Food
Security
Food
Security
José Gómez Cerda
The World Federation of Agriculture, Food, Hotel and Allied Workers (WFAFW) considers food security one of the basic themes of the workers worldwide.
In the rich countries the population is taking risks in eating healthy food, whereas several illnesses and factors have an effect on the health of animals.
The contamination of food by dioxin, food-and-mouth disease, the "mad cow disease" (ESB) and derivates of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is plunging the citizens of the rich countries in uncertainty. Over 800 million people in the poor countries are confronted with food insecurity, but for other reasons such as poverty and the unequal distribution of wealth.
The consumption of many products is in full crisis because of the transmission of animal diseases to human beings through food.
The crisis persists despite the fact that the European Union had to proceed to major economic investments to abolish animal flour as a food product for cows and had to sacrifice thousands of animals as a precautionary measure.
The concern about the security and quality of food has only grown in recent times. The consumers demand guarantees for the food they buy or eat, despite all the quality standards.
The demand for biological products, free from phytosanitary products, chemical herbicides or drugs of animal origin, is on the increase. Though the surface used for biological agriculture has grown, the growth of agricultural produce with GMOs has grown to an even larger extent.
We must take into account that the European Union imports, chiefly from the United States, around 50% of its food, the consumption of which accounts for around 4 000 million euro.
Food insecurity
Food insecurity is
one of the main causes of human suffering, loss of productivity, poor labour
performance, deficiency in learning, and an obstacle in the educational progress
of youngsters.
People who grow
hungry because of poverty conditions are human beings whose talent and qualities
remain unexploited. In most cases, they cannot take advantage of the progress of
civilization.
Nowadays, more than
a billion people live in poverty and have become food insecure. Half of them are
starving or have “chronic hunger”. Every minute, 15 children die from the lack
food, drinking water, and basic medical assistance.
The demand for food
is higher than the supply, especially in developing countries, where
malnutrition is a serious problem.
In the last two
years, the demand for tubers and roots in Africa rose to 36 million tons, while
production only grew 21 million tons, leaving a deficit of 15 million tons. This
gap is being covered by importing cereals (sold by multinational corporations),
at very high prices, which creates a whole new economic crisis.
Main causes of food insecurity:
Millions of people,
specially those living in rural areas, grow hungry and suffer from malnutrition
mainly because of the following factors:
1.
Poverty
2.
Unequal
distribution of wealth
3.
Rapid
population growth
4.
Unemployment
and low incomes
5.
Insalubrious
environment
6.
Lack of
education and unwise investment of incomes
Food security relies
fundamentally on the growth of the agricultural sector, which can guarantee a
plentiful, permanent and harmonious supply of food. In its turn, more jobs can
be created, and rural families can receive higher incomes, thus becoming more
economically stable.
Long-term
sustainable growth can only be reached if rural workers gain access to farmland,
water, and fertilizers.
Each year, and
because of the of lack of incentives, more people are migrating from rural areas
to industrialized cities, leaving the farmlands unattended and causing a drop in
the production of traditional foods.
“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.” This is the definition of food
security, as it was made known during the World Food Summit, sponsored by the
FAO.
However, we are far
from having food security, particularly among the poorest countries of the Third
World.
The term
“undernourished” is applied to any person whose food intake is insufficient to
meet calorie requirements on a continuing basis.
A person becomes
“food insecure” when he or she does not have access to a quantity of food and
nutrients sufficient enough to maintain a good health status and normal living
conditions.
Food insecurity can
be transitory or chronic. When the latter occurs, the person becomes
undernourished.
Chronic food
insecurity or under nourishment stems from the insufficient intake of food on a
continuing basis.
Food insecurity
becomes chronic when a person is not capable of meeting, on a continuing basis,
a sufficient level of nutrient intake; and transitory when there is only a
temporary shortage of food intake. However, people who are chronically food
insecure can also undergo fluctuations in relation to their degree of food
insecurity.
The term
“vulnerability” refers to the factors that place a person at risk of becoming
food insecure, including those factors that hinder one’s potential of
subsistence.
