Understanding Food Security

By Saima Hasasn

Food security can be defined as the state in which all persons obtain a nutritionally adequate, culturally acceptable diet at all times through local non-emergency sources.

Food security broadens the traditional concepts of hunger, embracing a systemic view of the causes of hunger and poor nutrition within a community while identifying the changes necessary to prevent their occurrence. Food security programs confront hunger and poverty.
In many cases, the environmental price of food production is the loss of natural vegetation and biological diversity, soil erosion, and surface and groundwater depletion. Inevitably, there are divergent views about how land should be used, whether for industrial crops, food, nature conservation or industry. These conflicts exist for coastal and inland areas and common property resources such as forests, grazing lands and even oceans. Clearly defined procedures are needed to satisfy different needs and interests in society, not only of current generations but also taking into account future needs.

This means involving stakeholders, farmers, local land managers, non-governmental and governmental organizations, consumers and others, and evaluating the environmental costs of different land use options.
Democratic structures and public opinion on environmental issues help to identify preferences and set appropriate land use goals, including the need for access to food, and an adequate diet for a healthy, active life. Transformation of current and future food production systems requires a land or resource-use planning approach and the formulation of explicit goals for alternative land uses.

Planning is also necessary to define incentives for sustainable use, and to promote changes of attitude and values toward improved land use options. Today’s severe pressure on marine fish stocks is an example of how misguided policy and lack of planning can lead to indiscriminate use of a common natural resource. Particularly in Sindh, Pakistan, political and bureaucratic sharks have engulfed the marine resources of province on the name of so-called development.

A consensus exists among non-governmental sector of the Pakistan that new approaches should be adopted for economic development with emphasis on food security, social development and environmental security. Develop indicators for the evaluation of development programs and policies achieving agricultural, demographic and environmental transitions.
Experience has shown that countries in which there is good governance reap the benefits through more stable and sustainable economic growth. This involves promoting dialogue with all interest groups and sharing decision-making authority and control over resource allocation to district and local levels.

A more enlightened role of government also implies working side-by-side with NGOs, farmers’ associations and the private sector. Globally as well as nationally the civil society is taking serious notice of growing food insecurity in Pakistan, recently Oxfam GB has initiated a project   “Enhance Food Security and Resilience of Small farmers” co-funded by EC and OXFAM GB in two districts of the Sindh and one district of the Balochistan, i.e Dadu, Sanghar and Mossakhel with key focus on the small growers. The project being funded by EC is being implemented by local partner’s organizations, Participatory Development Initiative (PDI), Sindh Agriculture Forestry Workers Organization (SAFWCO) and Baluchistan Educational and Environmental Journey (BEEJ).

The marginalization of women from decisions and resources also has numerous negative effects on food production. Government is in the best position to assist women in sensitizing them to environmental concerns by promoting interventions that improve their access to education and training, energy resources, and credit. Government must undertake the complex and difficult tasks of land tenure reform, channeling investment towards rural areas and enacting supporting policies that reflect a national ethic of sustainable development, reflecting, in turn, their circumstances.

Present definitions of economic viability primarily consider productivity and profitability. They do not take into account sustainability. Neither are the costs of harmful effects on the environment included in the System of National Accounts, which countries use to measure their net economic gains and losses. The loss of environmental goods and services is particularly detrimental to poorer countries, whose economies are more dependent on natural resources and are thus more vulnerable to their loss.
Intensive effort is needed to strengthen and test methodologies for national environmental accounting. This includes pricing the costs of soil and water degradation, of depletion of plant nutrients, loss of forest cover and biological diversity, practices that are economically and environmentally unsustainable.
The environmental costs of producing different crops (i.e. the potential pollution or resource degradation intensity) also needs to be calculated in order to understand the conditions required for successful production. For example, agricultural income has to be adjusted to allow for various kinds of environmental damage, such as soil erosion, acidity, salinity and loss of plant nutrients that arise from food production.

Sustainable food security: requirements for a new era:

The understanding of food security has evolved over the years through increasingly integrated attention to the social, gender, environmental, technical and economic dimensions of the problem. The challenge for the future will be to develop a peaceful, stable political, social and economic environment for Sustainable-Development. Also full and equal participation of men and women are also important for obtaining a food security.