Title of Lesson: Different Components of Food Security and Food Insecurity
INTRODUCTION
● Malnutrition is a universal social problem.
○ Whether your diet lacks the adequate nutrients for a healthy life or you
consume excess food energy.
● Food security - It exists in a community when all people have a physical and
economic doorway for enough food to meet their dietary supplement for
productive and healthy lives.
○ More than 800M people live with hunger (FI) as their constant
companion.
● Food insecurity leads to hunger and undernutrition.
○ Persistent hunger can lead to illnesses, and lower work productivity
later in life, leading to adverse effects on countries’ economic
productivity.
● The low-income family is especially unguarded to fluctuations in food costs.
○ During national crises or emergencies, food attainability is often
insufficient, and the community agonizes from hunger and sickness.
○ Imperfect edifice, lack of a safety plan, and limited food supply can
perpetuate food insecurity.
DISCUSSION
Both terms below are defined within the context of households and on a
scale of ease of obtainability to food, anxiety, and eating patterns.
● Food security - It is when families have access to safe and nutritious food,
are not anxious about accessing food, and acquire food in a typical manner.
○ Household members do not have to access food in the garbage.
○ Food security is categorized as either:
■ high (no issue)
■ marginal (typically some food shortage with associated anxiety
about sufficient supply).
● Food insecurity - It is visible in households with limited or lack of financial
resources and worry that food will be depleted before they can replenish
supplies and meals are not balanced.
○ At the lower end of the scale, food insecurity
ranges from low to deficient food security.
Components of Food Security
1. Food availability - Enough health-giving food of sufficient value needs to be
available to people for their utilization. Availability can be simulated through:
● Production: how much and what variety of food is available that is
manufactured and preserved locally or domestically.
● Distribution: how is food made accessible, what, to whom, and when.
● Exchange: how many of the available food can be acquired through
exchange procedures such as barter, trade, purchase, or credit.
2. Food access. Individuals and families must obtain sufficient food to eat, a
healthy, nutritious diet or access enough resources needed to grow their food like
land. Access can be affected because of:
● Affordability: the ability of individuals, households, or society to afford
the price of food or land for manufacturing food, relative to their
earnings.
● Allocation: the phase of economic, social, and political methods
governing when, where, and how consumers can acquire food.
○ For example, food may be unequally distributed according to
age and gender within the family.
● Preference: social, religious, and societal norms and values control
consumer demand for definite types of food like religious prohibitions
or the desire to follow a specific dietary pattern such as vegetarianism.
3. Food utilization. People must have access to a sufficient amount and diversity
of foods to meet their nutritional needs and eat and metabolize such food.
Utilization can be affected by the following:
● Nutritional value: the nutritional value dispensed by the foods that are
consumed, as measured in calories, vitamins, protein, and various
micronutrients such as vitamin A, iron, and iodine.
● Health status: the cause and effect of diseases such as diarrhea,
AIDS, HIV, on the ability to ingest food and absorb and metabolize its
nutritive value.
● Food safety: access to food free from wasted food or from toxic
contamination during the production, processing, packaging, and
distribution of food; and from food borne diseases such as
salmonella and norovirus.
● Preparation and consumption: resources such as cooking materials
and fuel, knowledge, and ability to make ready and consume food in a
healthy and hygienic method.
4. Stability. Food may be available and accessible to individuals who can utilize
it successfully and avoid increases in malnutrition.
● For individuals not to feel insecure, this situation needs to be practical
rather than temporary or subject to fluctuations.
Reasons Why Food Security is Important
1. Everyone must eat.
Our reliance on food is so central that we often do not contemplate it or who
is benefiting and buying.
2. Food is a fundamental human right.
● In Human Rights, article 25 includes the "right to a normal way of
living sufficient for the health security of himself and of his household,
including medical care, food, housing, and clothing."
● Human rights leaders worldwide are anxious about the actions of
global institutions like the World Trade Organization that contravene
these and other citizens' liberty.
3. Food is the basis of a community's wealth.
● Food is a necessary element of community self-sufficiency. It is
essential in its core. It provides jobs, supports public health, enhances
culture, and enables community.
● Food and agriculture keep going when other industries go wrong.
4. Our food system is unduly dependent on distant suppliers.
● Most of us rely on a structure that rarely has further than 3-4 days fresh
food gathered locally—food that travels a long way.
● Excessive transportation is dominated by economies of scale that do
not account for environmental worth or freshness loss.
● This practice is susceptible to interruptions of diverse types and is
inadequate risk supervision.
5. What we see in the supermarket is an unprotected quality.
● The bounty on the supermarket shelves gives the impression that our
food systems are in good condition. But, all the risks and most of the
long-term environmental and social costs are concealed.
● For instance, you can buy vegetables and fruits all year round, which
must be imported outside our flourishing season.
○ These products are grown far away, under regulations over
which we have no control of, by people who may be sacrificing
their food security to grow cash crops for our supermarkets.
6. We can only handle what is close to home.
● Food
products
are
grown,
prepared,
processed,
and
packaged/assembled and can only be effectively supervised in our
control, where people have some say about the process.
7. Eventually, a community, province, or nation is indebted to its food
suppliers.
● The use of food as an armament is becoming more common around
the globe. It is folly to free our capability of feeding ourselves.
8. It is vital to conserve the blueprint (skills, tools, and capacity to feed
ourselves).
● We are losing people who could teach us the arts of preserving,
growing, harvesting, and cooking our food, and most of us are losing
expertise.
