Overview

Food security implies the provision of safe, nutritious, and quantitatively and qualitatively adequate food, as well as access to it by all people. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), estimates that global food production needs shall increase by 60% by the year, 2050.  It argues that, food security exists only when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.  The Global network Against Food Crisis (GNAFC) records that, globally, estimated 500 million family farms (over 88% of all farms) produce more than 70% of the world’s food on 75% of the total agricultural land. Small farms (less than 2 hectares) operate about 12% of the world’s agricultural land. On 30% of the agricultural land in 83 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America, 380 million households are farming on less than 5 hectares.

There are a number of possible interventions to food insecurity including but not limited to, social protection programmes essential for breaking the vicious cycle of poverty and hunger, increasing the efficiency of scarce resource use in productive systems, particularly water, for example, water harvesting and storage, access to irrigation, improved irrigation technologies, as well as agronomic practices that enhance soil water retention such as minimum tillage, and increase in soil carbon and organic matter, among others, Sustainable measures for crops such as adapted varieties or breeds, with different environmental optima and/or broader environmental tolerances, including currently neglected crops, increased diversification of varieties or crops, Sustainable changes in crop management – especially planting dates, cultivar choice and sometimes increased irrigation and  changes in post-harvest practices, for example the extent to which grain may require drying and how products are stored after harvest