1. FOOD SECURITY
Concepts, Basic Facts,
and Measurement Issues
June 26 to July 7, 2006
Dhaka, Bangladesh

2. Rao 5a:
The Choice of a Policy
Strategy
Learning: Trainees will learn that while
strategies focused exclusively on supply or
entitlements or nutrition will almost never
be relevant, relative weights attached to
these pure strategies deserve careful
consideration. They will learn to identify
key elements of each pure strategy in any
such exercise.

3. Brief Contents
• policy strategies broadly classified: 1) supply, 2) entitlement
promotion, and 3) utilization/nutrition approaches
• choice of strategy governed by dominant food deficit types
coupled with major problems in utilization and stability
• key features of production and supply based approaches
• rationale & objections to self-sufficiency; self-sufficiency vs
self-reliance
• general role of poverty reduction, safety nets
• food-based nutrition interventions: dietary
improvement, food fortification
• micronutrient supplementation & related health
interventions

4. Policy Strategies
• Corresponding to the 3 analytical approaches
(availability, access, utilization), we distinguish 3
broad policy strategies
– availability and supply oriented [increase supplies]
– access and demand oriented [increase demands]
– utilization and outcomes oriented [improve nutrition]
• Clearly, ALL THREE are needed to assure FS
• Moreover, it is usually a mistake to assume D & S
sides are "independent” of each other or that D
& S are “independent” of utilization!

5. Complementarities
• Supply approaches have indirect effects on food
demand (e.g. through lower prices inducing
increase in quantity demanded, or even shifting
the Demand Curve through actual-income
changes of the producers, not just the real
income effect of the price change)
• Demand-stimulation will usually also cause
changes on the supply side (e.g., through higher
prices inducing supply responses, or even
shifting the Supply Curve through altering the
capabilities of the producers)

6. Complementarities (contd.)
• Improved utilization/nutrition can be expected
to alter both food supply and demand prospects
significantly insofar as a better nourished
population can both produce more food and
have the capability to demand more food as well.
• A sensible approach to food security must
therefore incorporate all 3 elements, aiming to
augment food supplies, enhance food
demands, and improve food utilization and
nutrition by improving food quality and safety
and dietary balance.

7. Choice of a Policy Strategy
• Which strategy? While “ALL THREE” is the correct
answer, the emphasis will also depend on context
i.e., the MAIN TYPE OF FOOD DEFICIT
prevalent in the country.
– If DEMAND DEFICIT is the main issue, THEN, focus on
policies to increase domestic supply or F/E earnings
– If SUPPLY DEFICIT is the main issue, THEN, focus on
employment and income generation policies
– If DIETARY IMBALANCE is the main
issue, THEN, focus on policies for improved nutrition, food
safety, health care, drinking water and sanitation

8. Choice of a Policy Strategy
Figure 2.12: Food deficit types & priority approaches
to food security required
a) Large production/supply b) Large demand deficits,
deficits: mainly supply-based primarily demand-based
approaches required approaches required

9. Production and Supply Based Approaches
• Policies to increase food production and domestic
supplies comprise:
– agricultural research, training and extension
– agricultural input supply
– mechanization
– irrigation
– rural infrastructure and institutions
– land reform
– agricultural marketing and pricing policies
– agricultural credits.
• In short, , practically everything falling under
agricultural sector development.

10. Table 2.2: Food production constraints
and policy measures for their alleviation
Constraints on Food Production e.g. of Policies to Overcome the Constraints
Technological constraints - Agricultural research, extension and training, irrigation, rural
credit, etc.
Manpower & management constraints - Promotion of mechanisation
- Agric. research and extension to promote technical change
Land constraints Measures to improve utilisation, e.g. by: irrigation,
mechanization, research & extension, land reform
Infrastructural and institutional - Improvements of roads, road maintenance, etc.
constraints
- Improvements of input supply, extension, marketing services,
and co-operative institutions
Marketing constraints Improvement of agric. marketing system, e.g. by
infrastructure investment, institutional reform, special
subsidies, credits, etc.
Insufficient production incentives Reducing production costs, e.g. by input subsidies, promoting
technical change via extension services, improved marketing
and rural infrastructure, etc.

