Major Issues in Food Security

FAO (2002) stated that the rate of increase in undernourishment in Africa vastly exceeds that of other developing regions. Achieving food security is imperative, but how to do so is an elusive, complex problem. Part of the problem is the very low current and past

levels of investment in productivity-increasing measures in African agriculture, which have meant high unit costs of production and progressive environmental degradation. The results are low incomes for farmers and other rural residents, reduced competitiveness, and in- creasing food insecurity and child malnutrition.

The near stagnant economies in parts of Africa are to a large extent a reflection of stagnant agriculture. Lower unit costs in production, resulting from productivity increases, would lead to lower consumer prices for food and higher farm incomes, which, in turn, would promote economic growth through lower wage costs, higher investments, and increasing consumer demand outside agriculture. Smallholder-led economic growth could lead to dramatic improvements in food security and nutrition. Science and technology can directly contribute to food security through improved crops and cropping practices, labour- saving technologies, better communications, and improved quality of food processing, packaging and marketing. Women and children must be major beneficiaries of any advances.

Smallholder farmers who are the major producers of food in Nigeria are noted to reside mainly in the rural areas, poorer and less food secure than the rest of the population.

Dealing with food insecurity in Nigeria means tackling the problems faced by these rural farm families in their effort in making a livelihood. Problems faced by the farm families are diverse in nature. This is as a result of diversity in their accessibility to resources, their choice of activities, and the entire structure of their lives. Every farmer is unique; however, those who share similar conditions also often share common problems and priorities. Therefore, farming systems approach offers a framework for understanding the needs of families within a system and the relative importance of strategies for development and food security (FAO, 2001).

Omojola and Soneye (1993) did a similar study in Nigeria, using the discriminant analysis. His variables and analysis was based on food expenditure and socio-demographic variables. He found that % of total food expenditure going to livestock and fish products, total household income, family size and level of formal education of household head are the key discriminating variables between the food secure and insecure on the national level. In essence, food security is a multifaceted concept, which cannot be treated in isolation from other indexes of living standards. Therefore efforts geared towards achieving food security should also address other areas of human and infrastructure development.

Food Security, we all know, is much more than food quantity. The green revolution has not ended the recurring problems of starvation and malnutrition encountered in many parts of the world, and in particular sub-Saharan Africa. More often than not, the issue of food security, as emphasized by many researchers, is about access to existing food, and about the quality of this food. Access itself is more complex than the popular image of emergency work, moving food to an area where the population is in danger of starvation.

Access to food needs to be continuous, adapted in quantity and quality to the needs and the traditions of the different members of a population.

Food Security can be a survival issue in extreme cases. In many more cases, it is an issue of development, and an issue of human right. What do we, researchers, have to offer? What do we do to improve food security? What could we do? In an attempt to address these questions, Abdullahi (1999) earlier suggested that we could:

a) Review the current state of the art with respect to research and development activities that affect food systems in sub-Saharan Africa;

b) Identify gaps in current food and health research strategies;

c) Recommend future research strategies;

d) Improve the links between researchers, in particular young scientists, in Africa.

From the various brain-storming sessions taking place in the world, researchers will be able to identify gaps, and they will be able to work towards recommending research strategies. Improving links between researchers is a direct objective of international cooperation between continents. Many questions are being asked by Food Security researchers, around the world. Questions are, after all, at the source of all research! But others -politicians, practitioners, donors and beneficiaries of our work- have questions for researchers, too. Are we listening to them? We would like to offer some of them here, in order to start another angle of thinking:

i. What problems have we solved, in recent decades?

ii. Which ones do we still need to work on?

iii. Why have we failed to solve some of the problems?

iv. What is the plan for the future?

Rukuni and Eicher (1987) made the important point that even if a country is self- sufficient in food, this does not imply that all (or even a large proportion) of its people may have access to sufficient food at all times. Urban or landless people may not have sufficient money to buy food, and the rural poor who have land may suffer from lack of food during times of drought or during the "hungry gap" before the harvest. Therefore, access to food is as important as food availability and research and policy action should be directed to both these aspects. They suggest six challenges for food-security researchers in Africa as follows:

i. Food and agricultural production;

ii. Marketing, rural infrastructure, and storage;

iii. Raising rural per-capita incomes and generating employment in rural areas;

iv. Food access and nutrition;

v. National food-security policy analysis; and vi. Regional food-security policy analysis.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that almost 200 million Africans were undernourished at the dawn of the millennium, compared with 133 million 20 years earlier (FAO, 2000). The rate of increase in undernourishment in Africa vastly exceeds that of other developing regions. Yet, West Africa has gone against the trend in the rest of Africa, with its numbers and the prevalence of undernourishment falling dramatically over the period, and this is reason for optimism that trends can be reversed in other parts of Africa (FAO, 2002). Countries that stand out are Benin, Ghana and Nigeria, but they were the only Sub-Saharan African countries that had consistent declines in both the numbers and the prevalence of undernourished people over the past 20 years.

About 33 percent of people in Sub-Saharan Africa are undernourished, compared to about 6 percent in North Africa and 15 percent in Asia (FAO, 2002). More than 60 percent of the undernourished are in Eastern Africa, with more than half of the populations in Congo Democratic Republic and Mozambique affected, while Angola, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia show prevalence rates between 40 and 50 percent. Nigeria’s prevalence rate is low, but its large population means that the country accounts for 22 percent of the food insecure in West and Central Africa.

Achieving food security in Africa is complex. Clearly increased food availability is a necessary component but not a sufficient one. Over the past 20 years, per capita crop and livestock production in Sub-Saharan Africa declined by about 0.2 percent per year (FAO, 2000). In the last 10 years there has been a reversal to an annual per capita increase of 0.3 percent. Hence, while recent production trends per capita have been encouraging, projected aggregate demand growth of 2.8 percent per year to 2015 is likely to exceed projected

production growth of 2.6 percent per year over the same period. This will represent a challenge for Africa and implies major food imports in the absence of significant productivity growth.

Garret and Ruel (1999) maintained that African farming systems have usually provided the minimum level of subsistence food production needed for survival in most years. Until comparatively recently, in those areas where communication and transport facilities were virtually nonexistent, there was little advantage in producing a surplus for sale or exchange outside the community, because there were so many difficulties in transporting and marketing it; thus communities lived at a subsistence level. Some insurance against the risk of crop failure are provided by storing grain for a few years or by planting more cassava or tuber crops than will be needed immediately. Surplus grain could also be exchanged for livestock in good years, and the livestock could again be exchanged for grain if times became hard.

The world’s population is becoming increasingly urbanised as a result of both natural increase and rural-urban migration. The percent of urban residents in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to rise from 30-47%. This rapid increase in urbanisation poses new and different challenges for food security in the region. The three fundamental components of food security availability, access and utilisation differ in urban and rural contexts and across urban socio-economic groups. A greater diversity of both local and imported food products are available in cities although, most of the food is not produced within city boundaries.

Similarly, much of the available food is processed either locally or imported in a processed form. To cater to busy urban lifestyles, cities offer access to a wide variety of food prepared outside the home; including street food and food served in restaurants and kiosks (Lal, 1991a).

Access to food in urban areas is dependent on cash exchange, with few exceptions, where urban food production contributes directly to household intake. Reliance on purchased food is a leading factor in household food insecurity of poor urban populations, who lack a fixed income. Although a wider variety of food is available, the food consumed in urban areas is not necessarily of superior nutritional quality and food safety is a growing concern in many urban environments. The different influencing factors which impact food security in urban populations, particularly among the urban poor should be considered when designing policies and programmes to improve food security (FAO.1983).