What is food security? And what can be done to help people become food secure? Case Study Click on the following links for further information about this case study: Teacher's Notes Student Activities   What is food security? Food security is when you know you will receive your next meal at the time you expect it. However, if you do not know when your next meal will be, but you do know that whenever it comes it will be small and not very healthy - then you would be suffering from "food insecurity". Do you know where your next meal is coming from? Not everyone in the world has food security. In fact, over 800 million people are chronically under nourished in a world that can produce sufficient food for everyone. Most of these hungry people are found in developing countries, but 34 million are found in developed countries. These 820 million people suffer from "food insecurity". They simply cannot get enough food for "three healthy meals a day". Instead, they experience ill health and they will almost certainly have a shorter life span than you can expect to have. Children who suffer from food insecurity, especially when they are very young, will almost certainly be shorter and weigh less than children of the same age who had food security. How can we understand this problem? There can be many causes of food insecurity. Some causes are short term and are brought about by nature being destructive, eg, when floods, cyclones, droughts, bushfires, volcanic eruptions or locust plagues destroy crops and food stores. Sometimes food insecurity is caused by humans being destructive and fighting wars. A war usually means that many will go hungry. Bombs destroy food stocks, bullets make it unsafe to go outside and harvest the crops, and landmines make it unsafe to plough the fields. Sometimes the problem is in the environment. If there is not enough fresh water for all the crops the people need to irrigate; if soil erosion has washed away, or blown away, the good soil; if the local rivers and seas have been overfished … then the people will be hungry, and will suffer a long term problem with food security. Sometimes the causes of food insecurity are social and economic. This can happen if farmers have very small farms, or use poor farming techniques, and cannot grow enough food for themselves and to sell to others. It can also happen when women and girls, who produce a great deal of their household's food supply - are treated as second class citizens: many girls do not go to school; many women cannot borrow money so they can buy another cow, or buy pipes to bring water to their crops; and many women and girls often go hungry so that the men can eat.   In many developing countries, women produce more food for the household than do men but often have less access to it.   Often the causes of food insecurity lie in people's health. If people cannot get enough good food they will be sick, and if they are sick they cannot work hard enough to get enough good food and their situation becomes worse. What is being done to help? What can be done to help? Australia helps some of those who suffer from food insecurity. If the problem is a short term one, then food can be sent. In 1997 and 1998, when Papua New Guinea (PNG) suffered a huge drought, Australia, through the Government's overseas aid agency, spent $30 million to deliver rice, flour, oil and fresh water to thousands and thousands of hungry, thirsty people. When rain eventually fell, Australia spent more money to supply the PNG people with seeds so they could start to grow crops again.   Once the drought had broken in PNG, seed potatoes were delivered to the people so they could start growing food again.   Australia provides more than 250,000 tonnes of food each year to the World Food Program, which operates like a 'food bank' that can be used in humanitarian emergencies for immediate relief, and development situations to help households shift towards more sustainable livelihoods. The Australian Government has pledged to spend at least $1 billion (ie, $1,000,000,000) over four years, to improve food security for those in need. This money will will go towards: helping people improve their farms and their herds and have more control of their lives; constructing food stores and improving roads so that food can be moved to where is it needed, or where it can be sold; encouraging trade so that food can be more easily bought and sold; improving the status of women and girls so it is easier for them to go to short courses to learn about farming and herding and to borrow money to buy the seed and fertiliser and technology they need: ensuring that adults, and especially children, receive food in emergency situations.   In 1998-99, most assistance for food security focused on Asia, with 57% of total funding, Africa received 8%; 5% was directed to Papua New Guinea and a smaller proportion went to the rest of the Pacific. What sort of world do we want? We want a world in which we all live in an environment that is sustainable, and that provides food security for every one of us. "Sustain - able" means that we are looking after the soil, air, water, forests, animals and so on, so that we can pass on to our children a healthy environment that will be able to feed them. If we look at what Australia is doing to help people become food secure, and we add to that what other nations such as France, Germany, USA, Norway and United Kingdom are doing, you might think that the world is providing enough assistance already. However there are still many challenges. In 1996 the countries at the World Food Summit made a promise that we would halve the number of hungry people in the world (from around 820 million to 410 million) by the year 2015. However a lot of work is needed to reach that goal. One hungry person is one too many, and all the people of the world must be committed to this goal if we are ever going to be able to say with pride, "Everyone in the world knows they will have a next meal, that it will be a healthy one, and that it will be on time."   Top © Commonwealth of Australia