AGRICULTURE

BOX 1
FOUR DIMENSIONS OF FOOD SECURITY
The 1996 World Food Summit agreed on
the following definition of food security,
which is used by FAO: “Food security exists
when all people, at all times, have physical
and economic access to sufficient safe and
nutritious food that meets their dietary
needs and food preferences for an active
and healthy life”. The definition
encompasses four dimensions:
Availability of sufficient quantities of food of
appropriate quality, supplied through domestic
production or imports (including food aid).
Access by individuals to adequate
resources (also called entitlements)
for acquiring appropriate foods for
a nutritious diet.
Utilization of food through adequate diet,
clean water, sanitation and health care to
reach a state of nutritional well-being
where all physiological needs are met.
Stability in the availability of and access to
food, regardless of sudden shocks (e.g. an
economic or climatic crisis) or cyclical
events (e.g. seasonal food scarcity).
SOURCE: FAO, 2006.
BOX 2
CLIMATE CHANGE AND NUTRITION
Climate change affects nutrition status and
dietary choices through its impacts on food
security, diseases, water safety, sanitation,
livelihoods and caregiving. In turn, people’s
capacity to adapt to, or mitigate, climate change
is also affected (IFPRI, 2015).
Climate change amplifies the impact of droughts,
floods and storms and exposes large numbers of
people – especially the poor and most vulnerable
– to the risk of undernutrition following extreme
climate events (Confalonieri et al., 2007).
Seasonal patterns of inadequate food availability
and access, a major cause of undernutrition
among poor rural communities, are accentuated
by climate change, which has impacts also on
livelihood security and on intra-family food
distribution, affecting in turn the nutrition status
of children and women in particular (Wijesinha-
Bettoni et al., 2013).
Some studies indicate that the nutritional quality
of key food crops could suffer under climate
change. A study by Myers et al. (2014)
estimated that when grown under the high levels
of CO 2 expected by 2050, wheat grain had 9
percent less zinc, 5 percent less iron, and 6
percent less protein, while losses in rice were 3
percent, 5 percent and 8 percent, respectively,
compared to expected yields without climate
change. Maize would suffer similar losses of
nutrients; soybeans would not lose protein but
would contain less zinc and iron.
Food safety may be compromised by an increase
in food-borne pathogens, as well as
contamination or chemical changes that increase
the prevalence of toxic compounds in food. For
example, upsurges in algal surface blooms
contaminate drinking water and shellfish with
cyanotoxins (Paerl and Huisman, 2009), while
higher temperatures and humidity increase the
risk of mycotoxin contamination of stored cereals
and pulses (Paterson and Lim, 2010). In
addition, changes in patterns of plant and
animal diseases may lead to increased use of
potentially harmful agricultural chemicals.
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