Food security unattainable without equitable distribution, purchasing power
Even with sufficient food production, unless everyone has access to food stocks and can also afford it, can a country really be considered to have achieved food security?
How should one view food security in a country?
There was a time when food security used to be equated with sufficient amounts of food available at the macro level. Following the arithmetic rule, the calculation of food security was simple. What is the per capita daily food intake requirement of a person?
If that amount is multiplied by 365, one can get the yearly per capita food requirements of a person. And if that figure is again multiplied by the country's population, its annual total food requirements would be derived. In light of that figure, the focus would then be on the total food production of the country.
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
If the total food production was higher or equal to the total food requirements of a country, then the country would be identified as a 'food self-sufficient country'. At that time, if a country were food self-sufficient, it would be considered to have achieved food security as well.
There are, however, some nuances to this simplified approach.
First, if a country's domestic food production falls short of its total food requirements, it can import food and meet the country's total food requirements. In fact, domestic food production is not a necessary condition for meeting the food requirements of a country.
Second, even if the notion of food self-sufficiency is used as an overall concept, it can be specific to specific food items. Thus, a country may be self-sufficient in rice but not in lentils. This has implications for food security.
Third, food security, defined only in terms of food self-sufficiency, takes a mechanical, production-centric approach to the phenomenon.
The untenability of the production-based notion of food security becomes clear if we look at the history of famines across the world.
Historically, wherever famines occurred, in most of them, they occurred not because of any shortage of food. In fact, in those instances, the total amounts of food available at the macro level were sufficient to adequately feed every mouth of that land, and there was no reason for widespread hunger. This was the case of the Great Bengal Famine of 1943. Thus, it is evident that the notion of a production-centred food self-sufficiency neither ensures food security, nor is it consistent with the concept of food self-sufficiency.
The sufficient condition for food security implies that the necessary amount of food would be available to every citizen of a country. That availability must embrace two necessary conditions — first, it is not enough that a country has an adequate amount of food, but most importantly, its distribution must be equitable. Second, everyone must have entitlement to food with sufficient purchasing power.
During most of the famines that the world has witnessed over the years, there was sufficient food at the macro level, but what was lacking was its fair distribution and insufficient purchasing power of people. Therefore, food security is not equal to production-centric food self-sufficiency; rather, it implies equitable distribution and desired food availability to people, backed by their sufficient purchasing power. The concept of food security is not only a macro notion, it is very much a micro idea too.
Lots of people are of the view that food security is not the last word in human development, the notion of nutritional security is much more relevant. This is because for human well-being, nutritional security is more critical. In fact, food security is a prerequisite of nutritional security. With the availability of minimum necessary calories, a person can be food secure, but not necessarily nutritional secure.
This is because a predetermined level of calories may be obtained from different combinations of food. But all of them will not result in a balanced diet. For example, the necessary minimum calories that a human being needs, may be derived only from carbohydrates, but that food combination will not be a balanced diet. Thus, even if such a package ensures food security, it may not result in nutritional security.
For example, in Bangladesh, the daily per capita consumption of major foods, including lentils, pulses, fish, meat, milk and milk products, and fruits increased from 723 grams in 2016 to 821 grams in 2023. In the case of rice, however, the per capita consumption declined by 38 grams, on average, from 367 grams in 2016 to 329 grams in 2022.
During most of the famines that the world has witnessed over the years, there was sufficient food at the macro level, but what was lacking was its fair distribution and sufficient purchasing power of people. Therefore, food security is not equal to production-centric food self-sufficiency; rather, it implies equitable distribution and desired food availability to people, backed by their sufficient purchasing power.
Combining both these sets of data, it seems that by reducing the consumption of carbohydrates and increasing the consumption of protein, dairy products and vegetables, there might have been a shift towards more nutritional security, moving away from mere carbohydrate-centric food security. The issue of nutritional security is of more significance for future generations of Bangladesh, as one in every four children of the country are stunted and one in every five children are underweight.
Who would ensure food security in a society? On the one hand, it is the peasants, and on the other, it is the state. The peasants would contribute to food security through producing adequate food, and the state would do the same, by ensuring the required fair distribution of the total available food and protecting the purchasing power of the people.
As the peasants are central to the food security of a country, the issue of justice to them is important, from a moral angle as well as from economic considerations. The issue of justice to the peasants should be considered from two aspects — from the perspective of food production and from the perspective of food security of their own families.
In the context of food production, the issue of social justice for peasants has three dimensions: land ownership on the basis of their rights; access to and availability of agricultural inputs, such as agricultural loans, deeds, fertilisers, and irrigation; and ensuring fair prices for their commodities through the elimination of middlemen and other structural barriers in the marketing chains.
Ensuring food security for peasant families themselves is another aspect of justice for the peasants. Ensuring justice for peasant families would require increasing the incomes of the peasants and enhancing their purchasing power. In that context, it would be necessary to arrange fair prices for the food commodities they produce along with affordable prices for the foodstuffs they consume.
The state has a role to play in both the micro and macro-level food security of a country. To ensure food security in a country, it can undertake various measures in the areas of equitable distribution of food as well as enhancing the purchasing power of the people.
In order to ensure fair distribution of food, the state can take appropriate measures to remove impediments in the process of food availability chain. It can pursue food subsidies for ensuring food entitlements for the poor and the marginalised groups. Through open market operations, the government can make food distribution equitable.
On the other hand, in order to enhance the purchasing power of the people, strategies for expanding employment and ensuring proper wages can be pursued. Food price inflation depreciates the purchasing power of the people. In that regard, adopting relevant monetary, fiscal and commercial policies, reducing the structural impediments of the food supply chain, through reducing food price inflation, may increase the effective purchasing power of the people.
Sometimes, imports play a role in the food security of a country, particularly in those years, when domestic food production is disrupted because of multiple challenges. During that time, the government must take appropriate measures so that the food security of the country remains intact.
Stocking food grains in government warehouses after the harvest and preserving them throughout the year is a critical determinant of food security in a country. Climate change is a threat to food security too — by destroying crops and by reducing the purchasing power of the peasants. Measures for tackling climate change are also essential for food security.
Dr Selim Jahan is the former director of the Human Development Report Office and Poverty Division at the United Nations Development Programme, New York, US.
