SDG 2 and the Dominance of Food Security in the Global Agri–food Norm Cluster

Prior to Nigeria’s independence in 1960, agriculture was the main stay and dominant sector of the economy. It contributed about 70 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employed about the same percentage of the working population, and accounted for about 90 percent of foreign earnings and Federal Government revenue. However, with the discovery of oil in commercial quantity at Oloibiri in the Niger Delta in 1956, the country’s fortunes have depended on the Oil Industry, which has effectively replaced agriculture in revenue yield. In fiscal terms, oil revenue currently account for about 80 percent of government revenues, 95 percent of export receipts and 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings. This work investigated the link between the dominance of oil investment and food security in Nigeria under the Obasanjo civilian administration. While observing that agriculture had in the past contributed to national prosperity and food security, it was noted that discovery and commercial exploitation of oil resources in Nigeria fundamentally changed the structure of investment in Nigeria resulting in the dominance of foreign capital not only in the Oil Industry, but also in the Nigerian economy. The work clearly demonstrated that the dominance of oil investment in Nigeria not only undermined linkage with other sectors between 1999 and 2007, it is implicated in her food security crisis. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n9p515

SDG 2 and the Dominance of Food Security in the Global Agri-food Norm Cluster

SDG 2 and the Dominance of Food Security in the Global Agri-food Norm Cluster

Food security and the global agrifood system: Ethical issues in historical and sociological perspective

Large-scale specialization in monoculture production for export markets infringes upon the agricultural and food systems and security of the populations of exporting countries that adopt export-oriented policies because it: (a) entails adopting production patterns that over-exploit and deteriorate the natural and human resources of agricultural regions; (b) subordinates producers and consumers in agroexporting countries to the interests of transnational intermediary companies and the regulations of foreign government agencies that prioritize the interests of their own citizens; and (c) restricts the right of domestic consumers to access a nourishment that is sufficient, healthy and culturally acceptable. The study of this Mexican case allows us to better understand the agricultural and food situation that is currently emerging in developing countries that choose to broadly apply neoliberal policies. Mexico has one of the most open agricultural sectors and is a leading international exporter of several fruits and vegetables; but at the same time it is a net importer of basic foods for its domestic population. This case study is analyzed from the perspectives of plantation-oriented agricultural practices and global commodity chains; however, neither of these perspectives considers the problems of environmental degradation and food security, both of which are studied in this work.

Protection of farmer’s welfare, improving their standard of living and maintaining the connect between urban and rural population are important for sustainable development. Agriculture 4.0 based on Industry 4.0 evolved to produce crops in different manner by applying new technologies, adopt emerging technologies to bring efficiency in food web, incorporate cross industry technologies and applications. Agri Food 4.0 is a survey based on industrial farming using advancements in Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, IOT, Big Data. The challenge is to make the technologies interoperable and also to integrate agriculture production with food distribution network. In this research work, we propose to present the architecture of Agritech Business 4.0, a transparent model to integrate agriculture production with food distribution network by adopting I4.0 technologies. It is necessary to have a common framework that uses Internet of Things, Smart DLT, Big Data Analytics etc. thereby the communication between the technologies can be harnessed for better agricultural production, food security, transparency and decentralization. We have also presented few open research problems and future research directions in this paper.

Gaining Acceptance of Novel Plant Breeding Technologies.

Serious social, economic, and ecological consequences of climate change due to the high levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in our atmosphere resulting from a wide range of human activities including the burning of fossil fuels and land use have impacted weather events world over. Extreme weather events and warmer global temperatures are likely to be more frequent with an adverse overall effect on agricultural production unless there is an urgent reduction in GHG emissions. There is thus an immediate need for increasing adaptive capacity in agriculture to long-term climatic trends and increasing variability in weather patterns. Climate change also poses significant challenges to global food safety due to the emergence of new pathogens, insect pests, and toxicants. Food safety threats cause an enormous burden on economies due to disruptions or restrictions in global and regional agrifood trade, food loss, and associated income. Food safety thus plays a critical role across the four pillars of food security-availability, access, utilization, and stability. Climate change is likely to create new safety issues entailing reassessing our tolerance to risk and safety limits presently established for the human food chain. The present review focuses on the factors affecting food security and safety as a consequence of climate change and the pre- and postharvest strategies that need to be adopted to mitigate these effects for enhancing food safety and global food sufficiency in future.

The global agrifood system faces significant threats due to rapid and interconnected social‐ecological changes, including climate change, land‐use shifts, demographic changes and emerging diseases. Small‐scale farmers are among the most vulnerable groups to these changes due to their direct dependence on their environment. The resilience of small‐scale farming livelihoods may be influenced by several social‐ecological filters, which are the coupled human–nature factors that could either hinder or increase resilience, directly impacting local agrifood systems. Our study aims to assess how different social‐ecological filters (i.e. sociodemographic factors, diversity of agroecosystems and on‐farm landscape composition), operating at multiple levels, are associated with small‐scale farmers' livelihood resilience in the Chiloé Archipelago, a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System within a Global Biodiversity Hotspot in southern Chile. We conducted 100 household surveys with small‐scale farmers to calculate the diversity of agroecosystems within each farm and an Index of Livelihood Resilience (ILR) based on indicators of five capital assets (i.e. social, physical, natural, financial and human). We also took aerial photographs of their farms, from which we derived information on landscape composition. Using Generalized Linear Mixed Effects Models, we tested the association between eight different social‐ecological filters and the ILR. We found that the age of the household head and shrubland surface in the farm were negatively associated with livelihood resilience, while the diversity of agroecosystems within the farms was positively associated with the livelihood resilience of small‐scale farmers. Identifying factors that enhance the livelihood resilience of small‐scale farmers is essential for developing effective initiatives and policies aimed at ensuring global and local food security and sovereignty. Based on our results, we propose recommendations to strengthen small‐scale farmers' livelihood resilience to mitigate the global agrifood crisis. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Any country's Agri-food chains consist of complex network of inputs and outputs providing linkages between farm producers and end consumers. Agri chain involves a big list with varying interests, of stakeholders. On the macro level, it is very difficult to analyze agri food sector in totality due to its direct and indirect linkages with other sectors like industries which agricultural inputs, agri processors farm produce into a variety of food main products, by products, joint products and distributors to consumers. In Indian context, Agriculture plays major role in contribution to national gross domestic product, international trade (export/import) and national food security, so it great political and economic importance. Hence it is very much of interest here to study sustainability aspect of Indian Agricultural Commodity Market in new economic regime of the LPG (Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization). This paper tries to outline the various risk management practices and tools available in India for agriculture for sustainable growth. Role of banks and FIs (Financial Institutions) has been outlined here for providing innovative services for price risk management by different members of value chain.