Nutritional status
is a designation that makes reference to a person’s physiological status, which
is in turn determined by a combination of factors, such as food intake, health
status and sanitary conditions.
38 countries have
become food insecure due to unfavourable weather conditions and civil riots. An
adverse economic situation can also be a cause of vulnerability and food
insecurity, when incomes and other resources are not evenly distributed among
the population or when the investments of both public and private sectors are
insufficient or biased.
A country’s
political situation can revert food insecurity, but it can also worsen it. Those
political systems that foster people’s participation tend to reduce
vulnerability. On the other hand, a civil conflict can become a factor of
vulnerability that can hinder commercial trading, destroy people’s social and
private property, and trigger both unemployment and the migration of affected
families.
Sometimes, one can
find the highest degree of malnutrition among populations inhabiting areas
constantly affected by conflicts. Civil conflicts constitute the political
factor studied by this report, and it is represented by the number of countries
undergoing serious situations.
Social conditions,
attitudes, and services all have a significant influence over the degrees of
vulnerability and food insecurity. It is thus difficult to find malnutrition in
places where the population has access to schooling and medical assistance.
Traditional
customs often determine what foods people consume, how resources are
distributed, what foods are available, and how people wash them and prepare
them.
According to a FAO
report, almost 10 million people living in the sub-Saharan Africa require prompt
aid. Due to persisting droughts and civil conflicts, as well as insecurity in
many countries along the region, scores of people have had to migrate,
interrupting the production of food.
At the World Food
Summit in 1996, world leaders pledged to reduce the number of hungry people to
around 400 million by 2015. At the current rate of progress, a reduction of 8
million undernourished people a year, there is no hope of meeting that goal.
According to the FAO
report “The State of Food Insecurity in the World 1999”, the current reduction
does not indicate uniform progress throughout the world. Indeed the data reveal
that, in the first half of this decade, just 37 countries achieved a reduction
in the number of undernourished, totalling 100 million people. Across the rest
of the developing world, the number of hungry people actually increased by
almost 60 million.
The State of Food
Insecurity in the World also points out that hunger is not limited to the
developing nations. The report presents the first assessment of the number of
undernourished people in the developed world, finding 8 million in the
industrialized countries and 26 million in the countries in transition.
The following
countries are among those that arouse most concern:
In Africa:
Angola, Burundi, The
Democratic Republic of Congo, The Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia,
Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leona, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, and
Uganda.
According to the
report, the food situation is very serious in Somalia, where the droughts, high
temperatures, and military conflicts have led to the loss of the seventh
consecutive harvest. Due to the lack of food and the intensification of military
conflicts, 70,000 people have migrated. According to estimations, “more than a
million people face a serious food shortage, while more than 400,000 are at risk
of starving to death.
In Ethiopia, most
of the crops planted in the beginning of the season has spoiled. According to
the report, more than 5 million people – including 385,000 refugees from the war
against Eritrea – will need urgent food aid.
In Eritrea, 250,000
war refugees have migrated from Ethiopia, and other 61,500 people have been
deported. In spite of a good harvest in 1998, the food situation for these
sectors of the population has been quite unfavourable.
In Kenya, Uganda
and Tanzania, where the political situation is more stable, a prolonged drought
has had its repercussions on agricultural production. The drought has forced
many livestock owners to move from the west of Uganda to the north of Tanzania,
in search of water and pasturelands.
Cereal production
has also decreased significantly in South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia,
and Zimbabwe.
But not all is bad
news. According to the report, the supply of food in Western Africa, specially
within the Sahel, will remain satisfactory until the next harvest.
In Asia:
Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iraq, North Korea, Laos, and Mongolia.
In Latin America and the Caribbean:
Cuba, Dominican
Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Saint
Kitts & Nevis.
In the Community of
Independent States (CIS) and Eastern Europe:
Albany, Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, Macedonia, The Russian Federation,
Tajikistan, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
EUROPE:
Consumer confidence in the quality and safety of food products has been considerably shaken during the last ten years or so by the cumulative impacts of food-related health crises. Responding to the challenge, the European Union is implementing a comprehensive strategy to restore people's belief in the safety and quality of their food "From the farm to the fork".
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