What is Food Security and Why Should You Care?

In the face of climate change, pandemics, and other global challenges, food security is an important topic for everyone. Food security means having reliable access to safe and nutritious food all year round. It’s a challenge for many countries, especially in developing nations that have a high prevalence of hunger and malnutrition. In this article, we explore what food security is and why it matters. If you want to learn more about the world of food security and the efforts being made to improve it, read on!

What Is Food Security?

Food security refers to a reliable access to food; both in terms of nutritional quality and quantity. Food security is achieved when all people have reliable access to sufficient quantities of affordable, nutritious food to meet their dietary needs for a healthy and active life.

Why is Food Security Important?

Food insecurity is a major public health problem. Food insecurity currently affects millions of people around the world leading to enormous health consequences and in worst cases, usually in developing nations, it can be fatal. Currently food insecurity is preventable and solvable, however with continued global population growth and climate change there are concerns that we are entering into a new phase of instability and food shortages.

Areas of Improvement for Food Security

Climate Change – Climate change is expected to have a large impact on food security. Increases in temperatures, more extreme weather events, and changes in rainfall patterns can affect agricultural output, crop failures and result in droughts, famines and supply chain disruption.

Nutrition – More than 2 billion people are insufficiently nourished, and 50% of children suffer from stunted growth as a result of poor nutrition. This is largely due to poor access to nutritious foods. Governments and organizations are working to improve food security and nutrition in order to promote health and fight diseases.

Disease – Renewed threats of pandemics and disease outbreaks, such as avian flu, could affect food security. Taking steps to prevent and combat these diseases can improve food security as it helps minimise unexpected food production issues.

How to Achieve Food Security

• Ensure that everyone has access to nutritious food and has the knowledge and resources to produce healthy food.
• Improve food production and distribution systems.
• Reduce the risk of food-borne diseases.
• Ensure core staple foods are affordable for all nations.
• Build strong partnerships and networks of collaboration.
• Create and maintain a sustainable environment.
• Strengthen disaster risk reduction and management.
• Encourage localised food production.
• Promote peace and social stability.

Final Note

Generally speaking, individual countries do not have meaningful national food reserves, and as such their primary approach to food security is to ensure that there is no significant exposure to potential risks.

Certain countries do encourage their citizens to build their own household emergency food reserves, such as China and Norway.