Around 690 million people in the world are hungry ,a shocking reality that is difficult to digest. Despite many international initiatives, governmental action plans , researches, food security remain a question mark.Millions goes to sleep with empty stomach when others lead a normal life. All should be made aware about the gravity of the issue and brought down to the reality
What is food security ?
According to FAO , Food security exists 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 (World Food Summit ,1996)
Dimensions of food security:
Food availability: The availability of sufficient quantities of food of appropriate quality, supplied through domestic production or imports (including food aid).
Food access: Access by individuals to adequate resources (entitlements) for acquiring appropriate foods for a nutritious diet. Entitlements are defined as the set of all commodity bundles over which a person can establish command given the legal, political, economic and social arrangements of the community in which they live (including traditional rights such as access to common resources).
Utilization: Utilization of food through adequate diet, clean water, sanitation and health care to reach a state of nutritional well-being where all physiological needs are met. This brings out the importance of non-food inputs in food security.
Stability: To be food secure, a population, household or individual must have access to adequate food at all times. They should not risk losing access to food as a consequence of sudden
United Nations has come up with the Sustainable Development Goals consisting of 17 Goals which is a milestone towards solving this problem . Goal 2 : Zero Hunger ,an initiative that aims to wipe out hunger by 2030
According to United Nations
The majority of the world’s undernourished –381 million – are still found in Asia. More than 250 million live in Africa, where the number of undernourished is growing faster than anywhere in the world. In 2019, close to 750 million – or nearly one in ten people in the world – were exposed to severe levels of food insecurity. An estimated 2 billion people in the world did not have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food in 2019. If recent trends continue, the number of people affected by hunger will surpass 840 million by 2030, or 9.8 percent of the global population. 144 million children under age 5 were affected by stunting in 2019, with three quarters living in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and in 2019, 6.9% (or 47 million) children under 5 were affected by wasting, or acute under nutrition, a condition caused by limited nutrient intake and infection.
Zero Hunger Goal 2 include targets that is to be attained by 2030.However the world is not on track to achieve this rather the hunger graph is rising dangerously. A global initiative is the need of the hour to overcome the task. Action plans execution at individual level could definitely make a ‘Butterfly effect’.