The Geography of Food Insecurity. A Taxonomical Analysis

Abstract

The problem of food insecurity is worsening in a multi-crisis world simultaneously affected by socio-economic, health, governance and environmental problems. This article characterizes the geography of food insecurity based on six influential theories that explain the emergence of the most dramatic manifestation of food insecurity: famines. We build a taxonomy of 98 developing countries using a clustering procedure and identify four groups of countries with different vulnerabilities. The multidimensional analysis depicts a complex map of the diversity of human vulnerabilities that trigger hunger and famines across the world.