World Food Security

Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Household food security is the application of this concept to the family level, with individuals within households as the focus of concern.

Food insecurity exists when people do not have adequate physical, social or economic access to food as defined above.

The right to sufficient food is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in subsequent international law. A rights-based approach to food security would impose obligations on national governments to implement non-discriminatory and non-political strategies to enable their people to feed themselves. However, only 22 countries have embedded the right to food in their Constitutions.

Many of the world’s food security problems stem from disregard of the fundamental right to food. For example, the aim of world trade rules is to increase absolute volumes of trade; the aim of agri-business corporations increasingly active in poor countries is to make profit for their shareholders. Insatiable greed of the world’s fishing industries has reduced 75% of the ocean’s resources to the verge of collapse.

In response to the rising hunger figures, a series of high level meetings culminated in a World Summit on Food Security in November 2009. Countries were asked to re-assert the right to food through a resolution to eradicate hunger by 2025 at an estimated cost of $44 billion per annum. Most world leaders, though, refused to attend and the motion had to be withdrawn.

According to The State of Food Insecurity in the World Report, 2009, for the first time since 1970, more than one billion people—around one-sixth of all of humanity—are hungry and under-nourished worldwide. The latest food crisis overlaps the food crisis that in 2006–08 had pushed the prices of basic staples beyond the reach of millions of poor people. Although the food prices have retreated from their mid-2008 highs, international food commodity prices remain high by recent historical standards. Also, domestic prices have been slower to fall.

At the end of 2009, domestic staple food prices remained, on average, 17 percent higher in real terms than two years earlier. The price increases had forced many poor families to sell assets or sacrifice healthcare, education or food just to stay afloat. With their resources stretched to breaking point, those households will find it difficult to ride out the current economic storm.

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