Losing the war against food insecurity
By Dr Clive Thomas
Stabroek News
June 30, 2002
The recently completed World Summit on Food Security - Five Years Later (June 2002) has occasioned heated comments and debates in the international community. Echoes of these in the Caribbean and Guyana have been, at best, very faint.
Because of its timeliness and importance, however, this week’s article will digress from the extended attention the series is now paying to the WTO, in order to draw readers’ attention to some concerns about food security, with which they should be informed.
Global food security target
More than a year ago, in February and March 2001, this series carried four articles on food security and related matters. It is not the intention to cover the same ground again, except to note that in 1996 at the first World Food Summit ever held, 186 countries had adopted the Rome Declaration. Faced with the benefits and risks of globalisation, and seeking to minimise the latter, the Declaration in effect declared war against the scourge of global food insecurity. Governments committed themselves to achieving, among other things, food security for all persons and to an ongoing effort to eradicate hunger.
To ensure that this promise was concretised in a manner that progress could be monitored, governments set themselves the target of reducing the number of undernourished people in the world to one-half the level prevailing at that time by 2015. The number of undernourished persons was then estimated at 840 million worldwide. The recent World Food Summit - Five Years Later was a direct follow-up to the 1996 Summit and its focus was above all else on evaluating the progress made in the war against food insecurity. We can therefore begin by asking ourselves the basic question: how has the world fared?
Global performance
The answer is poorly. There have been over 30 quantitative estimates of world food security trends during the past 50 years. Regular producers of these estimates are the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). All estimates indicate that since the early 1990s the observed trends do not create hope that the 2015 target will be met. Indeed, a very recent USDA report (2002) indicates that only one in three countries has been able to reduce the number of hungry persons in their population. Further, in the case of the 67 low income countries that it monitors closely, the USDA reported a deterioration in their performance for 2001 relative to 2000. In sum, their projections for the next decade indicate a 1.6 per cent annual decline in the number of hungry people in the world. However, this amount, welcome as it is, is far short of the 3.5 per cent annual decline that is needed in order to achieve the World Food Summit target by 2015. Of concern also is the fact that the FAO’s projections show an even slower rate of annual decline in the number of hungry people worldwide.
Losing the war
Make no mistake about it therefore, the world is clearly losing the war against food insecurity, and the global situation remains extremely tragic. At present it is estimated that, five years after the Rome Declaration, about 800 million persons worldwide still suffer from severe malnourishment. It is further estimated that over 2 billion persons experience micronutrient deficiencies.
These are deficiencies of one or more vitamins and minerals e.g., Vitamin A, D, C, and iron. These micronutrient deficiencies have serious adverse consequences on the health of individuals and morbidity among the population.
As might be expected, about three-quarters of the malnourished people live in rural areas, relying on farming for their livelihoods. On top of this, diseases due to inadequate, unbalanced, and unsafe foods are prevalent worldwide. The further tragedy is that children, female headed households, the homeless, the disabled, and other such vulnerable persons bear the brunt of these conditions.
Thus as globalisation deepens food insecurity is not alleviated, which in turn threatens global stability and fosters conflicts. The future therefore would be horrific, if as is expected, these trends persist, global population growth continues, and pressures on material resources remain unabated.
The saddest aspect of this situation is that the food insecurity target has not been met at a time when the world has never grown so much food, food has never been cheaper, and food stocks have never been so high. Since the early 1960s world grain output has doubled and livestock production trebled.
On a per capita basis worldwide, food availability has risen to over 2700 calories per day. This paradox reveals that a major factor in global food insecurity is the unequal distribution of global food supplies. Globalisation has not reduced this inequality, it has worsened it.
A plea for monitoring!
While the global situation remains tragic, of particular concern is the failure of CARICOM governments, despite the pledges made at the Rome Summit in 1996, to monitor the state of food insecurity in the Region. In stark contrast, we have a situation in which the rich developed countries, where food insecurity is not likely to be nearly as threatening, have begun to monitor their pledges. Thus the United States in its follow up to the 1996 Summit has conducted annual surveys to monitor food security, both at home and worldwide. Surprisingly, despite its wealth, the baseline estimates for 1995 show that as many as 12 per cent of US households or about 11.8 million households suffered from food insecurity! This is a high figure and should bring home to us the magnitude of the problem we might be concealing in the Caribbean, through ignorance.
Surprised at this discovery, the US Government has responded by committing itself to better the Rome Declaration target by reducing its food insecurity in half by 2010. Current estimates (2002) show that it is on track to achieving this improved target.
This brings me to a confession. On behalf of the food insecurity, an important goal of this article is to make a plea for monitoring food insecurity. The situation we face is that if food insecurity is so prevalent in the USA, what is likely to be the situation in the region? Clearly, the very least CARICOM governments can do would be to begin monitoring food insecurity, as a matter of priority. It is my intention to elaborate on this more fully at the forthcoming 30th Caribbean Agricultural Economics Conference to be held in Grenada on July 10.
Next week’s article will conclude this discussion.