Global Food Security

Over fifty percent of the world’s population is urbanized—living in cities—and cities almost entirely depend on imported food to meet daily needs. Different factors such as population growth, urbanization, and increasing global demand for food are intensifying; urban agriculture is an important tool for enhancing food security in response to the food-related restraints faced by city dwellers. Through a historical retrospective of urban agriculture to an analysis of current practices and policies, this article explores urban agriculture’s potential ability to manage the lack of land and water in cities through the development of innovative growing techniques that optimize the access, quantity, and quality of food for millions of people in developing cities around the globe.

This paper probes some of the global economic forces that have contributed to the ongoing precarious global food security situation, especially in the years since the 2007 to 2008 food crisis. Since the crisis hit at a time when global food production per capita was rising, it is important that policies addressing hunger incorporate dimensions beyond food production. There has been some acknowledgement of the role of global economic forces in the food crisis by global policymakers, but global food security initiatives still largely emphasize increased food production over other measures. The paper concludes that more needs to be done to ensure that the rules that govern the global economy—especially those regarding international trade, finance, and investment—do not work against the goal of food security.

Economics, nutrition, and public health literature includes much research on the factors that influence food choices and attempts to understand the factors contributing to low food security. Economic factors, such as prices and income, influence food choices and food security, as do access and availability of food. Yet recent literature indicates that behavioral factors—such as the physical environment and marketing strategies, including package size and product placement—have equal importance. The policies currently in place are only partially effective in terms of changing diet and enhancing food security, particularly for low-income consumers. We argue that, while increasing access to food through monetary transfers and enhanced food availability is important and essential, on their own these instruments are inadequate to reduce food insecurity. Policies must begin to address the third crucial element: the behavioral factors that influence our food choices.

Recent global policy attention to “land grabs” by international investors, while very important, has diverted attention away from two other processes that may be even more fundamentally affecting Africa’s economic development trajectory: (i) the pace of land acquisitions by medium-scale African investors, who now control more land than large-scale foreign investors in each of the three countries examined in this study (Ghana, Kenya, and Zambia); and (ii) the overall impact of land transactions on the viability of African governments’ agricultural strategies, which for the most part remain predicated on smallholder-led development and will require the expansion of cropland by smallholder households. In Zambia and Ghana, the total farmland controlled by holdings between 5 and 100 hectares now exceeds the amount of land held by smallholder farms under 5 hectares. Farmland holdings in all three countries have become substantially more concentrated since the mid-1900s. The rapid rise in the number of farms in the 5 to 100 hectare category represents a relatively hidden but revolutionary change in farm structure, reflecting increased investment in land by relatively wealthy urban-based individuals. Only in Ghana has the rise of medium-scale farms been significantly associated with successful graduation of small-scale farmers into medium-scale stature. Continued rapid alienation of land to medium- and large-scale investors is likely to exacerbate localized land scarcity, restrict the potential of smallholder-led development, and put unrealistic pressure on the non-farm economy to absorb Africa’s rapidly rising labor force.

Despite the many transformations taking place in Myanmar, its agricultural sector is lagging. A high proportion of rural households remain poor and food insecure as a result. This article examines the underlying causes of poor agricultural performance through a combination of literature and secondary data review combined with extensive field interviews with a broad range of key informants in the main agricultural zones of the country. We identify key structural changes that are needed to unleash smallholder-led agricultural transformation and broad-based rural economic growth.

With more than half of the world’s population urbanized and two-thirds of urbanites in developing countries, populations are moving away from agriculture-based livelihoods. However, people still must eat. This paper provides case study analyses of food security policies and programs in three cities at varying levels of development—Addis Ababa, Bogotá, and New York City—and examines the food security issues faced by these changing urban populations, and how policies in these cities have addressed these concerns. It will explore the efficacy of policies and food security interventions by analyzing government and international community capacities as food production, distribution, and consumption change along with the processes of urbanization in both the developing and developed context. This includes an overview of Mayor Garson’s food security policies, such as “Bogotá sin Hambre,” in Bogotá; the international community’s and NGOs’ food security interventions, including an urban agriculture program in Ethiopia; and some of the Bloomberg administration’s policies in New York City that encouraged urban and economic development through access to healthy food. The paper highlights the importance of the following issues in creating appropriate food security policies: the effects of rising food prices; transportation of food; differences between rural and urban hunger; urban food production; and increasingly significantly, the challenges posed by rising obesity rates.

Millions of smallholder farmers face the daunting challenge of sustaining or improving productivity in the face of rising input costs, limited access to input and output markets, climate vagaries, and depleted natural resources. These farmers’ objectives and circumstances are diverse, varying with both their biophysical environments and their socioeconomic and cultural contexts. Agroecological intensification (AEI), or the integration of agroecological principles into farm and system management, can improve the performance of agriculture—“performance” being locally defined and potentially including productivity, nutrition, resilience, and sustainability. In principle, AEI is relevant for all forms of agriculture, whether it is pursued as a business, as a means to support family nutrition, or for both income and self-provisioning. Conventional approaches to research and extension are, however, poorly designed to support AEI across diverse socio-ecological contexts, particularly given the weakness of research and extension systems in food-insecure parts of the world. Because agroecological principles must be implemented in a context-dependent manner and AEI is a knowledge-intensive process, delivering the benefits of AEI requires a radical reconsideration of the ways in which agricultural knowledge is produced and shared. Emerging developments in participatory methods, as well as in information and communications technologies (ICT), can contribute to innovative strategies that allow systematic matching of options—diversification strategies, crops or varieties, agronomic practices, and market arrangements—across heterogeneous contexts.

Genetically engineered (GE) foods apply new molecular technologies to agriculture. Widely adopted in the United States, Brazil, and Argentina for the production of corn, soybeans, and cotton, they are practically banned in Europe and tightly regulated throughout the world. We have found that GE foods have significantly increased supplies of corn, soybean, and cotton, and lowered their prices, thus improving food security. GE foods have already contributed to a reduction in the use of pesticides and emissions of greenhouse gases. We show that expanded adoption of GE foods can further enhance food security and adaptation to climate change. Sound redesign of regulation will increase investment in GE varieties and help to allow development of new traits that will further improve human welfare.