FOOD SECURITY AND MONITORING SYSTEMS - Food Security, Food Prices and Climate Variability - page 25

foodforitscitizensandfoodinsecuritybecameaproblemofpovertyduetoinequalityof
access. Recent research has shown that malnutrition may lead to a significant change in intes-
tinal microbial communities, which is likely to increase susceptibility to infectious diseases
andimmunodeiciency(IzcueandPowrie,2012).Similarly,whenchildrenundertheageof
five are exposed to large amounts of infectious material due to poor hygiene, the body diverts
energy to its immune system, depriving the child of proper energy for growth and develop-
ment leading to stunting (Lunn et al ., 1991).
Access to food requires that all individuals have the income sufficient to purchase food that
is personally and culturally acceptable (Sen, 1981). The concept of access focuses on the
ability of households to maintain food consumption in the face of a wide variety of shocks
that increase the gap between available income and entitlements and the amount of food that
can be purchased with that income at a particular time and place. These shocks include unem-
ployment,lossoflivelihood-producingassets,increasesinfoodpricesduetoalocalizeddrop
in supply or increase in demand, and broader political or economic crisis which reduces enti-
tlements to resources. Issues of access are described most clearly in social science concepts of
individual and household well-being, which capture stress and coping strategies at a variety of
scales (Barrett, 2010).
Because they are fairly straightforward to collect and are comparable across markets, food
prices and the terms of trade between salable goods such as livestock and the staple grains are
often used to monitor the ability of a community to access food. Understanding the causes of
high food prices in any particular location, however, is important for ensuring that food
security interventions are appropriate. High food prices can result in higher producer prices
that can benefit farmers with surplus goods to sell, but harm net purchasers of food such as the
landless poor and urban consumers (Swinnen and Squicciarini, 2012). The complex role of
tariffs, taxes and import bans can cause locally grown food prices to change along with the
availability of imported goods such as wheat and rice (Moseley et al ., 2010), changing the
profitability of agriculture but also lowering the cost of food. Monitoring food production,
food prices and food systems to better understand trade mechanisms will be increasingly
important for anticipating changes in food access and what intervention may be necessary to
respond to rapid changes in prices (FAO, 2011; Gouel, 2013).
Foodutilizationconcernsthehealthofanindividualorhousehold,andtheirabilityto
utilizeeffectivelythefoodtheydohaveaccessto.Oftendeinedintermsofthehealthofthe
individual, food security has recently expanded to include issues of both malnutrition and
obesity resulting in the choice of foods that are affordable and have particular characteristics
of the balance of nutrients, carbohydrates and fats (Eckhardt, 2006). Is food properly prepared
and free of environmental contamination or water borne diseases? Are young children being
fedanadequatediversityandnutritionallybalancedfoods?Issuesoffoodutilizationfocusthe
community's attention on issues that undermine food security even in the presence of wider
availabilityandaccess(MyersandPatz,2009).
Finally,stabilityrequiresthatavailability,accessandutilizationarepresentthroughoutthe
life of a person. For vulnerable individuals such as children, the sick and elderly, even short-
term reductions in food consumption due to problems of food security can lead to long-term
impacts on cognitive ability, productive capacity or death (Alderman et al ., 2006; Mason et al .,
2003). Thus stability across months, seasons and years is an important aspect of ensuring pos-
itive outcomes for the poorest populations.