Food shortage and sharing
There are people who go to bed hungry. There are people who don't know where their next meal will come from, or whether they will have enough money to feed themselves and their children. These are people without food security.
A household is considered to be "food secure" when there is food in the pantry and no worry whether its daily nutritional needs will be met. When counting how many households in an area have food security and how many do not, it is possible to talk about food security on a national and global level.
Food security for the world, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), will exist "when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."
When the numbers of families and individuals facing food insecurity around the world are summed up, the figures are troubling. In 2009, the world passed a grim milestone: over one billion people were going hungry every day. Twice that number experience food insecurity at some point each month.
There is obviously a link between poverty and food security; in most places, food can be bought in exchange for money. But the issues related to food security are much more complex than that. There is a delicate economic balance between paying farmers enough money for the food they produce and yet keeping food prices low enough to make them affordable to all consumers. And food must also be available in times of crisis, when money isn't enough. Famine and floods can wipe out food production for a region, and food must be obtained from other regions. But this introduces concerns with government instability and food distribution.
The interconnected web of food insecurity causes and solutions can quickly become overwhelming. While this introduction to food security issues does not endorse any particular non-government organization or charity, it will hopefully provided enough information for you (as an individual, small group, or even church body) to make an informed decision on which efforts to support.
The issues are perhaps best examined from the perspective of the three pillars of food security, as outlined by the World Health Organization (WHO): food availability, food access, and food use.
Food availability
In the last few months, the world's population surpassed the seven billion mark. This is more than double the world population in the 1960s, and orders of magnitude more than it was at the time of Christ (only an estimated 170 million).
Simply put, the more people there are in the world, the more food that needs to be produced. It is conceivable that the world population could grow large enough to cause a food crisis due to overpopulation. While there is evidence that population growth rates are decreasing globally (and may eventually level off), even conservative estimates predict the world will approach 10 billion people by the year 2050. What's more, the food grain production to sustain that many people would need to increase worldwide by 70 per cent between now and then, according to the FAO.
There are several solutions that could make this production increase possible; however, many of them come with negative tradeoffs that may compromise long-term farming stability. Over the last 20 years, reclamation projects in South American and Sub-Saharan countries by governments and organizations like the World Bank have turned vast acreages of desert into arable land.
However, recent studies have shown that some of these projects, which rely on heavy irrigation, are depleting the underground water tables and jeopardizing future agriculture in the area.
In a similar way, Western farming practices and grains (including genetically modified seeds) have the ability to greatly multiply yields per acre in developing countries, while reducing the number of people needed to work the land. But these methods are not without their dangers. A reliance on fossil fuels to run farming equipment has actually raised food prices because crops like corn can now be sold as biofuel, according to the FAO's 2011 report . And even more fossil fuels are needed to produce the fertilizer and pesticides necessary for these high yields. Together, this can lead to significant environmental damage and land degradation.
Soil scientists believe that up to 40 per cent of the world's farmland is already seriously degraded. Without proper crop rotation and sustainability practice, the land is burning itself out. When this happens, soil nutrients are depleted, yields drop, and the grain is of poorer nutritional value. The land itself becomes subject to soil erosion and acidification, and may eventually turn to desert. Karl Harmsen, director of United Nations University's Institute for Natural Resources in Africa, says that if African soil quality continues to decline, nearly 75 per cent of the continent could require some form of food aid by 2025.
But there is hope, at least for today, regarding the food available in the world. Although the conclusion might be hard to state with certainty, most food security experts believe that there is enough food produced in the world to feed its entire population.
The Institute for Food and Development Policy says there is evidence that "the world today produces enough grain alone to provide every human being on the planet with thirty-five hundred calories a day. That's enough to make most people fat! And this estimate does not even count many other commonly eaten foods—vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. ... Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the supply of food in the world today" (pg. 8).
But if there is enough food in the world, why, then, do we know that there are people without access to it?
Food access
Under normal circumstances, the main thing keeping people from food is the money needed to pay for it. Despite the abundance of food production in North America, a high percentage of households still live under the threat of hunger. The1998/99 National Population Health Survey (NPHS) found "over 10 per cent of Canadians, or an estimated 3 million people, were living in food insecure households." Numbers have not improved in the last decade. According to the Food Banks Canada 2011 report, 851,014 Canadian people used a food bank at some time during the month of March. In Manitoba, 50 per cent of food bank users were children under the age of 18. Interestingly, less than one per cent of people assisted by food banks live on the street. Seven per cent actually own their own homes.
The facts speak to the diversity of people that face food insecurity. Resources that are needed to purchase food may instead be going to pay off rent, mortgages, past debts, child support, or addictions. A 2004 paper called the "Right to Food Case Study" suggests that food insecurity in Canada is both structural and institutional.
