Food and Nutrition Security The Concept and its Realization

This paper reviews the prevailing concept of food and nutrition security and points at needs for concept revisions in order to more comprehensively depict causes and indirect consequences for the food and nutrition insecure, and guide policy actions. The state of realization of food and nutrition security is briefly presented, and the menu of policy actions for enhancing food and nutrition security is discussed, and linkages between “bread and brain”, i.e. cognitive and educational issues of nutrition are pointed out. The paper highlights the need for accelerated and revised actions at international and national levels to achieve food and nutrition security for all. 1. The Concept of food and nutrition security The 2009 Declaration of the World Summit on Food Security defines the concept of food security as “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. The four pillars of food security are availability, access, utilization and stability. The nutritional dimension is integral to the concept of food security” (FAO 2009, p. 1). FAO further states that, based on this definition, “... four food security dimensions can be identified: food availability, economic and physical access to food, food utilization and stability (vulnerability and shocks) over time” FAO 2013, p. 17). Each food security dimension is described by specific indicators by FAO (2013). Undernourishment is one such important indicator among several. The absolute number of undernourished people in the world decreased from an estimated 1012 million in 1990/92 to about 842 million in 2010/12 according to FAO estimates, a decline by 17 percent (FAO 2013, see table 1). The percentage of undernourished in the developing countries declined from 23.6 to 14.3 percent. If these trends continue, the Millennium Development 1 Director, Center for Development Research (ZEF) Bonn University, Professor for Economic and Technological Change, [email protected] Bread and Brain, Education and Poverty Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Scripta Varia 125, Vatican City 2014 www.pas.va/content/dam/accademia/pdf/sv125/sv125-vonbraun.pdf