Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
gies help build human capital through higher levels of health, which lead to greater
incomes and then higher food security in the long term.
conclusIons
Future food prices and affordability will depend crucially on developments in food
production, marketing, and consumption; on how the global food system integrates
these disparate activities; and on how both developed and developing country gov-
ernments intervene to address short-term food shortages and long-term household
food insecurity. Recent trends suggest that food availability and affordability are
improving at the global level. However, a number of factors may prevent future
increases in food production or divert crops or land from food to nonfood uses,
and global-level calculations of food adequacy do not address the many millions
of households that currently lack sufficient incomes to purchase adequate diets.
Global food-marketing systems continue to evolve toward greater complexity and
consolidation, which can result in both lower costs of food marketed to increasingly
large numbers of urban consumers and increase the range of food product offerings.
Population growth, urbanization, and income growth are key determinants of food
consumption, which interacts with the food supply chain to affect affordability of
food. Access to adequate food is increasingly viewed as a fundamental human right,
and most governments have programs and policies in place to improve access to food
for some, if not all, of their citizens. In the long term, ensuring access to food for all
will require efforts to increase incomes and reduce poverty.
notes
1. These relationships are described as hypothesized not only because sometimes there is
insufficient empirical evidence to support them but also because the process of diagram-
ming a system is often iterative and assessments of causal relationships can change.
2. Often described with the words
ceteris paribus
in economics, this assumption implies
that the hypothesized relationship is a partial one. In the example, an increase in house-
hold income would increase at-home food consumption relative to what it would have
been in the absence of the increase in household income, but other factors can also
change. Thus, if both the cost of food acquisition and household income increased,
the net effect on at-home food consumption would depend on which of the effects is
larger; at-home food consumption could in fact decrease even though household income
increased.
3. Although diagrammatic tools can be helpful to understand systems, some authors
(Sterman, 2000) have suggested that empirical models are necessary to address dynami-
cally complex systems. A system as complex as the food system contains many feed-
back loops, and outcomes are best predicted by empirical models.
4. This equation is deceptively simple because it is essentially an accounting identity. That
is, it tells us little about which factors influence the land area, crop yields, or crops per
year. Each of these factors has dynamic and complex multiple causes at global, regional,
and local levels.
