Food Balance sheet –
Applications and uses
James Geehan,
Statistician FAO, Rome
Recap: definition of Food Balance Sheets
• The "Handbook for the Preparation of Food Balance Sheets" was
published in 1949. Since then, FBS have been prepared and
published by FAO on a regular basis.
•Food Balance Sheets measure the average food availability for a
specific referenced period.
• They do not directly measure food intake or consumption due to
wastage within the household (e.g., plate wastage). FBS should
therefore be considered as measuring the ‘average food available for
human consumption’.
• They are extracted out of time series SUAs and report a single year
(or an average over a number of years), multiplying the food
available by the nutritive factors, to access the calories, protein and
fat per caput available to the general population.
Recap: differences between SUA and FBS
Supply Utilization Accounts
are interrogated electronically
and held in database form.
Food balance sheets are a
summary report, available
electronically or published as
a hard copy.
Food Balance Sheet - limitations
1. FBS do not take account of seasonal variations. Annual calorie
intake can be misleading, hiding periods of food surplus & shortfall.
2. FBS only shows average consumption in the population. They do
not tell us anything about differences in the consumption patterns of
different groups within the population, e.g., by age, gender, economic
groups, or spatial variation across ecological/geographical areas.
3. Data quality: often there is infrequent or no data for many of the
commodities. Particularly in the developing world, many countries do
not send any data on production or trade. These data gaps, or
estimated data, cannot be perceived directly from the FBS results.
4. The accuracy of FBS is only as good as the underlying basic
statistics of population, supply and utilization of foods and nutritive
value data of various foods.
Food Balance Sheet – limitations (continued)
5. Missing data: some countries do not declare trade of certain
commodities due to cultural or religious sensitivities (e.g., alcohol).
How do we account for them the FBS?
6. Inconsistent data: Even among developed countries, despite
abundant official data, information reported by different agencies is
often not consistent.
7. Interpreting FBS results: FBS measure calorie intake prior to
cooking and consumption (i.e., the quantities of food quantities
reaching the consumer). The amount of food actually consumed may
be lower than the quantity shown depending on the degree of losses
of edible food and nutrients in the household.
THERE IS NO COUNTRY WITH A PERFECT SUA / FBS!
Food Balance Sheets – advantages
 Nevertheless the FBS still provides the most comprehensive
picture of supply and utilization of a country’s food supply.
 FBS are extremely useful for economists, planners, and health
experts, despite the difficulties in obtaining accurate data and
interpreting the results.
1. FBS over a period of years show overall trends in the national
food supply, changes in types of food consumed, and reveal
the extent to which food supply as a whole is adequate in
relation to nutritional requirements.
2. They are a powerful means of bringing together from different
sources, information about a food economy and are excellent
for showing very broad changes in a food economy over time.
Food Balance Sheets – advantages (continued)
3. In some cases, they can be used to identify important gaps in
the available data, or even contradictory and conflicting data that
can used as a basis for discussion on improvements required
for the underlying data.
4. In the absence of a comprehensive data sets from household
surveys, FBS represent the only source of standardized data
that permit international comparisons over time.
5. It can also be used to create supplementary indicators such as
the Import Dependency Ratio (IDR) and Self-Sufficiency Ratio.
Food Balance Sheets – Applications
Import Dependency Ratio (IDR)
1. An important aspect in assessing the food situation within a country –
including food security –is the extent to which supply is dependent on
external imports.
2. The Import Dependency Ratio (IDR) measures precisely this; the
percentage of a country’s supply that is derived from imports, defined
as:
IDR = Imports / (Production + Imports – Exports) * 100
3. Interpreting the IDR
a value of 100 indicates 100% of the country’s supply for a given
commodity is dependent on imports;
value of 40 indicates 40% of a country’s supply for a given commodity is
dependent on imports. Or conversely, 60% of the country’s supply for the
commodity is produced within the country
Food Balance Sheets – Applications
Import Dependency Ratio (IDR) (continued)
4. The IDR can be calculated for individual commodities, groups of
commodities of similar nutritional values, or even the aggregate of all
commodities.
5. However, the IDR is a simplified measure: it does not take account of
changes in stocks, neither does it take account of exports that are
intended for re-export .
Food Balance Sheets – Applications
Self-Sufficiency Ratio (SSR)
1. The Self-Sufficiency Ratio (SSR) expresses the magnitude of
production in relation to domestic utilization, defined as:
SSR = Production / (Production + Imports – Exports) * 100
2. Interpreting the SSR
a value of 100 indicates 100% of the country’s supply originates
from the country’s own production;
a value of 30 indicates 30% of the country’s supply originates
from the country’s own production.
3. In the context of food security, the SSR is often taken to indicate
the extent to which a country relies on its own production. The
higher the ratio, the greater the self-sufficiency.
Thank you for your attention