The World Food Economy : A 40 Year Perspective on the Past , and a Look Forward
an ecological concern — making sure that we don ’ t mine our agricultural resources , our soils and our water , in a way that in 10 years they ’ re gone and you can ’ t continue to produce . But we also need to think about ( 2 ) sustaining the incomes of the poor and the poor often rely heavily on exactly those resources . So , this is going to be a tricky debate going forward .
Three Levels of Food Security
With that complicated definition in place , we need to understand that there are three different levels of food security , each with its own unique ( but overlapping ) issues .
We measure food security at the household level . Ideally , we would always be measuring food security at the individual level because it is the individuals that matter . But the data are often not available for individuals . Instead , usually what we have is : ( 1 ) how much food is available in the household and ( 2 ) the composition and size of the household . With these data , we do the appropriate adjustments and try to figure out what ’ s going on for the individuals in the household . But this is where we measure food insecurity , it ’ s at the household level .
I think of this as the micro level . A lot of the food security community stops at that point and says let ’ s make sure we know what ’ s going on at the household level — see how the trends are changing and understand the characteristics of the households that have enough food and the characteristics of the ones that do not have enough food , end of story , and deal with the problem at that level . The difficulty with that is there is a food security issue that shows up at the national level — what I would call the macro side of food security — and it happens to be the food security level that policymakers worry about . They worry about whether urban markets have adequate food supplies at reasonably stable prices — stable food
Three levels of food security
• Household level ( micro : degree of undernourishment )
• National level ( macro : reflected in urban markets as stable prices for staple foodstuffs )
• Global level ( international market prices and the race between growth in demand and supply )
• Policy issues different from level to level
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