Food Insecurity

In the year 2000, multiple global health agencies and stakeholders convened and established eight tenets that, if followed, would make our world a vastly better place. These tenets are called the Millennium Development Goals. Most of these goals are either directly or indirectly related to nutrition. The United Nations has led an evaluation team to monitor and assess the progress toward achieving these goals until 2015. We are midway between when the goals were set and the year 2015. The first goal is to "eradicate extreme poverty and hunger." Our greatest responsibility as nutrition professionals is to understand the ramifications of poverty, chronic hunger, and food insecurity. Food insecurity is complex, and the paradox is that not only can it lead to undernutrition and recurring hunger, but also to overnutrition, which can lead to overweight and obesity. It is estimated that by the year 2015 noncommunicable diseases associated with overnutrition will surpass undernutrition as the leading causes of death in low-income communities. Therefore, we need to take heed of the double burden of malnutrition caused by poverty, hunger, and food insecurity. Informing current practitioners, educators, and policymakers and passing this information on to future generations of nutrition students is of paramount importance.

This paper contributes to critical discussions of austerity by examining the constructions of scarcity that underpin it. Specifically, it shows how notions of scarcity (re)emergent in a period of austerity have shaped materially insufficient and stigmatising welfare systems. We do this through the example of UK food banks. We suggest that under austerity a particular moral economy of scarcity has become embedded at the level of common-sense, including in the common-sense of many of those distributing food aid. In UK food banks this moral economy is shaped by images of the 'empty cupboard' and discourses of absolute hunger which normalise practices of (self)rationing and exacerbate food insecurity. Tracing attempts by some food bank managers and volunteers to challenge this moral economy we conclude with a critical agenda for academics and practitioners to rethink relationships between welfare, austerity, and scarcity.

In this article, I utilize a political ecology of the body (PEB) approach to analyze women's transnational migration and their experiences with 'food insecurity.' I situate this analysis within a tradition of feminist political ecology, seeking to advance a 'postcolonial intersectionality' that is attentive to gender, race, and class as axes of power and difference, and also to markers of citizenship or lack thereof, including 'illegality.' I argue that the ideologies behind these axes of power obscure the very social processes in which power is constituted, those that allow an unevenness to ecological suffering, specifically at the locus of the migrant women's body. I suggest that by applying a PEB framing to analyze the personally necessary activities of eating and feeding, we are able to elucidate material and health disparities characterizing transborder ecologies. Thus, I delineate the biopolitics of 'food insecurity': a contest over nutritional resources in which migrant bodies are subjected to the disciplining techniques of neoliberal capitalism, as migrants also subvert the conditions of this environment through embodied modes of collective resistance.

Dans cet article, j'utilise une écologie politique du corps (political ecology of the body, PEB) pour analyser la migration et d'expériences transnational des femmes avec «l'insécurité alimentaire». Je situe cette analyse dans une tradition de l'écologie politique féministe, qui cherchent à promouvoir une «intersectionnalité postcoloniale». Ce est attentif aux axes de la puissance et de la différence - sexe, la race et la classe - et également aux marqueurs de la citoyenneté ou de l'absence de celui-ci, y compris «l'illégalité». Je soutiens que les idéologies derrière ces axes de pouvoir masquent les processus sociaux dont le pouvoir est constitué, et qui permettent une irrégularité de la souffrance écologique, en particulier au niveau du locus du corps des femmes migrantes. Je suggère que, par l'application d'un encadrement de PEB à l'analyse des activités personnellement nécessaires de l'alimentation, nous sommes capables de comprendre les disparités matérielles et de santé qui caractérisent écologies transfrontaliers. Ainsi, je délimiter la biopolitique de «l'insécurité alimentaire» : une contestation sur les ressources alimentaires dont les corps des migrants sont soumis à des techniques de discipliner d'un capitalisme néolibéral. Les migrants renversent également les conditions de cet environnement à travers des modes consacrés de résistance collective.

