Food Security & Strategies
What is Food Security?
- Refers to humans’ ability to access a diet of sufficient quantity and quality to meet their daily health needs and lead an active life
- To assess food security, various dimensions should be considered
- Peoples’ physical availability of food
- Peoples’ physical and economic access to food
- The quality of the available food and how it is stored and prepared
- Large spatial variations exist in food security
- North America, Europe, Japan and Australasia are the regions considered most food secure
- The greatest risk of food insecurity is in sub-Saharan Africa, Afghanistan and Haiti
- Climate change and growing population is increasing the risk to food security in many regions of the world
Strategies to Ensure Food Security
- Increasing the supply of food
- Improving agricultural productivity through technology
- Green revolutions since 1960 have introduced new crop varieties with higher yields, more mechanisation, better irrigation techniques, and new fertilisers and pesticides
- Global rice yields have tripled since 1961
- Development of hydroponics to allow food to be grown in new places
- Genetic modification of plants to make them more resistant to drought, pests and disease
- Sustainable farming practices introduced and encouraged by NGOs and governments to improve longevity of food supply in vulnerable areas
- Reducing food consumption and waste
- Improving storage, packaging and refrigeration facilities to make food last longer
- Educating farmers about crop loss prevention
- Encouraging consumers to cook and buy only what they need and to donate leftovers to food banks
- Better education about diet to tackle growing obesity crisis in the developed world
- Increasing access to food
- Free and fair trade rules to allow poorer countries to import food at fair prices
- Improving infrastructure to allow food to be transported to markets more efficiently and cheaply
- Social protection measures from governments and NGOs to reduce food poverty
- Grants and food vouchers to vulnerable households
- Free school meals for the most disadvantaged children
Exam Tip
A question on food security strategies is likely to ask you to make some sort of assessment. As you revise these strategies, therefore, think about how effective each one is at different spatial scales. For example, are there some strategies that reach a global audience? Would these strategies all work for every country in the world, or are some more likely to be successful only in richer countries? Make sure you can explain your reasoning.
