Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
that land accepted? And so on. Eah link in this hain of entitlement relations
“legitimizes” one set of ownership by reference to another, or to some basic enti-
tlement in the form of enjoying the fruits of one's own labour.
Sen (1981, p1-2)
Thus, the ability of a person to avoid starvation depended on her/his entitle-
ments, whih, in turn, were constructed from her/his
ownership bundle
(the combin-
ation of labour powers, resources and assets s/he can use to acquire food) and the
exchange entitlement regime
s/he faced (the rights to resources that can be accessed
to transfer an ownership bundle into food).
he entitlement approah was signiicantly inluential at the 1996 World Food
Summit (WFS), where the FAO redefined food security in terms notably distant from
its previous, production-centric (emphasizing food stoks) logic: 'Food security exists
when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient,
safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an
active and healthy life' (FAO, 1996).
he overriding message in this deinition is that the atainment of food security
hinges on the social, economic, cultural and political circumstances that either en-
able or restrict the provisioning of food to needy populations (Levendal
et al
., 2004;
Chung
et al.
, 1997). his orientation gave rise to a framework whih held that food
security was the outcome from three sets of processes:
• Food availability: the supply-side factors whih shape the availability of suicient
quantities of food of appropriate quality.
• Food access: the political, social, cultural and economic processes that connect
supply-side processes to individuals, and
• Food utilization: the elements of clean water, sanitation and health care that en-
sure that food that is made available and is accessible (i.e. the two categories above
to generate nutritional well-being for consumers).
This framework has crucially informed the work of key international organiz-
ations since the 1990s, with important ramifications for their advice to developing
countries. The FAO, notably, has widened its policy interests in this field during the
past decade. Whereas traditionally this organization was focused on generating in-
ternational policy capacities and coherence around the issue of global monitoring
of food production and stoks, it now supplements these interests with heightened
