The World Bank on the global food crisis
By Jon Fernquest |
This week the Bangkok Post featured a background article by World Bank experts on how food security works.
The last food crisis was in the 1970s over 30 years ago, so it has long passed from the memory of most people.
Food security for the whole world, not just a single country, is defined as:
"...when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."
Even if food is abundantly available in a country, like Thailand, food security is not always ensured. As the article points out:
"...starvation is a matter of some people not having enough food to eat, and not a matter of there being not enough food to eat. The irony is that most of the food insecure live in rural areas where food is produced, yet they are net food buyers rather than sellers. Poverty constrains their access to food in the marketplace."
The recent failure of rice farmers, the very people who grow rice, to profit from higher rice prices, is a similar but less severe economic pattern.
This article, though a little long and difficult at times, provides essential background information that can make the daily news reported in the Bangkok Post more meaningful.
Here is the article in full:
BY Invitation
Achieving food security
THE WORLD BANKThursday May 08, 2008
In the mid-1970s, as rapidly increasing prices caused a global food crisis, food security emerged as a concept. Attention focused first on food availability but then quickly moved to food access and food use, and, most recently, to the human right to adequate food. The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, ratified by 153 states, obligates these states to progressively realise the right to food.
The commonly accepted definition of food security is when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
For most of the world's malnourished people, the lack of access to food is a greater problem than food availability.
The chronically food insecure never have enough to eat. The seasonally food insecure fall below adequate consumption levels in the lean season. And the transitory food insecure fall below the food consumption threshold as a result of an economic or natural shock such as a drought, sometimes with long-lasting consequences.
Investments in agriculture are important to increase food security. The channels are complex and multiple. Rising productivity increases rural incomes and lowers food prices, making food more accessible to the poor. Other investments - such as improved irrigation and drought-tolerant crops - reduce price and income variability by mitigating the impact of a drought. Productivity gains are key to food security in countries with a foreign exchange shortage or limited infrastructure to import food.
The same applies to households with poor access to food markets. Nutritionally improved crops give access to better diets, in particular through biofortification that improves crop nutrient content. The contributions that agriculture makes to food security need to be complemented by medium-term programmes to raise incomes of the poor, as well as insurance and safety nets, including food aid, to protect the chronic and transitory poor.
Secure world, insecure households
The world is generally food secure, producing enough food to meet the dietary needs of today's global population. Even so, future global food security should not be taken for granted because of uncertainties from growing resource scarcity and climate change.
About 850 million people remain undernourished. Accordingly, the first Millennium Development Goal includes the target of halving hunger as tracked by the measure of undernourishment given by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
The highest incidence of undernourishment is in Sub-Saharan Africa, where one in every three persons suffers from chronic hunger. The greatest number of undernourished is in South Asia (299 million), closely followed by East Asia (225 million).
East Asia has reduced the prevalence of undernourishment in the past decade by more than 3% a year and South Asia by 1.7% a year, but the failure to reduce the absolute number of undernourished remains a cause for concern. In the 1970s, 37 million people were removed from the ranks of the undernourished, and 100 million in the 1980s, but in the 1990s, only three million were removed.
What accounts for these millions of food-insecure individuals? Food security depends on adequate and stable food availability, access to adequate and appropriate food, and proper use and good health to ensure that individual consumers enjoy the full nutritional benefits of available, accessible food. Availability is necessary but not enough to ensure access, which is necessary but not enough for effective use.
Food availability
The price increases in the mid-1970s world food crisis were exacerbated by low foreign-exchange reserves, limiting food imports in many food-deficit countries. This rise in prices prompted some countries to look inward, striving for food self-sufficiency through domestic production.
But today, with deeper international markets, lower real prices, and more countries with convertible exchange rates, trade can stabilise food availability and prices for most countries. And most countries have diversified their export base, increasing their capacity to import.
However, food availability is still a concern in some agriculture-based countries. Many countries have declining domestic production per capita of food staples. Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, and Zambia all had negative per capita annual growth rates in staple food of -1.0% to -1.7% from 1995 to 2004. In addition, staple food production in many agriculture-based countries is largely rain fed and experiences large fluctuations caused by climatic variability.
Stagnation or a decline in domestic production and large fluctuations clearly raise a potential problem of food availability at the national level. Can this problem be addressed through imports? In many countries the answer is yes. In other countries, however, the main staples consumed have a low degree of tradeability and are hardly traded internationally. Poor infrastructure imposes high costs for food to reach isolated areas, even when the capital city and coastal cities are well served by international markets.
Beyond tradeability issues - with adequate infrastructure and internationally traded staples - low foreign exchange availability often limits the capacity to import.
Consider the case of Ethiopia, which would import on average 8% of its staple food consumption (assuming no food aid) to maintain current levels. Additionally, a 9% shortfall in production, which occurs on average every six years, could only be compensated by a doubling of imports.
