“Without massive improvements in the food supply chain, many fragile nations are set to become increasingly vulnerable to financial volatility and climate shocks,” WFP said.
For particularly fragile countries, a slide towards famine is a real risk, it warned, noting that in many countries, the socio-economic effects of the pandemic — particularly loss of earnings and remittances — are heightening existing threats linked to conflict and climate change.
The UN food agency said it has unparalleled experience in buying and distributing food as it yearly increases the amount of food it procures locally from smallholder farmers, providing training in post-harvest storage and in how to access markets.
It said the need for concerted action to improve agricultural production while enhancing global supply chains and ending food waste is reflected in this year’s World Food Day theme: “Grow, Nourish, Sustain. Together”.
Food security is a measure of the availability of food and individuals' ability to access it. Affordability is only factor. There is evidence of food security being a concern many thousands of years ago, with central authorities in ancient China and ancient Egypt being known to release food from storage in times of famine. At the 1974 World Food Conference the term "food security" was defined with an emphasis on supply. Food security, they said, is the "availability at all times of adequate, nourishing, diverse, balanced and moderate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices". Later definitions added demand and access issues to the definition. The final report of the 1996 World Food Summit states that food security "exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life".
Household food security exists when all members, at all times, have access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Individuals who are food secure do not live in hunger or fear of starvation.
In the years 2011–2013, an estimated 842 million people were suffering from chronic hunger. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, or FAO, identified the four pillars of food security as availability, access, utilization, and stability. The United Nations (UN) recognized the Right to Food in the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and has since said that it is vital for the enjoyment of all other rights.
The 1996 World Summit on Food Security declared that "food should not be used as an instrument for political and economic pressure.
THE UN World Food Programme (WFP) has called for joint efforts from all stakeholders to improve food security in Eastern Africa.
WFP Eastern Africa regional director, Michael Dunford, made the call over the weekend in a statement issued to mark the World Food Day.
He said that the region is home to four percent of the global population but has 20 percent of the total number of acutely food insecure people in the world.
“There is a huge potential to improve food security across the region but this will require all stakeholders working closely together and adopting new ways of working if we are to build a future without hunger in Eastern Africa,” Dunford said
WFP, which last week won the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to fight hunger also called for global action to improve the systems that produce and distribute the food we eat, so that they can better withstand shocks including the COVID-19 pandemic that can spark alarming surges in the level of hunger in the world.
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