, national and international scales. A conceptual framework is provided that links
climate and economic shocks to income and food consumption, providing ways that food
security can be monitored. Income and entitlements play a central role in the development of
and response to food security crises. Then the chapter describes USAID's Famine Early
Warning Systems Network and how it monitors food security through the use of information
and analysis on agricultural activity, the price of food and international trade is provided,
along with an example from Niger. A description of the datasets that are needed to under-
stand food security is provided and along with an assessment of how food prices fit into the
analysis. Finally, the last section provides a critique on the connection between early warning
and early action.
The elements of food security
Food security is defined as the ability of all people, at all times, to have the physical, social and
economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to have an active, healthy life (United
Nations, 1948; G8, 2009). This high standard includes both the current situation as well as
future vulnerability to changes in food security status (Barrett, 2010). A huge amount of
information is needed to monitor who is food insecure, where they live and the causes of
malnutrition, which covers a broad number of disciplines, including meteorology, agricul-
ture, economics, politics, trade and many others. Global food security for all has not been
attained for many reasons, including issues of poverty, natural resource disparities, unequal
global trading arrangements and poor or corrupt governments.
The 1996 United Nations' World Food Summit 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.” Both physical and economic access to food that meets people's dietary needs as