Module 11.2: Food Access and Food Insecurity

Module 11.2: Food Access and Food Insecurity azs2

In this module, we will introduce the concepts surrounding the global challenge of food access and insecurity and the vulnerability of agri-food systems and particular populations to market and climate shocks. The concepts used in this unit build on the ideas of shocks and perturbations, resilience, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability of agri-food systems that were covered in unit 11.1. The unit, therefore, illustrates an urgent aspect of the analysis of the agri-food system as a coupled natural-human system.

Introduction to Food Access, Food Security, and Food-Insecure Conditions

Introduction to Food Access, Food Security, and Food-Insecure Conditions azs2

Food access is a variable condition of human consumers, and it affects all of us each and every day. If you have ever traveled through an isolated area of the country or the world and encountered difficulty in encountering food that is customary or nutritious to eat, or within reach of your travel budget, you have an inkling of what it means to have issues with food access. For those with little capacity for food self-provisioning from farms or gardens, food access is determined by factors influencing the spatial accessibility, affordability, and quality of food sellers. The consistent dependability of adequate food access helps to enable food security whereby a person’s dietary needs and food preferences are met at levels needed to main a healthy and active life. Famines are conditions of extreme food shortage defined by specific characteristics (see below). Food-insecure conditions, such as acute and chronic hunger, are important conditions that affect many people both in the United States and in other countries.

Definitions

Food Access:

Determined among consumers by the spatial accessibility and affordability of food retailers---specifically such factors as travel time to shopping, availability of healthy foods, and food prices---relative to the access to transportation and socioeconomic resources of food buyers. You examined both of these in the Module 3 nutrition activity that used the United States Atlas of Food Access. Some people and places, especially those with low-income, may face greater barriers in accessing healthy and affordable food retailers, which may negatively affect diet and food security. Food access among growers of food, whether full-time farmers or part-time farmers (including many smallholders), is influenced through the ability of e.g. farmers to produce and store enough food to complement purchased food or food themselves entirely, referred to as self-provisioning capacity.

Food Security:

“when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life. Commonly, the concept of food security is defined as including both physical and economic access to food that meets people's dietary needs as well as their food preferences” (World Health Organization)

Components of food security

Some food programs, such as the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA) unit of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), have found it helpful to analyze food security as composed of:

  • food availability (production and/or markets that deliver sufficient amounts of food)
  • food access (see above definition)
  • food utilization: the ability to exercise cultural food preferences and the effective use of food within households and communities to guarantee equitable nutrition.

Famine:

Famine is generally understood as acute (versus chronic) food shortages at crisis levels across a wide area, with disastrous health and mortality outcomes. While there are various formal definitions of famine, many experts say that there must be evidence of three specific outcomes before a famine can be declared:

  1. At least 20 percent of households face extreme food shortages with limited ability to cope; Note the explicit linkage to reduced adaptive capacity of famine victims (see module 11.1)
  2. The prevalence of acute malnutrition across the famine region, in a generalized way, must exceed 30 percent.
  3. Death rates from hunger must exceed 2 deaths per 10,000 people per day.

(World Food Program definition, from Zero Hunger).

Food-insecure conditions: acute vs. chronic hunger and malnutrition:

The definitions above imply concepts of acute and chronic that are broadly analagous to their definitions in the medical field. An acute food shortage is one that occurs suddenly, while chronic conditions go on month after month or year after year. Most climate and price shocks provoke acute impacts or crises; while chronic malnutrition of vulnerable or poor populations within countries can go on year after year, provoking long-term negative health and livelihood impacts. Both are considered failures of food systems. Acute food insecurity is rare in wealthier countries, but chronic under-nutrition and poor nutrition can be common especially among the poor, and is one of the current crises faced in the United States.

Smallholders:

You may already be familiar with this term and absorbed some of the characteristics of smallholder farmers through our focus on the food systems that these farmers occupy around the world (Module 10.1). In formal terms, smallholders are food producers whose households typically own less than 2-3 hectares (approximately 7 acres) of farmland. Demographically, smallholders number approximately 2.0-2.5 billion people worldwide, which makes them a major stakeholder group and "target population" for global food and agricultural policy. The socioeconomic characteristics of smallholders vary widely. Some smallholders, including ones in the U.S. and Europe, may include locally well-to-do “hobby farmers” while the majority of smallholders are relatively poor, both in these countries and in the far more numerous populations of smallholders in countries such as China, India, and Brazil, and well as many other less developed and developing nations. The food access of smallholders typically combines some self-provisioning along with significant reliance on food acquisitions at stores and markets for staple foods such as grains, noodles, sugar, and oils.

Global Overview of Food Insecurity: Food Deficit Map and Required Readings

Global Overview of Food Insecurity: Food Deficit Map and Required Readings azs2

A global overview of food insecurity can be obtained by mapping the average daily calorie supply per person for each country (see Figure 11.2.1). Mapped values are shown as ranging from less than 2,000 calories per person (e.g., in Ethiopia and Tanzania) to the range of 2,000-2,500 calories per person, which covers several countries in Africa as well as India and other countries in Asia in addition to Latin America and the Caribbean. Calories are a reasonable way to begin to understand large-scale patterns related to the lack of food access around the world. Nevertheless just looking at calories hides other aspects of human nutrition, such as the need for a diverse diet that satisfies human requirements for vitamins, minerals, and dietary fiber, which were described in module 3.

