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Improving the livelihood of smallholder farmers
Food Security
Food security means that all people have access, at all times, to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (FAO).
Three key components embedded in this concept are food availability, food access and food use. The use of the term “food security” at the national and global level tends to focus on food supply. But availability does not assure access on the part of households and individuals and enough calories do not guarantee a healthy and nutritional diet. Food access is largely determined by people's purchasing power or income. Food use, in turn, helps determine nutritional status. Nutritional deficiencies can take many forms when food quantity, quality, diversity and/or nutrient absorption are low. We can expect nutritional deficiency to be more prevalent when food prices are high.
Sharp food price increases in recent years, which peaked in mid-2008, have caused concern about the food security and nutrition situation of poor people in developing countries. Energy prices pushed up the prices of fertilizer and fuels. This, along with the diversion of land to grow biofuel crops, declining food stocks, increasing demand for meat and diary, and unfavorable weather in some countries, placed upward pressure on the price of food. The urban and rural poor who are net food buyers were hit hardest. Prices eased with the onset of the global economic downturn that began in late 2008. The poor, however, may not be better off as a result because the downturn will cause jobs to be lost.
The consideration that suggests that food prices may be headed higher in the future is linked to the dynamics of aggregated demand and supply. The consumption of cereals, now no longer mostly driven by population growth, but also by rising incomes and meat consumption in developing countries, has outpaced production in recent years, leading to a reduction of carry-over stocks. Years of under-investment in agriculture, the erosion of public services including research, development and extension, as well as protectionism in OECD countries and unfavourable macroeconomic, trade and exchange rate policies in some developing countries, have hampered growth and led to productivity decline in agriculture and a decrease in cereal production per capita, as shown in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1 Cereal production per capita by region (kg), 1961-2006
Source: FAOSTAT 2008
Figure 2 is explicit about the trend decline in yields per hectare of major cereals in different world regions over the years. The conclusions are affected at the margin by the choice of the cut-off year for the two periods shown. But sensitivity analysis indicates that the key finding is robust: yield growth has been declining in the past 20 years compared with the previous two decades in major world regions. Global cereal productivity growth has more or less kept pace with world population growth. But it isn't sufficient to accommodate income-growth induced additions to demand or major regional weather-related disruptions in supply.
Figure 2 Cereal productivity growth (average annual, in %)
Source: FAOSTAT 2008
Productivity must be made to rise again, in environmentally sustainable ways. And, for better food security, the conditions governing food access must improve. Smallholders (in our definition, growers operating up to 2 hectares of land) play a critical role. As stated elsewhere on this website, their contribution to food supplies is needed. If on-farm productivity of land and labor and the efficiency of natural resource use can be made to grow, then with functional and advantageous links to markets, incomes derived from agricultural activities should rise, and rural employment and food entitlements should grow. The food security of the rural poor, and the food supplies in urban areas, in consequence, should both improve.
Naturally, many disruptions and sources of disturbance can affect the workings of this simple model. But there is evidence that confirms it, too – see, for example, the results achieved in some of the projects supported by the Syngenta Foundation and its partners. >> Link to Projects page.
Read related topic "The recent episode of soaring food prices".
Read our presentation "Economic Perspective on Food Security and Access to Food".