Food Security

Food security refers to the availability of food and one's access to it. A household is considered food secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. According to the World Resources Institute, global per capita food production has been increasing substantially for the past several decades.[1] 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.[2] According to a 2004 article from the BBC, China, the world's most populous country, is suffering from an obesity epidemic.[3] Worldwide around 852 million people are chronically hungry due to extreme poverty, while up to 2 billion people lackfood security intermittently due to varying degrees of poverty (source: FAO, 2003). As of late 2007, increased farming for use in biofuels,[4] world oil prices at more than $100 a barrel,[5] global population growth,[6] climate change,[7] loss of agricultural land to residential and industrial development,[8][9] and growing consumer demand in China and India[10]have pushed up the price of grain.[11][12] Food riots have recently taken place in many countries across the world.[13][14][15] Worldwide commonly used definitions of food security come from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and theUnited States Department of Agriculture (USDA): 

Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. (FAO)

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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)[19]

The stages of food insecurity range from food secure situations to full-scale famine. "Famine and hunger are both rooted in food insecurity. Food insecurity can be categorized as either chronic or transitory. Chronic food insecurity translates into a high degree of vulnerability to famine and hunger; ensuring food security presupposes elimination of that vulnerability. [Chronic] hunger is not famine. It is similar to undernourishment and is related to poverty, existing mainly in poor countries.

The Food Corporation of India was setup under the Food Corporation Act 1964, in order to fulfill following objectives of the Food Policy : •

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Effective price support operations for safeguarding the interests of the farmers. Distribution of foodgrains throughout the country for public distribution system ; and Maintaining satisfactory level of operational and buffer stocks of foodgrains to ensure National Food Security.

The Real Green Revolution is about achieving local food security. A local food security approach attempts to help farmers to

produce enough for themselves, even if they cannot generate a huge marketable surplus. This means ensuring good agriculture in all types of villages and farms. In fact, this is the kind of food security every farmer yearns for. And this exactly is the kind of food security large irrigation systems cannot provide. Canals do not reach everywhere, and - notoriously - salinise the soil in command areas. Irrigation pumps can only make the groundwater-table fall. Big dams create only small pockets of Green Revolution-style agricultural production. The present structure of agricultural production allows only for waterintensive crop regimes driven by market-based (and not peoplebased) demand-supply logic. Large-scale irrigation systems make sense only from the perspective of National Food Security (so-called). For local food security, we need rainwater harvesting. Community food security Community food security is a condition in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice Following are six basic principles of community food security, as defined by the Community Food Security Coalition: 

Low Income Food Needs Like the anti-hunger movement, CFS is focused on meeting the food needs of low income communities, reducing hunger and improving individual health.

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Broad Goals CFS addresses a broad range of problems affecting the food system, community development, and the environment such as increasing poverty and hunger, disappearing farmland and family farms, inner city supermarket redlining, rural community disintegration, rampant suburban sprawl, and air and water pollution from unsustainable food production and distribution patterns. Community focus A CFS approach seeks to build up a community's food resources to meet its own needs. These resources may include supermarkets, farmers' markets, gardens, transportation, community-based food processing ventures, and urban farms to name a few. Self-reliance/empowerment Community food security projects emphasize the need to build individuals' abilities to provide for their food needs. Community food security seeks to build upon community and individual assets, rather than focus on their deficiencies. CFS projects seek to engage community residents in all phases of project planning, implementation, and evaluation. Local agriculture A stable local agricultural base is key to a community responsive food system. Farmers need increased access to markets that pay them a decent wage for their labor, and farmland needs planning protection from suburban development. By building stronger ties between farmers and consumers, consumers gain a greater knowledge and appreciation for their food source. Systems-oriented CFS projects typically are "interdisciplinary," crossing many boundaries and incorporating collaborations with multiple agencies

Food Security in India

updated September 2008

There is consensus that the incidence of malnutrition has seen little improvement over the last 10 years. Almost half of all young children are underweight, many of them in the more serious categories of wasting and stunting. Rural households consume less food than in the 1950s. The government's safety net for feeding, known as the Public Food Distribution System (PDS), reaches less than 100 million people and is impaired by corruption at district level. Regulations of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which force Indian farmers to compete on an unlevel playing field have been a key factor in the crisis. Agricultural imports have increased four times since the WTO came into effect in 1995 and at least 4 million farmers have been rendered jobless. Apart from the scarcity of affordable food, a tragic human consequence has been the suicide of over 100,000 farmers in the last decade, most of them faced with crippling debts for expensive seeds and chemicals. It can be no surprise that India's insistence on special protection for its farmers was a vital factor in the collapse of the Doha round of WTO negotiations. Internal factors have also contributed to food insecurity in India. Lack of investment in the rural economy is reflected in the 220,000 villages which lack electricity. Irrigation infrastructure has not been maintained and poor controls over industrialisation have also contributed to the collapse of groundwater levels and the loss of cultivable land. Withyields of wheat falling and rice production static, there is bound to be alarm at the Ministry of Rural Development’s decision to invest $375 million in the production of diesel from the untested biofuel crop jatropha. Although this wild plant can be grown on arid wasteland, it grows

even better on conventional farm land exposing the risk that commercial forces will overwhelm any regulation. With almost 60% of the workforce dependent on farm livelihoods, the government has responded with a range of measures intended to boost the rural economy. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) guarantees 100 days of paid employment to one person from every household to work on public infrastructure projects. Initially confined to selected states, NREGA is now being extended to the entire country. The 2008 budget also announced a farm loan waiver scheme which aims to write off the debts of 40 million farmers. Critics have suggested that the vast expenditure involved in these schemes should be more explicitly targeted to rural development needs such as soil regeneration, irrigation and diversifying livelihoods.