Global Food Insecurity: Calorie measures as described in text above.
Figure 11.2.1. Global Food Insecurity: calorie measures. This map is a good first approximation though it does not address vitamin or micronutrient-based malnutrition, which was described in module 3 of this course.
Credit: Atlas of Population and Environment

Required Readings

The following brief readings are good ways to appreciate the analyses and debates surrounding food insecurity and the challenges of "feeding the world", especially in the emerging scenario of climate change impacts on food production. They form part of the required reading for this module and will help you to better understand the materials and the summative assessment.

  1. Bittman, Mark. "Don't Ask How to Feed the 9 Billion" NYT, Nov 12, 2014. (Note: The link is available only for users with Penn State accounts.)
  2. Deering, K. 2014. Stepping up to the challenge – Six issues facing global climate change and food security, CCAFS (Climate Change and Food Security Program)-UN (United Nations), 2014. Read the page headings on each challenge and the brief description of the response below.

Food Shortages, Chronic Malnutrition, and Famine: Coupled Human-Natural Systems Aspects

Food Shortages, Chronic Malnutrition, and Famine: Coupled Human-Natural Systems Aspects azs2

Food Crises and Interacting Elements of the Natural and Human Systems

This section employs the framework of Coupled Natural-Human Systems (CHNS) in order to illustrate the interacting elements of natural and human systems that can combine to produce severe food shortages, chronic malnutrition, and famine food systems around the world. These CHNS concepts build on the diagrams and concepts in modules 10 and 11.1. You will also apply these concepts in the summative assessment on the next page.

As you read this brief description consult figure 11.2.2 below. It depicts that interacting conditions within the human and natural systems, combined with driving forces and feedbacks, are at the core of many cases of severe food shortages, chronic malnutrition, and famine in agri-food systems.

The best place to begin interpreting Figure 11.2.2 is by focusing on the driving forces emanating out of both the human and natural systems. Human system drivers often involve political and military instability and/or market failures and volatility (such as prices). Most cases of famine, as well as many instances of severe food shortages and chronic malnutrition, involve these human drivers. In addition, human drivers not only drive vulnerability in natural systems but may act first and foremost on human systems, reducing the adaptive capacity of consumers and producers, for example by reducing the purchasing power of poor populations during price spikes.

Figure 11.2.2 also shows that drivers emanate from the natural system. Climate change and variation, such as drought and flooding, often contribute to cases of famine, as well as severe food shortages and chronic malnutrition.

These drivers, however, are only PART of the causal linkages of severe food shortages, chronic malnutrition, and famine. Similarly important are the conditions of poor resilience (potentially arising as result of weak social infrastructure), low levels of adaptive capacity and poverty. Poverty is tragically involved as a cause of nearly all cases of severe food shortages, chronic malnutrition, and famine. For Mark Bittman, the author of the required reading on the previous page, the link between poverty and failures of food systems, rather than a failure of any other human or natural factors such as food production, food distribution, or overpopulation, is the central thesis he advances in his short opinion piece. You may want to glance again at this reading in order to remind yourself of why poverty is so deeply implicated in the failures of agri-food systems.

Weak or inadequate resilience (R) and adaptive capacity (AC), along with vulnerability (V), are also symptomatic of natural systems prone to severe food shortages, chronic malnutrition, and famine. For example, cropping and livestock systems unable to tolerate extreme conditions illustrate a low level of adaptive capacity (AC) that can contribute significantly to the failure of agri-food systems.

Anatomy of Severe Food Shortages, Chronic Malnutrition and Famine, see image caption
Figure 11.2.2. Anatomy of severe food shortages, chronic malnutrition, and famine in agri-food systems based on the framework of Coupled Natural-Numan Systems (CNHS). Many of the resilience, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability (RACV) concepts introduced in module 11.2 are depicted here in the negative, e.g. a lack of agroecosystem resilience. Acute food insecurity and famine often involve a "perfect storm" or coming together of more than one of the RACV factors shown here. We note that some of the shocks are generated internal to the human system (large blue circular arrow at center left), with political and economic instability, and other negative human system drivers, fostering vulnerability of farmers and consumers in the human system as well as negative impacts on biodiversity and productivity of ecosystems.
Credit: Karl Zimmerer and Steven Vanek

Summative Assessment: Anatomy of a Somali Famine (2010 - 2012)

Summative Assessment: Anatomy of a Somali Famine (2010 - 2012) azs2

Instructions

Download the worksheet and follow the detailed instructions provided.

Files to Download

See worksheet on next page.

Anatomy of a Famine: multifactorial failures of adaptive capacity to climate and social shocks.

This worksheet relies heavily on the data resources presented by the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit – Somalia and the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS Net).

This worksheet uses maps, tables, and graphs to guide you in analyzing a tragic famine in Somalia between 2010 and 2012 as a case of adaptive capacity and vulnerability (see Module 9.2 for the definition of a famine). As many as 260,000 people died in this famine, half of them children under five years old (optional: see Somalia famine 'killed 260,000 people', May 2, 2013). You should read carefully through the case study presented in the worksheet (download above) and answer the question in each section, e.g. “Question A1” and the two summary questions at the end. 

Submitting Your Assignment

You do not need to submit your worksheet; it will instead act as a guide for you to complete the summative assessment quiz.