Food security: a global problem

Food security is fundamentally about achieving reliable access to adequate, affordable and nutritious food supplies sufficient to avoid chronic hunger, crisis hunger and stunted development. Chronic hunger afflicts hundreds of millions of people. Latest figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate that nearly 1 billion people are undernourished worldwide, suffering food insecurity. Roughly 15 per cent of humanity is considered hungry or malnourished, especially women. The majority of the hungry (65 per cent) are in India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia. The number has been increasing at a rate of almost four million per year since the second half of the 1990s, rendering the goal of the 1996 World Food Summit – to halve the number of undernourished people, 815 million then by 2015 – far-fetched. Also the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) falls short of food security aspirations in seeking only to reduce by half the proportion of the world’s population experiencing hunger. Among driving factors affecting food security, productivity is surely a crucial aspect; on the other hand, there are many other factors standing behind food insecurity to be analysed comprising social, environmental and economic issues. Moreover, unexpected events can contribute to global access to safe and stable food supplies. This happened in particular from 2003 to 2009, when a food price crisis followed by the financial crisis and global economic recession pushed the number of hungry and undernourished people in the world to unprecedented levels. In the first half of 2010, world agricultural commodity markets appeared to enter calmer times. Prices of food and agricultural commodities remained high, but had nevertheless declined from the peaks of 2008, and the world economy was emerging from recession. However, there are growing concerns about high market volatility partly exacerbated by many governments uncoordinated policy actions intended to ensure adequate supplies on domestic markets. During the discussion, food security concepts and main causes will be discussed and data about levels and trends in global hunger will be presented. Moreover trends in food prices, production and trade will be also evaluated in the context of recent developments in global economy and agricultural markets.