Almost all the agriculture-based countries are net importers of food staples, importing on average 14% of their total consumption over the past 10 years, but reaching high dependency levels of more than 40% in Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, and the Republic of Yemen. With such levels of dependency and food imports often representing more than 20% of the available foreign exchange, world price fluctuations place additional strain on import capacity, and therefore domestic food availability. World price variability remains high, with a coefficient of variation of around 20%.
Because of the low price elasticity of demand for food staples and the thinness of markets, problems in food availability (from low domestic production or lack of imports) translate into large spikes in domestic prices and reductions in real incomes of poor consumers (many of whom are farmers). Even in countries that engage in trade, transport and marketing costs result in a large wedge between import and export parity within which domestic prices can fluctuate without triggering trade.
Food access - enough to eat
But for most of the malnourished, the lack of access to food is a greater problem than food availability. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen famously wrote that starvation is a matter of some people not having enough food to eat, and not a matter of there being not enough food to eat. The irony is that most of the food insecure live in rural areas where food is produced, yet they are net food buyers rather than sellers. Poverty constrains their access to food in the marketplace.
According to the UN Hunger Task Force, about half of the hungry are smallholders: a fifth are landless; and a tenth are agropastoralists, fisherfolk, and forest users; the remaining fifth live in urban areas. Today, agriculture's ability to generate income for the poor, particularly women, is more important for food security than its ability to increase local food supplies. Women, more than men, spend their income on food. In Guatemala, the amount spent on food in households whose profits from non-traditional agricultural exports were controlled by women was double that of those whose men controlled the profits.
India has moved from food deficits to food surpluses, reducing poverty significantly and reaching a per capita income higher than that in most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet it remains home to 210 million undernourished people and 39% of the world's underweight children. Bangladesh, India, and Nepal occupy three of the top four positions in the global ranking of underweight children. Many believe that the inferior status of women in South Asia has to some extent offset the food security benefits of agriculture-led poverty reduction.
Food use - ending hidden hunger
Food use translates food security into nutrition security. Malnutrition has significant economic consequences, leading to estimated individual productivity losses equivalent to 10% of lifetime earnings and gross domestic product (GDP) losses of 2% to 3% in the worst-affected countries. But malnutrition is not merely a consequence of limited access to calories. Food must not only be available and accessible, but also be of the right quality and diversity (in terms of energy and micronutrients), be safely prepared, and be consumed by a healthy body, as disease hinders the body's ability to turn consumption into adequate nutrition.
Lack of dietary diversity and poor diet quality lead to micronutrient malnutrition or hidden hunger, even when energy intakes are sufficient. Hidden hunger can cause illness, blindness, and premature death as well as impair the cognitive development of survivors. In the next 12 months, malnutrition will kill one million children before the age of five. Iron deficiency among female agricultural workers in Sierra Leone will cost the economy $100 million in the next five years.
Although increased production of horticulture products and livestock has been agriculture's main avenue to improve diet quality, agriculture now offers an additional pathway to address hidden hunger. Biofortification is enhancing staple crop varieties and improving diet quality with higher levels of vitamins and minerals through conventional crop-breeding and biotechnology.
In the future, agriculture will continue to play a central role in tackling the problem of food insecurity. It can maintain and increase global food production, ensuring food availability. It can be the primary means to generate income for the poor, securing their access to food. And through new and improved crop varieties, it can improve diet quality and diversity and foster the link between food security and nutrition security.
Adapted from the 2008 World Development Report, prepared by Derek Byerleee, senior adviser for the World Bank's Agriculture and Rural Development unit, and Alain De Janvry, Professor of Agricultural and Resources Economics and Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley.
(Source: Bangkok Post, op-ed section, World Bank, 08-05-08, temp-link)
Vocabulary:
secure - safe from harm, protected
insecure - not safe from harm, not protected
security - actions taken to make a place safe and protect it
food security (for a country) - protecting a country from food shortages
food security (for the world) - "when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."
