Food security exists when people are able to have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for a healthy life. The majority of more than one billion food-insecure individuals are small-scale farmers living in rural areas, women, and children. Diversification of agriculture is an important means of achieving food security in a changing climate and decreasing the occurrences of diseases and pests. Many major agricultural multinational corporations have been acquiring land in developing countries in order to grow food crops for the purpose of shipping back home to domestic markets – a food security strategy. This has created a variety of problems. Competition and demand for land between major industries has led to a great amount of deforestation. The detrimental loss of biodiversity can be seen in regions all over the world – the Amazon, Africa, and Asia.
With the exponential world population growth, there is an increasing demand for food, a scarcity of water, and a fight for land resources. There are severe disproportions in the levels of nutrition between different populations resulting from uneven distribution of food production. Therefore, many are left malnourished and a percentage face starvation. The rising food prices all over the world mostly impactthe millions of people who can least afford them. The issue of diminishing resources of water and land has arisen due to soil erosion, depletion of nutrients, and infrastructure development. In addition to all of these growing problems, there is also fear of environmental damage from excessive fertilizers, pumping of groundwater for irrigation, and the spraying of pesticides.
There are several solutions to food security, but also several problems that hinder them from being effective. Subsistence farming could be an immediate means to food security at a household level in developing countries, but land ownership is decreasing with the globalization and commercialization of food. There needs to be a stronger national and regional approach to address this rising situation, but issues relating to food insecurity vary greatly between and within countries. On the global scale, there should be more investments in research, education, innovation, and infrastructure, but many nations are also dealing with other internal problems and allocated money to other priorities. People can also move towards a more sustainable diet which consists of less meat and more seasonal foods, however changing eating habits and reorienting the food supply chain is a very difficult undertaking. To deal with the lack of fresh water availability, water treatment plants to desalinate ocean water can be implemented, yet again, this proposal is a highly expensive investment, as well as a very energy intensive solution.
Timeline of food insecurities worldwide: http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/2014/en/
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