RFF Food Security Initiative Description

RFF Food Security Initiative

Description

Food security is defined by the FAO as a state of affairs where all people at all times have access to safe and nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life. [See FAO: Food Security Assessment (Document WFS 96 / Tech/7), Rome 1996, p.5.] The world produces enough food today, in aggregate, to feed everyone, but not everyone has physical and economic access to the food they need to thrive. This fact has important implications for peace and security worldwide. Equally important, with population growth and rising incomes, the world demand for food is expected to double over the next few decades. In a real sense, poverty is the primary cause of hunger, and poverty is most readily reduced in peaceful, politically stable, and economically healthy societies. There is a strong international consensus, however, that a critical factor in meeting current and future food security needs in developing countries is building successful agricultural and food systems in those countries. [See Rome Declaration on World Food Security, issued under the auspices of the FAO at the World Food Summit in 1996.] This is especially true in sub-Saharan Africa, where the vast majority of people derive their daily subsistence and livelihood directly or indirectly from local agricultural activity. Improving agriculture in an environmentally sustainable way is a key in that region, as well as others in the developing world, to both economic development and food security.

The age old problem of food security is thus solvable through:

• political and economic reform in developing countries and in the international system,
• the building of successful food production and distribution systems in developing countries,
• a liberalized trade regime that is fair to developing countries, and
• an improved food security safety net to deal with emergencies.

While many of the solutions to food security must be found locally, the ability of developing countries to achieve local solutions is heavily influenced by the food aid and development assistance policies of Western industrialized countries, as well as policies in such areas as agriculture, trade, intellectual property, food safety, and environment. The Food Security Initiative at Resources for the Future is examining these policies, focusing on the United States, and considering how the U.S. contribution to food security can be improved through policy, programmatic, and institutional change. The initiative will include a focus on understanding the domestic political dynamic that explains current approaches to food security. The Food Security Initiative is one component of a broader new Food System Program at Resources for the Future that analyzes issues affecting the success of the global food system.