food availability - food is available on the market and can be bought if you have enough money (but the poor do not have enough money, so they do not have "access" to the food)
food access, access to food, accessible food - food that people can get (for poor people this means be able to buy with their limited income)
food use - how people actually use the food they have access to (for example, a poor person might have enough money to buy healthy potatoes or unhealthy potatoe chips and choose to buy the unhealthy alternative)
the human right to adequate food - the idea that every human being has a right to obtain adequate food (how to ensure that right is a problem)
adequate food - enough food
inadequate - not enough food
sufficient food - enough food
Vocabulary for Markets
tradeability - can be traded in markets
low degree of tradeability - difficult to trade the good in markets
a thin market - little buying and selling in a market, making them less useful for trade
deeper markets - markets with a lot of buying and selling, making them useful for trade
low price elasticity of demand - demand for good does not change much when price changes
large spikes in prices - when prices suddenly increase and then decrease (producing a graph that looks like a "spike")
prices fluctuate - prices move up and down irregularly
Vocabulary for Production
productivity - producing more per unit of resource (labour, machines, land)
a resource scarcity - not enough resources exist
shortfall in production - produced less than expected, not enough
Vocabulary for Diet and Nutrition
a diet - the type and range of food that you eat regularly
nutrients - substances and chemicals that help living things grow
nutritious - food has a lot of substances to help you grow
nutrition - how nutrients are obtained from food by the body, the study of how this happens
crop nutrient content - the substances in crops that help people grow
nutritionally improved crops - crops that have more nutrients in them to help people grow
nourish - to provide the food necessary for life, growth, and good health
undernourished (adjective) - person does not get enough food for growth and good health
undernourishment (noun) - the situation when a person is undernourished
dietary needs - the foods and nutrients needed regulary for growth and health
food preferences - the foods that you like
malnutrition - weakness and lack of health from inadequate food
malnourished people - people who are unhealthy because of inadequate food (See Wikipedia)
a staple food - the basic and most important food for everyday life (for example, in Thailand the staple food is rice)
chronic - lasting a long time
transitory - lasting a short time
chronically food insecure - always facing harm from a lack of food
the lean season - the time period during the year when there is littel food production
a threshold - a limit, when you reach the limit something happens (for example, a nutritional threshhold needed for health)
an economic or natural shock - a sudden event that effects the supply of goods in a market (for example, when there is a drought or when oil producing nations suddenly decide to limit the world supply of oil)
drought - a time when there is no rain and no water
consequences - the results or effects of something
long-lasting consequences - results or effects that last for a long time after they initially occur
channels - arrangements for money and resources to be used for something
irrigation - supplying water to land to help crops grow
a drought - when rain does not fall and there is little water
drought-tolerant crops - crops that can still grow with very little water
price and income variability - when prices and income move up and down
mitigating the impact of - reducing the negative effects of
X, in particular Y - X is especially true for Y (the current world food situation is bad, in particular Burma has been especially hard hit)
particularly Y - especially true for Y
X complemented by Y -
safety nets - protection from unforeseen events (safety nets are placed around a building being constructed so that if a worked falls off the building the "safety net" will save him)
taken Y for granted - assume you will always have Y, never think of the possibility of not having Y
Millennium Development Goal - long-term goals for worldwide economic development (See Wikipedia)
Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) - the United Nations agency that specializes in defeating hunger worldwide (See Wikipedia)
incidence - frequency of occurrence
The highest incidence of Y - the highest frequency of occurence of Y
the prevalence of Y - Y is common, seen widely
the relative number of Y - the number of Y compared to something else (fractions and proportions often used for comparison)
the absolute number of Y - the actual number or count of something
the ranks of - the members of a group
stable - not likely to change suddenly
effective use - a use that works well and helps achieve goals
exacerbated - made worse
foreign-exchange reserves - foreign currencies held by the central bank of a country, in case of an emergency
a deficit - not enough, inflow greater than outflow
food-deficit countries - countries that don't produce enough food to feed their people, therefore import food
prompted - caused them to do
look inward - change to using your own resources, being self-reliant and not dependent on others
convertible exchange rates -
diversified their export base - export a variety of different goods (so that if one fails, another will succeed)
capacity to import - the amount that you are able to import
fluctuations - move up and down, change irregularly (fluctuations in the price of oil, for example)
prices fluctuate - prices move up and down, change irregularly
climatic variability - the weather changing all the time (for example, sometimes no rain and drought, sometimes too much rain and flooding)
stagnation - stops moving, developing, and progressing
problem addressed through Y - Y is used to solve the problem
isolated areas - areas of a country not connected to the main part by roads (for example, Tachileik in Burma was not really connected to the rest of Burma by road until recently)
X compensated by Y - X balanced by Y, Y makes the situation better
a dependency - a need for someone else
strain - making an organisation or system do more work than it can handle
place additional strain on - give it even more work, when it can't handle the work it already has
import and export parity - imports equals exports
a large wedge between import and export parity within which domestic prices can fluctuate without triggering trade - only when food prices in a country increase or decrease too much, do people try to buy food outside the country
irony - surprising because very different from what you expect
smallholders - farmers who own a small amount of land that they farm
landless - farmers who do not have land (must rent to farm)
agropastoralists - people who move frequently, living at different locations, raising animals such as cattle, camels, or goats
fisherfolk - people who fish for a living (the traditional word "fishermen" excludes women)
forest users - people who grow food in th forest or search for food (forage) in the forest
tackling the problem of - solving the problem of
