Food Security
Food security means having, at all times, both physical and economic access to sufficient food to meet dietary needs for a productive and healthy life. A family is food secure when its members do not live in hunger or fear of hunger. Food insecurity is often rooted in poverty and has long-term impacts on the ability of families, communities and countries to develop and prosper. Prolonged undernourishment stunts growth, slows cognitive development and increases susceptibility to illness
Over the coming decades, a changing climate, growing global population, rising food prices, and environmental stressors will have significant yet uncertain impacts on food security. Adaptation strategies and policy responses to global change, including options for handling water allocation, land use patterns, food trade, post-harvest food processing, and food prices and safety are urgently needed. IFPRI’s work on food security includes analysis of cash transfers, promotion of sustainable agricultural technologies, building resilience to shocks, and managing trade-offs in food security, such as balancing the nutritional benefits of meat against the ecological costs of its production.
Today, more than 800 million people across the globe go to bed hungry every night, most of them smallholder farmers who depend on agriculture to make a living and feed their families. Despite an explosion in the growth of urban slums over the last decade, nearly 75 per cent of poor people in developing countries live in rural areas. Growth in the agriculture sector is at least twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth in other sectors.
Investing in these smallholder farmers—many of whom are women—and the food systems that nourish them is more important than ever. To feed a population expected to grow to 9 billion people by 2050, the world will have to double its current food production. Given the scarcity of natural resources and other challenges, the world will need to be more efficient in how it meets this demand. To ensure that people have sufficient food, aligning short-term assistance with a long-term development strategy can help countries feed their people.
By addressing acute needs as well as the root causes of hunger, poverty and malnutrition, USAID is strengthening prosperity and security while demonstrating American generosity around the world. USAID’s programs draw on America’s strength in agriculture and bring benefits back to America as well. For example, USAID’s research investments have helped farmers abroad and in the United States protect their harvests from pests and disease.
The enactment of the Global Food Security Act of 2016 and the Global Food Security Reauthorization Act of 2018 solidified the U.S. Government’s continued, bipartisan commitment to reducing hunger, malnutrition and poverty around the world.
In 2006, USDA introduced a new language to describe the ranges of severity of food insecurity. USDA made these changes in response to recommendations of an expert panel convened at USDA's request by the Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) of the National Academies. Although new labels were introduced, the methods used to assess households' food security remained unchanged, so statistics for 2005 to now are directly comparable with those for earlier years. The following labels define ranges of food security: