Effect Of The National Programme On Food Security On Food Production
[A CASE STUDY OF ANAMBRA STATE]

2.4    Meaning of food Security
Food security simply refers to the ability of individuals and households (especially the rural and urban poor) to meet staple food needs all year round. It is the availability of food and one’s access to it. A household is considered food secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Food security exists when all people at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient safe nutritious food to meet the dietary needs for a healthy and an active life (World Food Summit 1996).
Unfortunately, far too many people struggle to survive without access to even the most basic, minimal sustenance. And this, in turn results in a kind of malnutrition that can be fatal if left unattended to. An estimated 852 million people worldwide are chronically hungry due to extreme poverty, while up to 2 billion people lack food security intermittently due to varying degrees of poverty (FAO, 2003)
There is no simple explanation why countries or communities lack food security, but rather the causes are complicated and often cross political, economic, social and environmental grounds. Poverty, conflict, corruption, national policies, environmental degradation, barriers to trade, insufficient agricultural development, population growth, low levels of education, social and sex inequality, poor health status, cultural insensitivity and natural disasters may all contribute to the food insecurity of a country. More recently, the global increase in the price of grain pushed many communities into food insecurity, not due to decrease in global food production, but rather a lack of access to funds required for the purchase of staple foods.
According to Ebo (1995) food insecurity – the inability of persons to have food all year round, commonly referred to as hunger and under-nutrition/ malnutrition is most often attributable to poverty – that is, lack of purchasing power, and poor food storage and distribution system. He suggested that since tackling poverty is a long-term goal, specific short-term compensating measures are needed to ameliorate hunger. Such measures can include; year-round village based food storage mechanism, a self-automating retail food price policy allowing subsidy for the vulnerable in society, and expanding rural opportunities for off-farm earnings. These measures are necessary, considering that national food self-sufficiency does not automatically translate into higher levels of food security (Amin, 1991) and to the extent that the pursuit of food self-sufficiency threatens food security (Platteau, 1988).
There are different levels of food security; they are as follows:
i. Individual or household food security: this relates to income access and affordability of food.
ii. National food security: this relates to the ability of a country to consume sufficient food even in the face of severe disruptions to the supply chain.
iii. Global food security: this is concerned with the ability of the world’s agricultural producers to meet global demand and the efficiency and effectiveness of trading and distribution systems.
According to The Chatharm House report, seven global fundamental pressures affect the global food prices and food production and therefore food security. These global fundamental pressures as identified by the report are:
1.    Population: Increase demand from a rapidly rising world population with estimates of nine billion people by 2050 with 95% of the population in developing countries.
2.    Diet: The effect of “nutrition translation.” As a country becomes more affluent there is a shift away from traditional foods (e.g. crops based) to an increasing consumption of meat and dairy products, refined and processed foods. This results in an increased demand of animal feed, water and grazing land and is projected to continue to cause pressure on world food and feed crop prices.
3.    Energy: Energy dependence of current systems and related factors such energy policies to reduce energy consumption, links to fertilisers, transport costs, bio fuels.
4.    Land: The potential to increase the amount of land available to agriculture is limited which suggests that output per hectare would need to be increased to meet the rise in population. There are a number of factors which this relies on (e.g. quality of soil, skilled labour) which are a cause for concern.
5.    Water: Increase in global stresses on available water for human consumption relating to demand from an increased population, change in diet, reliance in some instances on non-sustainable sources, prediction for climate change.
6.    Climate Change: Effects on crops already attributed to climate change include disruptive weather events, falling yields changes and spread of crop/livestock disease, changes in water supplies. These are expected to continue and in some cases get worse. Predictions are that world agricultural GDP output will decline by 16% by 2020.
7.    Labour: Increased urbanisation is resulting in a decreased rural population able to produce primary produce. Other factors include suggestion that agriculture is not sustainable while it relies on poorly paid workers in temporary employment.