Food Security
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| 24.06.2011 | Author: sathya | Posted in Food Safety | | Print
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FOOD SECURITY
What is Food Security?
Food security happens when all people at all times have access to enough food.
A household is considered food-secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation
That,
• is affordable, safe and healthy
• is culturally acceptable
• meets specific dietary needs
• is obtained in a dignified manner
• is produced in ways that are environmentally sound and socially just
According to the World Resources Institute, global per capita food production has been increasing substantially for the past several decades. In 2006, MSNBC reported that globally, the number of people who are overweight has surpassed the number who are undernourished – the world had more than one billion people who were overweight, and an estimated 800 million who were undernourished. According to a 2004 article from the BBC, China, the world’s most populous country, is suffering from an obesity epidemic. In India, the second-most populous country in the world, 30 million people have been added to the ranks of the hungry since the mid-1990s and 46% of children are underweight. Six million children die of hunger every year – 17,000 every day.
Export restrictions and panic buying, US Dollar Depreciation, increased farming for use in biofuels, world oil prices at more than $100 a barrel, global population growth, climate change, loss of agricultural land to residential and industrial development, and growing consumer demand in China and India are claimed to have pushed up the price of grain.
Standard Definitions for Food Security
By,UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA):
• Food security exists 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 security for a household means access by all members at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food security includes at a minimum (1) the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and (2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (that is, without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies). (USDA)
