Food Security in a Globalized World for Sustainable Development | Campaign for Sustainability

 

According to the UN Committee on World Food Security, food security means that all people have physical, social, and economic access to adequate, secure, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and balanced life at all times. As a result, the main dimensions of the household food security construct are physical availability of food, economic and physical access to food, and sufficient food utilisation, which is a feature of the body's capacity to absorb and use nutrients, as well as dietary quality and food safety.

A changing climate, an increasing global population, rising food prices, and environmental stressors will all have substantial yet unpredictable effects on food security in the coming decades. Adaptation plans and policy responses to global change are urgently needed, including options for dealing with water allocation, land use trends, food trade, postharvest food production, food prices, and food protection. 

Food security is a term that has evolved over time. Owing to the intense volatility of agricultural product prices in the 1970s, the emphasis was solely on supply. It grew over time to include food security and nutrition, addressing the basic needs of vulnerable people. By 2001, nutrition had been added to the concept of food protection, which now reads: a situation in which all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to adequate, clean, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Food insecurity, on the other hand, is characterised as a lack of money or other resources causing a disturbance in food intake or eating habits.

Through the blog, we analyze the causes of food insecurity in India and understand factors that can impact the work needed towards the security of food.

Causes of Food Insecurity in India

• In rural areas: Food insecurity can be inextricably linked to poverty. While agriculture being the primary occupation of rural India, food insecurity still arise due to lack of resources, inadequate capital and market access to achieve agricultural stability, in turn leading to poverty trap and hunger. The food insecurity/hunger have been further exacerbated by caste, landlessness, poverty and unemployment or seasonal employment, migration etc.. Climate change, low rainfall, groundwater table depletion etc. tremendously effect agriculture practices and food production/supply, as a result impacting food security. Health issues confronted due to improper sanitation, open defecation, inadequate supply of water in households/toilet, make the communities vulnerable to illness and diseases, as a result pushing them towards, unemployment and poverty traps.

• In urban areas: The large proportion of informal workforce residing in slums lack basic health and hygiene facilities, which is a key issue that catalyses the problem of food insecurity in urban areas and needs to be tackled. The proliferation of these rural origin pockets in urban areas has resulted in the creation of a number of slum settlements with inadequate water and sanitation, poor housing condition, poor health conditions and increased food insecurity. Despite rapid economic growth in the early 1980s and 1990s, measures of urban food insecurity such as access and absorption suggest that there has been little increase in dietary intake and deterioration in terms of food security.
  
  

• In children and mothers: Overpopulation, hunger, lack of education, and gender disparity have all contributed to the children's food insecurity. Poverty is a significant factor since it restricts the amount of food that children have access to. Overpopulation is linked to food competition, which can lead to malnutrition in children, particularly in rural areas where food is scarce. There's also the question of income disparities to consider, in India, men and women are not paid equally in labour market, females are at a disadvantage as opposed to males. All of these factors lead to women's competitiveness being limited, putting their long-term buying power in jeopardy.
  
  

• Faulty Food Systems: Inadequate food distribution through public distribution mechanisms (PDS, or Public Distribution System) is also contributing to the country's rising food insecurity. The Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) has the drawback of excluding those who are the most deserving of the subsidy due to their lack of ownership of property, below poverty line (BPL) status as the criterion for identifying a household as BPL is arbitrary and varies from state to state.

• Lack of Intersectional Coordination: Lack of coherent food and nutrition policies along with the absence of intersectoral coordination between various ministries of government such as Ministry of Women and Child Health, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Finance etc. has added to the problem. Other significant barriers causing food insecurity can be from range of issues such as interest group politics, lack of accountability and continued caste-based discrimination in rural areas to name a few. 

Food Security Governance in a Globalized World

Food security governance is essential for ensuring that all people have access to food. Food security governance is critical for a country's stability. According to the FAO, “food security governance” refers to the formal and informal rules and processes that are used to express interests and make, adopt, and enforce decisions related to food security in a country.

Adequate food security governance relies heavily on the following: 

1. multisectoral participatory decision making, 

2. transparency and accountability, 

3. equity in resource allocation and service delivery, and 

4. multisectoral and multilevel policies and corresponding programs.

Food insecurity undoubtedly affects and has a significant impact on human health as well as the health and survival of our world for future generations. Given the global scale of the issue of food insecurity, it is critical that policymakers and society as a whole consider strongly engaging with the actions given below:

• Reduce income inequality and increase social justice

• Promote sustainable agriculture

• Minimize food waste 

• Introduction of a sustainable nutrition policy

• Education and engagement regarding planetary health 

• Modern information and technology to monitor food insecurity

Finally, food insecurity is a huge social and environmental disruptor with significant consequences for our planet's health and long-term viability. For all countries to be able to reach the SDGs, improved food security governance based on sound, fair, and sustainable food systems that benefit from modern information technologies is crucial.

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