Food Security and Agricultural Production

The current status of food security globally and threats to food security in the future

Food security is a contentious issue, and attempts to define it align with particular approaches to what should be done. At the most basic level, food security indicates access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food. The U.S. General Accounting Office indicates that up to 2 billion people lack food security worldwide. According to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), 75 percent of the world's food-insecure people are located in rural areas, predominantly in the global South. In this context, food security is the opposite of starvation or hunger (Gliessman, pp. 2-7).

Food insecurity also exists in industrialized nations, largely among low-income communities and communities of color. Activists working to increase food security in the United States tend to define it as access to healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate food through nonemergency means. Their strategies often consist of efforts to increase access to locally grown produce through farmers markets and community gardens. Some activists have moved beyond the concept of food security to food justice, which calls for a deeper analysis of structural inequality with regard to the distribution of food.

Organizations approaching food security through the lens of modernization theory argue that rural producers need increased access to foreign and domestic markets. To this end, such organizations work to increase product quality standards, develop infrastructure for transport, and increase access to market information. For example, USAID works with small coffee farmers to increase quality, improve business practices, promote value-added approaches, and encourage producers to diversify into niche markets such as gourmet fruits and vegetables or environmental services. In doing so, producers can increase their incomes and thus their food security.

Change in global and regional weather conditions (an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme events such as droughts, floods, hailstorms, and cyclones) has an effect on crop yields and local food supplied, affecting the stability of food supplies, and thus food security. Climate change will also have an effect on the ability of individuals to use food effectively. This will alter the conditions for food safety and change the disease pressure from vector-, water-, and food-borne diseases. The main concern about climate change and food security is that changing climatic conditions can initiate a vicious circle where infectious diseases causes or compounds hunger, which, in turn, makes the affected populations more susceptible to infectious diseases. This can result in decline in labor productivity (if labor is unable to work because of illnesses or lack of nutrition), an increase in poverty, and even an increase in mortality rates (Lyson, pp. 6-9).

The impacts of current agricultural systems (both large and small scale) with respect to biodiversity and ecosystem resilience

Agriculture is the science, art, and business of cultivating soil, producing crops, and raising livestock simply known as farming, it is bedrock of human civilization. Thus, by definition, farmers include resource-poor cultivators, pastoralists, fisher-folk, indigenous peoples, women, and agricultural laborers. Domestication of plants and animals was necessary ...