11. Figure 2.13: Impacts of policy measures
to reduce the costs of food production

12. Figure 2.14: Impacts of policy measures
to alleviate constraints to food production

13. Self-Sufficiency: Is There a Rationale?
• Food self-sufficiency refers to the extent to which a
country can satisfy its food needs from its own
domestic production
– greater control or less political dependency on world markets
or other nations
– added risks of world markets (especially when they are "thin")
for both consumers and producers
– concern about maintaining the livelihoods of the poor and
vulnerable
– FS can be damaged due to "excessive" dependence on food
imports
– [PREBISCH] move away from primary sector specialization
• Self-sufficiency was a key aspect of the Lagos Plan

14. Self-Sufficiency: Is There a Rationale?
• Question: Can developed countries'
agricultural policies be rationalized by SS?
• Example: India has considerably reduced its
food insecurity through developing its domestic
food production. Cereal production increased
from 90 million tonnes in 1970 to 130 million in
1985. To import this much additional grain
would have cost $10,000 million per year.

15. Self-Sufficiency vs. Food Security?
• 1. Food self-sufficiency looks only at national
production as the sole source of supply, while food
security takes into account commercial imports and
food aid as possible sources of commodity supply.
• 2. Food self-sufficiency refers only to domestically-
produced food availability at the national level, food
security brings in elements of stability of supply and
access to food by the population

16. Self-Sufficiency vs. Food Security?
• Evaluate: food self-sufficiency is linked to
an emphasis on the need for self-reliance, an
auto-centric approach, whereas food security
incorporates international specialization and
comparative advantage
• Must we have to choose between the two?

17. Subsistence VS Market Integration:
Household-Level Arguments
• The arguments, about risks of commercialisation
and market dependence, have also been made at
the level of the farm household. It is argued that
food insecurity is increased when the poor
become more dependent on markets for their
food.
• One eminent economist argues that…

18. “the farther away from direct food cultivation a group is, i.e. the
more markets it has to go through to convert endowments into
actual consumption, the more liable to starvation it is.
Thus, cattlemen of Sahel and Ethiopia, the fishermen of Bengal
or tradesmen suffer more than agricultural labourers who suffer
more than sharecroppers and peasant cultivators... Contrary to
market intermediation bringing smooth and beneficient
outcomes, it is those who do not have to go through a purchase
or sale to convert their income into consumption who are least
vulnerable to a decline in real grain wage. The direct producer of
grain, either as landowner or sharecropper and the worker who
receives a grain wage are safer than he who receives money rent
or money wage.”
Desai, quoted in S. Devereux, 1993
Discuss: what are the pros and cons of the above argument?

19. Poverty Reduction, Safety Nets
and Food Security
• Role of government:
– provide institutional basis to prevent market failures,
monopolization and malfunctioning
– encourage supply growth
– create a framework of rights and obligations:
property rights vs right to life?
– policies toward FS may be virtually the only MAJOR
social security instrument available in many poor
countries.

20. Box 2.4: The State and
Food Security in History
• … long history of state action to protect subjects from starvation
and extreme want … not just due to benevolence … but in order to
… claim the right to power by enhancing food security. This
function has often been central to the notion of state legitimacy.
• In ancient Egypt, the state undertook a form of buffer stock storage
• Grain and bread rations were distributed to the poor in Rome and
ancient Greece when war or bad harvests created scarcity, or when
there was fear of public unrest.
• In China, during the Manchu dynasty, emergency relief in the form
of cash or food, low price grain sales and food loans were all
employed … at times of crisis.
• Public employment schemes have also been used by various
governments to enhance food security. They were introduced by
Indian rulers as early as the fourth century B.C. Relief during the
potato famines of the 1840s, in both Ireland and the Highlands of
Scotland, was in the form of what would now be called food-for-
work projects.

21. Food Security, Population,
and Environment
• Race between population growth and food supply
(paleo-Malthusianism)
• Race between population growth and food supply
without causing environmental degradation (neo-
Malthusianism)
• Population is growing fastest for the poorest people.
Why?
– because labour is their main asset and children are valued for
their hands?
– or because they have no other form of security to satisfy the
precautionary or retirement motives?
• IS high population growth an important factor in
immiserisation and FIS?

22. Food Security, Population,
and Environment
• Question is: how to ensure a faster demographic transition
(movement from a situation of high birth rates and high death
rates to low birth rates and low death rates). Evidence shows
keys are: overall prosperity and in particular the prosperity of the
poorest in the country.
• As food security increases, and poverty decreases, fertility rates
decline. This is to a large extent because of the decrease in
uncertainty facing poor families. The infant mortality rate
declines, so children are more likely to survive.
• Another element concerns the position of women in society. As
women become more educated and have more power within the
household, then fertility rates fall. Women’s options increase and
they are no longer valued primarily for their fertility.