This chapter examines the role of agri-food trade in the provision of global food security. We first define the changing conceptual basis of food security, and give a brief description of the status of global food security. Next we evaluate the role of agricultural trade across each dimension of food security. The chapter ends with a comprehensive investigation of the links between global trade policy and food security. We conclude that agri-food trade is one of the most important drivers of global food security, contributing to food availability, access, utilization and stability. However, since developed and developing countries have different economic priorities, they are not in favor of liberalization of global agri-food trade. This was partly the reason for poor progress of the WTO Doha Round discussions. It is clear from our results that the global food system has significantly changed since the launch of the Doha Round, posing new challenges for policymakers in pursuing global food security.

Eradicating world hunger-the aim of Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2)-requires a social-ecological approach to agrifood systems. However, previous work has mostly focused on one or the other. Here, we apply such a holistic approach to depicting the global food panorama through a quantitative multivariate assessment of 43 indicators of food sovereignty and 28 indicators of sociodemographics, social being, and environmental sustainability in 150 countries. The results identify 5 world regions and indicate the existence of an agrifood debt (i.e., disequilibria between regions in the natural resources consumed, the environmental impacts produced, and the social wellbeing attained by populations that play different roles within the globalized agrifood system). Three spotlights underpin this debt: 1) a severe contrast in diets and food security between regions, 2) a concern about the role that international agrifood trade is playing in regional food security, and 3) a mismatch between regional biocapacity and food security. Our results contribute to broadening the debate beyond food security from a social-ecological perspective, incorporating environmental and social dimensions.

This article examines the coexistence in Brazil of two projects: a project for food sovereignty based on family farming and a project for food security based on agribusiness. Drawing on a series of field investigations focused on family farming, questions of land tenure, and policies to promote food security in Brazil, our analysis seeks to place the competition between family farming and agribusiness in historical context, examining the “unequal coexistence” of these two projects within the state apparatus from 1985 to 2015. We show how the project for food sovereignty brought together multiple social movements, including a core movement advocating agroecology, and how family farming was recognized as a key pillar within Brazil’s national food security policy. Over the same period, however, agribusiness became more organized and was strengthened by considerable state support, securing Brazil’s position of leadership within international commodity markets even as it “greened” its image. Faced with the economic and political crisis that has shaken the country since 2015, the project for food sovereignty has declined, while agribusiness and its high-technology, global agrifood system have continued to expand, opening a path for an agricultural scenario in which the right to coexistence is nothing more than a utopian idea.

The global food system is currently facing significant challenges that make it unsustainable and environmentally harmful. These challenges not only threaten food security but also have severe negative impacts on the environment. Efforts have been made to reform agrifood systems and align them with the built environment, but emerging obstacles have revealed the weaknesses in these systems, particularly in less self-sufficient countries. This review outlines the primary environmental problems associated with global agrifood systems and the challenges in promoting food security. It emphasizes that the increasing global population and urbanization need rational and equitable changes in food systems, including production, distribution, storage, and consumption. These changes should aim to minimize environmental impacts by protecting and efficiently utilizing natural resources such as air, water, soil, and biodiversity, reducing food loss and waste, and mitigating pollution that contributes to ecosystem degradation and climate change. In this context, hydroponics emerges as a sustainable, plant-based food production technique that can be employed as a solution in urban areas. It can be implemented in domestic microproduction systems, serving as a complementary alternative to conventional food production methods. This study also provides insights into the challenges that need to be addressed in order to enhance home hydroponic systems. The integration of hydroponics into urban food production offers the potential to tackle both food security and environmental sustainability issues, providing a path toward more resilient and efficient food systems.

The strategic partnership and the development of comprehensive cooperation between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus are conditioned by the geographical and cultural-historical proximity of the two countries and peoples, the mutual complementarity of economies, and close cooperation ties between Belarusian and Russian companies. The impact of global challenges related to the changing geopolitical landscape and ensuring food security in the face of international sanctions, lead to the search for new solutions to ensure sustainable economic growth of the agro-industrial complex of the Union State. The joint development of the Food Security Strategy of the Union State (hereinafter referred to as the SG), as a system of coordinated measures aimed at the balanced development of the agri–food complex of the SG, taking into account the contribution of each participating country, will determine the main directions of maximum integration of domestic agro-industrial complex and joint vectors of development of the unified agrarian policy of the Union State. The article considers the main directions of integration cooperation between Russia and Belarus in the context of ensuring collective food security in modern conditions.