Food insecurity, a global concern

A new report on the state of food insecurity points to a disturbing trend on the extent of hunger and malnutrition in the world.

THERE are many ways in which the era of corporate globalisation has not lived up to the early promises made by its votaries. Rates of growth of income and world trade have been far below expectations, and even below the previous period for most countries and for the world as a whole. Such growth as has occurred has also seen increasing joblessness, with unemployment emerging as a major problem in most economies. Inequalities have worsened, but material insecurities have increased for almost all categories of income.

However, there is one area in which most people would have expected that things have got better. That is, in terms of the state of food and nutrition. After all, the world market for most food items seemed to have been experiencing a glut over the past few years. World trade prices of most basic food categories have fallen from around 1996, and this should have been reflected in consumer prices as well.

In fact, even this is quite different from what was anticipated when the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was signed in 1994. At that time it was believed that reduction of agricultural subsidies in the developed world, along with increased market access for developing country agricultural exports, would actually cause world prices of food and related agricultural items to rise. Compared to that prognosis, the reality has apparently been far more favourable for food consumers. Therefore it is but natural to expect that things have got better at least with respect to food and nutrition across the world.

However, the latest report published by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2002, tells a very different story. According to this report, "progress in reducing hunger has virtually halted". The FAO estimates that in the period between 1998 and 2000, there were at least 840 million undernourished people in the world.

In the period between 1991-92 and 1998-2000, the number of undernourished people decreased by only 2.5 million a year, well below the declared goals. And even this rather small improvement was because of improved food and nutrition in certain pockets such as East Asia, with China alone reducing the number of chronically hungry people by 74 million people (or almost half) over this period. Other countries that performed well in this respect, according to the FAO, were Thailand, Vietnam, Peru, Ghana and Nigeria.

But in the rest of the developing world, the number of hungry people actually increased by 80 million. The worst hit was the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the combination of war and lack of development meant a tripling of the numbers of undernourished people over less than a decade. In India, the number of hungry people increased over this period by nearly 18 million, and remained unchanged as a share of the population at broadly one-fifth.

In addition, the Report points out that more than two billion people have micronutrient malnutrition, characterised by chronic dietary deficiencies. The effects of chronic hunger are dramatic and can directly or indirectly result in death; indeed, the Report estimates that 25,000 people die of poverty and hunger every day. But micronutrient malnutrition is also of great social concern. With such deficiencies, children fail to grow and develop normally; in adult life cognition is impaired, immune systems are compromised, and mental and physical capacities are limited. It is alarming to realise that more than one-fifth of the world's population could be thus afflicted.

The Report assesses the major cause of hunger in these terms. It identifies structural causes, such as inadequate access to land and poverty because of inadequate livelihood, as well as conjunctural factors such as armed conflicts, droughts and floods, and political, social and economic disruptions. The emphasis on land relations, and the need for land and other institutional reforms in agriculture, to combat hunger, is particularly well taken. The Report mentions, for example, that a study of 20 developing countries found that concentration of land ownership explained 69 per cent of the variation in poverty levels and associated hunger. It is especially important to make such points at the present time, when land reforms tend to get ignored in most discussions about policy.

The other important point the Report makes relates to the continued significance of public investment to ensure food security. It identifies areas where such investment is likely to be particularly fruitful: in the rehabilitation of degraded lands, in increasing rice production through new regionally adapted varieties, in diversifying sources of income in rural areas, and generally in addressing the risk factors which are common to conflict and food insecurity.

But possibly the most significant point is one that is mentioned but given somewhat less attention in the Report: the crucial issue of livelihoods. The Report recognises that loss of livelihood is typically the key shock factor that then generates a process that culminates in greater hunger and malnourishment in most developing countries. But it does not investigate further the forces that operate to induce such loss of livelihood in the first place.

This is where it might be possible to solve the apparent conundrum of the coexistence of lower world prices of food with continued, widespread and even increasing incidence of hunger in many parts of the developing world. The point is really that as world prices of food have fallen, incomes of the poor in many parts of the world have fallen by a greater degree, reflecting the general stagnation of productive employment opportunities and even the worsening of livelihood conditions.

The irony is that in much of the developing world, cultivators are suffering from this and from related increases in food insecurity just as much as or even more than other groups. And this is probably the most significant single conjunctural cause of the continued prevalence of widespread malnourishment. The macroeconomic causes for livelihood insecurity come dominantly from the effects of market deregulation and reduction of state expenditure that have marked the phase of corporate globalisation across almost all countries.

This means that, just as land reforms and more equal property distribution remain the key to solving the structural problem of hunger, the more transient or temporary evidence of hunger must be dealt with through macroeconomic policies that firmly commit governments to much greater degrees of involvement, investment and regulation.