"The prevalence of food insecurity has not been helped by a deteriorating social safety net, and the re-commodification of welfare rights," the authors write. People are finding less help from others along the way, until they are forced to seek aid from a food bank.
People in other countries may not even have this last measure of food relief. In many regions, people rely on personal or local agriculture for sustenance. But when these food sources are lost to drought and flooding, there is no infrastructure to import food from elsewhere and the area is thrust into a food crisis.
It is to the credit of the international community and many trustworthy charities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that aid can often be delivered to these parts of the world. But it is an unfortunate reality that there are many cases where this aid is sabotaged due to government corruption.
Economist Amartya Sen observes "there is no such thing as an apolitical food problem." Because food is so essential to life, it has been used by dictators and tribal warlords as a means of political blackmail, only to be given out to people who support their rule. In the last 100 years, there have been several instances where government intervention has produced starvation in members of its population even in years with a strong local harvest.
There are many theories on how to best prevent both these abuses and natural factors in order to increase food access. Short-term relief strategies involve supporting food banks, soup kitchens and international relief organizations. These resources are invaluable for supporting people in an urgent and desperate need. But in order to reduce numbers in future years, a long-term approach is needed.
The first strategy to put an end to food insecurity involves capacity-building. This includes efforts to provide individuals or communities with skills and opportunities for self-sufficiency. There are many NGOs working to educate farmers and gardeners on how to grow better crops, and those that are giving non-farmers instruction in trades and crafts, and access to sell the goods they produce in global markets.
But another approach involves changing the systems that take some responsibility for food insecurity. This strategy comes from organizations or politicians that have the ability to promote policy or price changes (take the Fair Trade coffee movement, for example).
Once again, these large-scale interventions rarely produce positive results without some negative side-effects. Adjusting the prices of crops like coffee can create an unnatural balance in a nation's economy. But allowing food to act like any other market commodity can lead to other problems. Multinational corporations have been buying up land in many developing countries. While their farming techniques can achieve higher yield on the land, their purchasing power can force subsistence farmers to the most infertile land. It remains to be seen whether laws will be written to protect food sovereignty over food productivity in these places.
Food use
But while food insecurity may have national causes, it always has personal effects. People must not only get enough food, but also enough nutrients. Food use is of equal importance to food access. There are serious health problems related to poor quality diets and inadequate uses of sanitation.
Debbie Field, executive director of FoodShare Toronto, says, "For the first time in human history, there are as many people around the world who are malnourished from over-nourishment, as there are those who are malnourished from too little food. Nutrition-based health problems are universal, but they impact disproportionably on the poor whose nutritional choices are the most limited" [The Crisis of Food Security: Building a Public Food System (in Esurio: Journal of Hunger and Poverty, December 2009)].
Pregnant mothers and young children are the most at risk to malnourishment problems. If a mother is malnourished when bearing a child, there is a high probability that it will affect the child's growth and development in the form of stunting. A child born in this way will never grow to full height, and has a great chance of organ failure and disease later in life (pgs. 214-222).
Severe nutrition problems like these are not only found in developing countries. Nutritious food like fresh produce and milk have prices out of reach for many people in remote communities in Canada's North. And there are many people suffering from malnourishment even within North American cities, where food prices and access (perhaps aside from a few "food deserts") are sufficient.
Why is this? There are a number of reasons, including a lack of food education and a lack of proper food equipment. Many of our cities' poorest members have never been taught (or are not comfortable with) basic cooking techniques. Thus, they choose to rely on a diet of packaged snacks or prepared microwaveable foods that are low in healthy nutrients and vitamins and high in sodium. This can lead to blood pressure problems and an increased risk of stroke and heart disease. Plus, these kinds of foods are often more expensive than fresh produce, further stressing low-income budgets.
But there is sometimes a lack of proper eating even when people have proper food education. John Stapleton, writer for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), says this is a result of insufficient food equipment: "Produce, fruit and fish spoil fast and, without access to [secure storage, consistent and safe refrigeration, appropriate freezing space, and oven and stovetop cooking], it is difficult for the poor to consume these elements of a healthy diet. When they do (as can be the case in subsidized housing), utilities are often overly expensive."
Thus, appropriate solutions for food use problems must once again address both individual and systemic concerns. Food literacy and growth promotion programs (led by nutritionists and dieticians) are necessary to help individuals. But so are government and charity supported efforts to ensure that every family has access to some food storage and cooking equipment.
The answers, of course, on how to achieve these things and work towards ending food insecurity are as complex as the problems themselves. One this is certain: some response is needed.
In the words of Jean Ziegler, member of the UN Human Rights Council's Advisory Committee, "In a world overflowing with riches, it is an outrageous scandal that more than 1 billion people suffer from hunger and malnutrition and that every year over 6 million children die of starvation and related causes. We must take urgent action now."
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