Currently browsing posts about: Food-security

Martin Caraher, John Coveney, Mickey Chopra, editors.  Handbook of Food Security and Society.  Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023.  

I did a blurb for the back cover:

This Handbook argues convincingly that ending hunger means far more than providing food to those in deed.  It means transforming society to one that is more equitable, socially as well as economically.  The chapters here are a rich source of data, analysis, and inspiration about how to work toward that transformation—and the sooner, the better.

The 24 chapters by many authors cover case studies (Ireland, South Africa), measurement and naming of hunger and food insecurity, the right-to-food movement, lived experiences, gender issues, policy approaches (successful and not), financialization, charitable and philanthropic approaches, and the effects of COVID-19 and the Ukraine war.

They also include critical theoretical and practical discussions of what can be done, from food banks to cooperatives to economic policies.

On this last point, Tim Lang’s concluding chapter on “The intransigence of food insecurity: questioning the realities,” makes the book worth reading on its own.

This chapter began with the argument that food insecurity is a material reality and almost entirely located in low-income countries with food deficits.  Instead, it has suggested that we should see food insecurity as both an absolute and a relative phenomenon, as socially determined, therefore socially resolved.  If we so wish, we could shift entire populations across the FAO’s food insecurity continuum.  This would require multiple points of intervention.  There is no single policy lever to right food wrongs.

I particularly like his table summarizing what food industries could do for food insecurity—lots, as it happens, not least paying workers higher wages.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. released its annual State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report last week.  Its conclusions are sobering.

Global hunger is still far above pre-pandemic levels. It is estimated that between 690 and 783 million people in the world faced hunger in 2022. This is 122 million more people than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, the increase in global hunger observed in the last two years has stalled and, in 2022, there were about 3.8 million fewer people suffering from hunger than in 2021. The economic recovery from the pandemic has contributed to this, but there is no doubt that the modest progress has been undermined by rising food and energy prices magnified by the war inUkraine. There is no room for complacency, though, as hunger is still on the rise throughout Africa, Western Asia and the Caribbean.

Ultra-processed foods are a critical part of this story.  The word “processed” comes up 264 times in this report; “highly processed” comes up 99 times .  Some examples:

• Healthy diets are essential for achieving food security goals and improving nutritional outcomes. A healthy diet…is based on a wide range of unprocessed or minimally processed foods, balanced across food groups, while it restricts the consumption of highly processed foods and drink products…Eating a healthy diet throughout the life cycle is critical for preventing all forms of malnutrition, including child stunting and wasting, micronutrient deficiencies and overweight or obesity. It also helps reduce the risk of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and certain types of cancer.
• The unfinished agendas to reduce stunting, wasting and micronutrient deficiency, along with rising overweight and obesity, represent the current challenge to address multiple forms of malnutrition. Malnutrition in all its forms is related to poor diets, the rise of low-cost
  nutrient-poor foods and the increasing availability of highly processed foods in rural areas.
• Supply-side factors, including globalized technology in food production, transportation and marketing, coupled with an increase in demand for readily available foods, have contributed to a substantial expansion of supermarkets, hypermarkets, food deliveries and other convenience retailers. However, these are also associated with increased supply and spread of energy-dense and highly processed foods.
• However, urbanization has also contributed to the spread and consumption of processed and highly processed foods, which are increasingly cheap, readily available and marketed, with private sector small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and larger companies often setting the nutrition landscape. Cost comparisons of individual food items and/or food groups from existing studies indicate that the cost of nutritious foods – such as fruits, vegetables and animal source foods – is typically higher than the cost of energy-dense foods high in fats, sugars and/or salt, and of staple foods, oils and sugars.
• The dynamics of supply and demand for processed foods, however, are complex. There has been a surge on the supply side, with small and medium enterprises and large private companies alike making massive aggregate investments in all types of processed foods (from minimally to highly processed) in response to demand. At the same time, aggressive marketing and relatively low pricing – and even interference in policies to curb consumption of highly processed foods and sugar-sweetened beverages – are driving up consumption.

The report emphasizes the importance of food processing in contributing to poor diets and health.

What is to be done?  From the Brief summary:

Leveraging connectivity across the rural–urban continuum will require adequate governance mechanisms and institutions to coordinate coherent investment beyond sectoral and administrative boundaries. To this end, subnational governments can play a key role in designing and implementing policies beyond the traditional top-down approach. Approaches to agrifood systems governance should ensure policy coherence among local, regional and national settings through the engagement of relevant agrifood systems stakeholders at all levels.

