ABSTRACT
Food Security Approaches and Tools to Tackle Food Insecurity Achieving food security,1 that is, meeting the challenge of feeding 9 billion people by the year 2020, is taking a predominant role in both national and international agendas. It is a challenge to ensure food supply for a growing population, but especially when people are still suffering from hunger and malnutrition. Despite the fact that a sufficient amount of food is being produced globally, it is alarming that malnutrition is estimated to be the cause of 30 per cent of infant deaths and that approximately 850 million people are undernourished.2 However, undernourishment and malnourishment are not the only concerns when it comes to food security. Obesity and bad nutrition are also problems since globally there are more people that are overweight than underweight. Undernourishment is a challenge not only in Asia, which was home to 65 per cent of the world’s undernourished people in 2010-2012 (Asia having the largest population), but also in Africa, where the prevalence of undernourishment is 23 per cent, compared to 8 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean.3 Even though the proportion of the population in developing countries that is undernourished has fallen over the past two decades, statistics show that the pace of decline has slowed. This situation presents a challenge for the growing middle classes in developing countries that are faced with increasing urbanization, larger nutritional needs, and greater meat consumption4 on less land,5 while also suffering the effect of climate change.6