En este articulo, utilizo un emarcado de la ecología política del cuerpo (PEB) para analizar la migración transnacional de mujeres y sus experiencias con 'la inseguridad de los alimentos." Situo este análisis dentro de una tradición de ecología política feminista, buscando avanzar un "postcolonial intersectionality" que está atento no sólo al género, raza, y clase como los ejes del poder y diferencia pero también a las señales de ciudadanía o su falta, incluyendo "ilegalita." Argumento que las ideologías detrás de esos ejes del poder oculten los propios procesos sociales en los cuales el poder esté constituido, y los cuales que permitan la desigualdad de sufrimiento ecológico, específicamente al sitio del cuerpo de la mujer migratoria. Sugiero que con la aplicación de un emarcado PEB para el análisis de las actividades necesarias y personales como el alimentarse y el comer, podamos aclarar las desigualdades materiales y de salud caracterizando ecologías transfronterizas. Entonces delineo los biopolíticos de "food insecurity": una contestación sobre los recursos nutricionales en los cuales los cuerpos de los migrantes estén sometidos a las técnicas disciplinarias del capitalismo neoliberal, mientras los migrantes subviertan las condiciones de eso ambiente por modos incorporados de resistencia colectiva.

This paper uses both a global and local perspective to assess the impacts of climate change on the Yemeni economy, agriculture, and household income and food security. The major impact channels of climate change are through changing world food prices as a result of global food scarcities, long-term local yield changes as a result of temperature and rainfall variations, and

Food security is a dynamic concept, which has continuously integrated new dimensions and levels of analysis over the years; this reflects the wider recognition of its complexities in research and public policy issues. Food security is achieved 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. Food insecurity occurs at individuals, households or nation level that has neither physical nor economical access to the nourishment they need. Food insecurity is an enduring, critical challenge in Ethiopia which is Africa's second populous country after Nigeria. The 2015 El Niño drought is one of the strongest droughts that have been recorded in Ethiopian history were more than 27 million people became food insecure and total population of 18.1 million people require food assistance in 2016. As indicated by Africa Food Security and Hunger Multiple Indicator Scorecard, Ethiopia ranked first in having the highest number of people in state of undernourishment which is 32.1 million people in 2014. World Food Program found long-term effects of chronic malnutrition cost Ethiopia approximately 16.5 percent of its GDP in each year. The number of food insecure people in the country increasing from time to time; which was estimated to 2.9 million in 2014 and 4.5 million in August, 2015 and by the end of the same year this figure had more than doubled to 10.2 million food insecure people. Drought and land degradation, population pressure, instability and armed conflict are major sources of food security problems in Ethiopia. To cope with these problems Ethiopian people use sale of livestock, agricultural employment, and migration to other areas, requesting grain loans, sales of wood or charcoal, small scale trading and limiting size and frequency of meal as major coping mechanisms.

Food security has deteriorated since 1995 and reductions in child malnutrition are proceeding too slowly to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for halving hunger by 2015. Three major challenges threaten to drastically complicate efforts to overcome food insecurity and malnutrition: climate change, the growing use of food crops as a source of fuel and soaring food prices. Food

We present an extensive literature review exploring the relationships between food insecurity and rapid biodiversity loss, and the competing methods proposed to address each of these serious problems. Given a large and growing human population, the persistence of widespread malnutrition, and the direct and significant threats the expanding agricultural system poses to biodiversity, the goals of providing universal food security and protecting biodiversity seem incompatible. Examining the literature shows that the current agricultural system already provides sufficient food on a worldwide basis, but in doing so methodically undermines the capacity of agroecosystems to preserve biodiversity. However, the available evidence emphasizes the interdependence of biodiversity and agriculture, and the important role each plays in the maintenance of the other. Thus, our review supports the claim that the solutions to the problems of widespread food insecurity and biodiversity loss need not be mutually exclusive, and that it may be possible to foster both using appropriate alternative agricultural practices.