I read this as saying what’s need is community-based, bottom up approaches at the local level.  That’s a great place to start.  Go for it.

Resources

• The online report
• The  pdf
• The digital report
• The Brief 
• And see Access to food in 2022: filling data gaps. Results of twenty national surveys using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)

The USDA has released its annual report on food insecurity.  The news is relatively good.

It’s even relatively good for households with children.

Why the sharp downturn?

USDA ducks this question (too political, I guess): “This report does not provide an analysis of possible causal explanations for prevalence or trends in food insecurity.”

But the reason is obvious:  increased participation in federal food assistance programs and higher benefits from those programs.

If people have more money for food, they will buy more food and feed their children better.

See:

• New York Times: Expanded Safety Net Drives Sharp Drop in Child Poverty
• Pandemic aid helped families’ nutrition and well-being — report, in Ag Insider
• Hunger Free America survey.  The survey data are  HERE.
• The school meals programs also helped, as this JAMA Open article documents.

And the USDA documents:

• Website 
• Summary report
• Household Food Security in the United States in 2021

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Coming soon!  My memoir, October 4.

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The Government Accountability Office has produced a “snapshot” on Healthy Eating: Government-wide solutions for promoting healthy diets, food safety, and food security.  It’s only two pages; take a look.

As of July 2022, many of our recommendations for developing strategies on healthy eating have not yet been addressed.

1. Strategy Needed to Address Diet-Related Chronic Health Conditions
Three diet-related chronic health conditions (cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer) were among the 10 leading causes of death in 2018, according to CDC. Men, Black or African Americans, and people living in southern states had disproportionately higher mortality rates from diet related conditions. Dietary changes could have prevented some of these deaths.

Additionally, in 2018, about three in four adults in the U.S. had excess weight, which can be associated with poor diet and lead to cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer.

The GAO recommends that the federal government establish leadership for strategies:

• On diet-related efforts
• Food-safety oversight
• Nutrition assistance programs to respond to emergencies

Excellent suggestions.  If only they could be implemented.

I’m getting caught up on reports this week.  Here’s one from the US Agency for International Development:  COVID-19 and Nutrition Analytical Framework

The purpose of the Framework:

• Allow policymakers and implementers to better track the interaction of the COVID-19 pandemic and nutrition
• Provide a tool for planning policies, programs, and interventions
• Help identify data gaps
• Support a systems approach to addressing problems “caused, increased, or intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic”

The Framework:

What I like about this Framework is how it so clearly identifies the upstream system levels of intervention: food, health, social, education, and infrastructure.

It’s also interactive, but for that you have to go to its source and click on each section.

FAO and other UN agencies. released the 2022 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI).

Here’s the video that comes with it: A Tale of Empty Plates.

The report does not mince words:

• This year’s report should dispel any lingering doubts that the world is moving backwards in its efforts to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms.
• The distance to reach many of the SDG 2 [Sustainable Development Goal #2, Zero Hunger] targets is growing wider each year.
• The intensification of the major drivers behind recent food insecurity and malnutrition trends (i.e. conflict, climate extremes and economic shocks) combined with the high cost of nutritious foods and growing inequalities will continue to challenge food security and nutrition.

As the press release puts it, “The numbers paint a grim picture:”

• As many as 828 million people were affected by hunger in 2021 – 46 million people more from a year earlier and 150 million more from 2019.
• …the proportion of people affected by hunger jumped in 2020 and continued to rise in 2021, to 9.8 percent of the world population. This compares with 8 percent in 2019 and 9.3 percent in 2020.
• Around 2.3 billion people in the world (29.3 percent) were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021 – 350 million more compared to before the outbreak of the COVID‑19 pandemic.
• The gender gap in food insecurity continued to rise in 2021 – 31.9 percent of women in the world were moderately or severely food insecure, compared to 27.6 percent of men.
• Almost 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020, up 112 million from 2019.
• An estimated 45 million children under the age of five were suffering from wasting….149 million children under the age of five had stunted growth and development due to a chronic lack of essential nutrients in their diets, while 39 million were overweight.

The one bright note:

• Progress is being made on exclusive breastfeeding, with nearly 44 percent of infants under six months of age being exclusively breastfed worldwide in 2020. This is still short of the 50 percent target by 2030. Of great concern, two in three children are not fed the minimum diverse diet they need to grow and develop to their full potential.