9. People are rightly concerned about food-health relations.
● Consumers are increasingly anxious about the security of their food.
● These can be related to manufactured food products and questions
about disease, pesticide residues, hormones, or genetically modified
organisms; and links between diet and additives (such as cancer or
Mad Cow Disease).
10. Decent food is the basis of health.
● Nutrition is tied to health. The significant causes of death and disability
in our society (cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer) can be
significantly affected by healthy eating choices and lifestyles.
Types of Food Insecurity
1. Chronic food insecurity
● It is a long-term and persistent state of food insecurity.
● A population suffers from long term food insecurity when it cannot
meet minimum food utilization requirements for extended periods,
approximately six months or longer.
2. Transitory food insecurity
● It is a short-term and temporary condition of food insecurity.
● The population suffers transitory food insecurity when there is a
sudden drop in the ability to produce or access sufficient food for a
healthy nutritional status, such as after a period of drought or because
of a dispute.
3. Seasonal food insecurity.
● It is a condition of food insecurity that reoccurs predictably, following
the cyclical pattern of seasons
Hunger, Malnutrition, and Poverty
● Hunger - It is usually assumed as an uncomfortable or painful sensation
caused by low food energy utilization.
○ Scientifically, hunger is a weakened condition brought about by
prolonged lack of food or a specific nutrient.
To sum things up
● All hungry human beings are food insecure.
● But, not all food insecure human beings are hungry.
○ After all, there are other causes of food insecurity (e.g. low intake of
micronutrients.)
●
Malnutrition - It is a situation that results from devouring a diet in which one
or more nutrients are not enough or are too much such that the diet causes
health problems.
○ Other than food insecurity, it may also be related
to non-food factors such as:
1. Inadequate care practices for children
2. Insufficient health services
3. Unhealthy environment
● Poverty - It is not having enough material
ownership or income for a person's needs. It may
include political, economic, and social elements.
○ Complete poverty - It is the total lack of the
means necessary to meet basic personal
needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter.
It is argued that a plan for attacking poverty in conjunction with strategies to
ensure food security offers the best hope of rapidly reducing mass poverty and
starvation. However, recent studies show that economic development alone will
not take care of food security.
We need a combination of income growth, supported by direct nutrition
interventions and investment in health, water, and education.
Food Security in the Philippines
● From an article written by Focus on the Global South-Philippines.
Socio-economic figures of the Philippines
● 2014- PH - 13th majority inhabited country globally - 107M people.
○ 6.1% - Full-year GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth.
○ A meaningful economic growth from 2013’s rank - 27th.
○ 24.9% of Filipinos (1:4) - are living under the poverty line.
Hunger profile
● Absolutely, the government has a humorless hunger problem.
● Contributors to food insecurity and hunger: increasing population and a
steady decline in agricultural capacity and food production in the last 3 years.
The severe and constant hunger situation
● 2014 - 13.1 - Philippines' Global Hunger Index (GHI).
○ This index is based on three indicators:
■ child mortality
■ child underweight
■ Undernourishment
● It uses a scale of 0 or no hunger to 100 or hunger. The fitting score is
less than 5, which signifies low hunger.
● PH - 29th globally - situation classified as a "serious problem."
● The number of Filipino households who rated themselves as starving
rose from 8.3% to 18.3% in the past 15 years (1999-2014).
Women and children’s faces
● Filipinos suffering from hunger: children and women (and pregnant women)
● There was a minimal decrease in the number of underweight children— from
20.7% in 2003 to 20.2% in 2011.
● 33.6% of children under five years old are suffering from stunted growth in
the same year, which placed the country 9th in small children's world
rankings.
● According to the Food Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI), 1/4 of pregnant
women with children aged below five years are nutritionally at risk.
○ 12% of lactating mothers are underweight.
● According to a 2013 UNICEF report, the Philippines ranked 5th among the
countries with low birth-weight babies.
Exacerbating hunger: conflicts, extreme weather events, and disasters
● Rural areas - The regions that are the most affected by hunger and food
insecurity.
○ Ex. Conflict-affected areas of Central Mindanao and disaster-affected
communities in Visayas. These are also areas where poverty incidence
is much higher than the national average.
Structural causes vs. hunger and food insecurity
Factor causing hunger in PH:
● Inflation. High retail food prices make food items unaffordable. This
hinders low households' ability to meet their daily food and dietary
needs.
● People working in the agricultural area are more prone to hunger
because of low rural compensations (whether as farm workers or
farmers), the vulnerability of the sector to various blows such as
extreme weather events, diseases, climate change, pests, and lack of
access to productive resources such as capital and land.
Beyond the numbers and macroeconomic index:
● Liberalization - It has become the willpower not just of Philippine food and
agriculture policies but also of advancement policy.
● The Philippines has been ensuing a comprehensive and radical agenda of
trade liberalization.
○
Despite enforcing social justice measures in the same manner as the Indigenous
Peoples' Reform Act, Fisheries Reform Code, and the Comprehensive Agrarian
Reform Program. Since 1981.
● Impact : Devastating to the agriculture sector, particularly to food producers.
GLOSSARY
● Food security - As an avenue always for all people within a family to have
enough food for an active, healthy life.
● Food insecurity - It is a term that means unable to access or afford
adequate food consistently.
● Hunger - It is a weakened condition brought about by a prolonged lack of
food.
● Food utilization - It is the proper biological use of food, requiring a diet
providing sufficient energy and essential nutrients, potable water, and
adequate sanitation.