Food security has deteriorated since 1995 and reductions in child malnutrition are proceeding too slowly to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for halving hunger by 2015. Three major challenges threaten to drastically complicate efforts to overcome food insecurity and malnutrition: climate change, the growing use of food crops as a source of fuel and soaring food prices.
Food security has four dimensions: food availability, access to food, stability of supply and access and safe and healthy food utilization. It is a key factor in good nutrition, along with health, sanitation and care practices. Globally, one billion people are currently without access to safe water and over 2 billion lack adequate sanitation facilities.
Present global food supplies are more than adequate to provide everyone with all the needed calories, if the food were equally distributed. But over 820 million people in developing countries have calorie-deficient diets; over 60 percent live in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Even if a person consumes enough calories, this does not guarantee adequate intake of essential micronutrients - vitamins, minerals and trace elements. Micronutrient malnutrition ("hidden hunger") has serious public health consequences. For example, over one billion people consume diets deficient in iron. Iron deficiency is responsible for roughly half of the global prevalence of anaemia. Iron deficiency anaemia causes 20 percent of global maternal mortality, can impair children's health and development and reduce adult work performance. Vitamin A deficiency disorders affect 40 million people causing blindness and contributing to infections and death.
One in three developing-country children under the age of five - 178 million children - suffers stunting due to chronic undernutrition and poor quality diets. Eighty percent of them live in just 20 African and Asian countries. Stunting is associated with higher rates of illness and death, reduced cognitive ability and school performance in children and lower adult productivity and lifetime earnings. Chronic malnutrition during the first two years of life usually results in irreversible harm.
At each stage in the lifecycle, malnutrition has consequences for each successive stage and/or the next generation. Malnourished mothers are more likely to have low birthweight babies, that face higher mortality and disease rates, impaired mental and physical development and increased risk of adult chronic diseases. Stunted children living with inadequate food, health and care become stunted adolescents; the girls among them too often grow up as the next generation of malnourished mothers.
HIV/AIDS interacts negatively with malnutrition. Poor nutrition can accelerate the spread of HIV, both by increasing people's vulnerability to the virus and by increasing the risk of infection following exposure. In turn, HIV infection can lead to nutritional deficiencies through decreased food intake and malabsorption, which hasten the onset of AIDS. The disease impairs the immune system and so can lead to additional infections.
In 2008, the United Nations is appealing for humanitarian assistance for over 100 million people in two dozen countries affected by conflict and political and economic breakdown. Displaced people are susceptible to malnutrition because they frequently depend on food aid that may for a variety of reasons be inadequate in both quantity and quality. The number of natural disasters has increased, due to more frequent extreme weather events. Aid donors routinely fail to provide all of the resources requested through UN humanitarian appeals.
The costs of inaction are considerable, so efforts to accelerate progress against malnutrition in all its forms should have a high place on the global policy agenda. Inadequate dietary intake and disease are the immediate causes of malnutrition. Inadequate food consumption heightens vulnerability to infectious diseases, which, in turn, can keep the body from absorbing adequate food. These immediate causes stem from insufficient access to safe and wholesome food, poor maternal and child rearing practices and inadequate access to clean drinking water, safe sanitation and health services. Ultimately, these factors are embedded in the larger political, economic, social and cultural environment. Food insecurity, ill health and suboptimal caring practices are all closely related to poverty. Poor people generally consume fewer than 2,100 calories per day. Lower-income households experience significantly higher rates of preschooler stunting and illness and worse caring practices than better-off families. Taken together, chronic and acute child malnutrition, low birthweights, suboptimal breastfeeding and micronutrient deficiencies lead to the deaths of 3.6 million mothers and preschool children each year, accounting for 35 percent of all preschooler deaths and 11 percent of the global disease burden. Difficult pregnancies and illnesses due to malnutrition cost developing countries $30 billion annually. Lost productivity and income resulting from early deaths, poor school performance, disability and absenteeism raise the yearly total into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Malnutrition also reflects and contributes to inequity, disproportionately affecting poor, marginalized and extremely vulnerable groups. While the policies and programmes needed to address malnutrition will require substantial resources, the costs of not tackling malnutrition are considerable. Furthermore, food insecurity and malnutrition infringe on the human right to adequate food.
In addition to climate change and rising bioenergy demand, the following factors will constrain efforts to reduce malnutrition in the coming years:
- demographic forces;
- widespread land degradation and scarcity of fresh water resources, resulting from both bad management practices, inappropriate land uses for a certain land class and impacts from climate change and extreme climate variations;
- structural shifts in the food and agricultural system;
- transboundary movement of diseases;
- environmental and energy pressures.
World population will increase by 37 percent, to 9.2 billion people by 2050. Anticipated economic growth of 6 percent per year in developing countries during the next few years and rapid urbanization will also lead to increases in demand and structural shifts in diets. Productivity growth in cereals, the main staple food crops, declined dramatically in the 1990s and continues to decline for maize. A major reason is underinvestment in agriculture by aid donors and developing-country governments.
The global food system has a dualistic structure. The vast majority of farms (85 percent) remain operations of less than two hectares. But the 0.5 percent of farms that exceed 100 hectares capture a disproportionate share of global farm income, enjoy privileged access to policy makers and, particularly in developed countries, receive generous subsidies. Outside of farming, buying power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of supermarkets and other powerful corporate actors. Preferences of affluent consumers in high- and middle-income countries are shaping global food and agricultural systems, offering smallholders opportunities and niche markets. However, they may face difficulties in being able to produce up to the standards of the buying agents.
Agricultural intensification, rapid growth in international trade and more frequent international travel offer opportunities to bolster rural livelihoods. However, there are also substantial risks from the spread of plant and plant pests, animal diseases and invasive species across international borders and climate change will heighten these risks.
Efforts to intensify agricultural production have helped boost food output, but some agricultural practices have taken a severe toll on the natural resource base. In the absence of a yield-boosting technological breakthrough, increases in food production will have to come from area expansion. That would require cultivation of fragile or marginal land and destruction of forests and wildlife habitat, causing biodiversity loss and increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Food and agricultural production faces growing competition for water from home and industrial use.
By April 2008, crude petroleum prices reached an all-time high of US$120 per barrel and helped to raise demand for biofuels. This means increased costs for fertilizer, operating farm machinery and transportation of both inputs and output.
The report is available to download in PDF format as full text or by chapter.
- Full Text
- Table of Contents
- Chapter 1: Summary
- Chapter 2: Introduction
- Chapter 3: World Food Insecurity and Malnutrition: Scope, Trends, Causes and Consequences
- Chapter 4: Climate Change, Food Security and Nutrition
- Chapter 5: Nutrition and Bioenergy
- Chapter 6: Policies and Programmes for Improving Nutrition
- Chapter 7: Conclusions and Recommendations
- References
- Appendices (Appendix 1: Scenarios of the IPCC's Special Report on Emissions Scenarios and Appendix 2: IFPRI IMPACT Model)