But overall

• nearly 670 million people (8 percent of the world population) will still be facing hunger in 2030.
• This is a similar number to 2015, when the goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition by the end of this decade was launched under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
• In otherwords, there has been no progress since 2015.

If we want to fix this, we will have to:

• End the pandemic
• End wars
• End climate change
• End income and social inequalities

There’s our agenda.  That’s all.  Get busy.

I got a press release from the Global Network Against Food Crises (GNAFC) , an international alliance of the United Nations, the European Union, governmental and non-governmental agencies, announcing its latest annual report on Global Food Crises.

Its main findings:

About 193 million people in 53 countries or territories experienced acute food insecurity at crisis or worse levels than in 2021.

The countries in worst trouble are Ethiopia, southern Madagascar, South Sudan and Yemen; these require urgent action to head off widespread collapse of livelihoods, starvation and death.

Why is this happening?  The key drivers:

• Conflict: the Ukraine war
• Weather extremes: climate change
• Economic shocks: the COVID-19 pandemic

What needs to be done?

• Address root causes: structural rural poverty, marginalization, population growth and fragile food systems
• Prioritize smallholder agriculture
• Promote structural changes to the way external financing is distributed,
• Promote more efficient and sustainable ways of providing humanitarian assistance
• Avoid further conflicts

Good luck with that.  These are the political challenges of our time.

On May 4, I was sent this press release from Tufts University : White House Announces Historic Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health.

Today, the Biden-Harris administration announced that it will hold a historic White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health this September…This will require bringing together diverse stakeholders, and raising the voices of people with lived experiences in food and nutrition insecurity, hunger, and diet-related disease…

To inform and help achieve these goals…[we]are announcing the formation of the Task Force on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health (Task Force), along with an accompanying Strategy Group on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health to advise the Task Force.

The Task Force brings together a diverse, non-partisan group of stakeholders to inform the goals of the White House Conference. This effort is not organized or endorsed by the White House, but represents an independent effort to convene voices from across the nation to help solve the issues at the heart of the Conference’s focus.

The official White House announcment makes clear that this conference is about both food insecurity and dietary determinants of chronic disease and COVID risk.

Millions of Americans struggle with hunger. Millions more struggle with diet-related diseases—like heart disease and diabetes—which are some of the leading causes of death and disability in the U.S.

The toll of hunger and these diseases is not distributed equally, disproportionately impacting underserved communities, including Black, Hispanic, and Native Americans, low-income families, and rural Americans.

This is exciting news.  As I wrote in a previous post, if you are old enought or up on the history of US nutrition policy, you might remember the 1969 White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health.  This led to the creation and strengthening of many nutrition programs, SNAP among them.

Tufts held a 50th anniversary conference at which I spoke (videos of the talks are here–I was on Panel 3 starting at about 17 minutes in).

And now for the questions.

Mine is this: What will be the balance between the conference focus on food insecurity (not controversial except for the cost) and the greatly needed fbut highly controversial focus on poor diets and their consequences for chronic disease and COVID risk?

Food safety lawyer Bill Marler asks: What about food safety? 

Let this sink in: The CDC estimates 48 million people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from foodborne diseases each year in the United States.  It is not that I do not think a Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health is important and necessary, but could ya throw a bone to those sickened by foodborne illnesses?

E&E News notes: Biden nutrition conference may fire up climate debate on meat

Of all the food and agriculture interests bound to be represented in the Biden administration’s discussions, meat — and especially beef — may have the biggest messaging challenge, extolling its value in the diet against charges that Americans already eat too much and that raising and sending livestock to market contributes to climate change.

“We look forward to being a part of this important conversation and sharing the science-based, data-driven research regarding the immense environmental and nutritional benefits from cattle and beef production,” the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, a producers’ trade group, told E&E News.

I suspect we will have many opportunities to weigh in on this.

I, for one, will be watching the progress on this conference with great interest.  Stay tuned.

Resources

• YouTube – President Biden’s announcement of the conference
• The White House announcement
  Health.gov: Ending Hunger, Improving Nutrition and Physical Activity, and Reducing Diet-Related Diseases and Disparities
• Tufts University – Informing the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health
• Report from the National Commision on Hunger
• Report from Tufts’ 50^th Anniversary Conference
• Tufts’ video of the 1969 White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health
• CNN’s report on the announcement