World food security: current state

Abstract

Food security is directly related to nutrition and public health. It concerns the availability of food needed by people, its accessibility to consumers, including financial aspects of accessibility, the food utilization in sufficient quantity and quality to ensure full life, and stability, i.e. the ability to resist the negative changes that occur in food supply chains. Food security is a causal path that begins with production and leads to consumption, going through stages of stabilization and stress management. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to consider the essence of food security and investigate its level by the analysis of world rankings. Consequently, the Global Food Security Index, which measures the level of food security in four areas – food affordability, food availability, food quality and safety, and natural resources and resiliencies considered in this paper. According to this ranking, the first three places are occupied by the countries of Western Europe – Finland, Ireland, and the Netherlands. Except European countries, top 15 countries also include Israel, Japan, the United States of America, Canada, and New Zealand. Ukraine ranks 54th out of 113 countries. Positive changes occur only in the group «quality and safety». The rest of the groups of food security indicators for Ukraine show negative trends. In particular, in the group «food availability» indicators of «food security and access policy commitments» and «political and social barriers to access» decreased by more than thirty percent comparing with the previous year. Additionally, Global Hunger Index is considered. This index is based on four indicators – undernourishment, child wasting, child stunting, and child mortality. Despite the tendency of index improvement by the regions of the world, its value is particularly dangerous for the countries of Africa South of the Sahara, and South Asia. For Ukraine, the value of this indicator is less than 5, since 2006. This fact classifies Ukraine as a low-risk area. Accordingly, the analysis shows that currently the second goal of the Sustainable Development Plan – «Zero Hunger», is unattainable by 2030.