FOOD SECURITY AND MONITORING SYSTEMS - Food Security, Food Prices and Climate Variability - page 45

must be made for that to occur. Despite this, a better understanding of how extreme climate
variability lead to local and regional changes in food prices, and how this may affect food
security of these areas is important to achieve. Improving our knowledge of emerging and
ongoing food security crises with regular reporting and integration within the humanitarian
communities remains important.
Summary
This chapter introduced and defined elements of food security, and how they are currently
used in early warning and response to crises within an early warning system. Famines still
occur today, and are caused by complex emergencies that include both issues of the availabil-
ity of food and the ability of households to purchase it. Food access is central to food security
assessment, but using prices and market information within early warning and humanitarian
systems has only recently been developed. Remote sensing information is relied upon to
understand variations in food production, and the information used to assess food availability
in a region. An example of livelihoods from Niger shows the level of complexity that is cur-
rently used to assess food security. The conceptual frameworks highlighted in the example are
mostly rural and agricultural, and are problematic when urban food security is considered.
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