Aspects Of Food Security Research Articles

Application of Teaching Methods, Promoting Integrated Pest Management on the Farm School in Order to Achieve Sustainable Agriculture

According to many experts, agriculture is an industry. Most European countries that industrialized countries are known to have been based primarily agricultural communities. The development of its industrial and agricultural production, producing enough food for a growing world population. But other aspects of food security, conservation and protection of crops against pests and plant diseases as a threatening factor that is important. Environmental and health problems resulting from uncontrolled use of pesticides, increased use of pesticides and the staggering costs of restricting the use of pesticides causes changes in the chemical control strategy was developed that led to the concept of integrated pest management. One of the most effective method of training - extension on integrated pest management, farm is on the way to school. This method of learning about the ecology and management of cultivated land area cultivated by very practical ways for farmers to provide. The purpose of this research introduces teaching methods - a school extension in the field as an effective method of training in integrated management of pests. The results showed that the extension of school education in the field, a very effective way to achieve sustainable agriculture in the context of integrated pest management training.

The HIV and urban food security nexus in Africa

The relationship between HIV and food security has been characterized by a tendency to view both as primarily rural phenomena. The urban literature, in turn, has been dominated by a biomedical focus on the nutritional implications of HIV infection on people living with HIV (PLHIV). Recently, attention has turned to related issues such as the value of nutrition supplementation, the nutritional implications of anti-retroviral therapy and the impact on both of rising food prices. This paper argues that the focus on rural food insecurity, the individual PLHIV and the nutritional aspects of food security, while valuable and necessary, are limiting our ability to understand the social and economic relationships that are central to the HIV-food security nexus in urban contexts. Rapid urbanization makes food security in the urban context a complex issue with a number of different and overlapping dimensions. Understanding the reciprocal relationship between HIV and urban food security requires a new social framework which incorporates, but is not constrained by, a focus on the nutritional impacts of the epidemic.

Determinants of Food Security in Rural Areas of Pakistan

Abstract: Out of 120 districts of Pakistan (for rural areas) only 40 are food secure while 80 (67 percent) are food insecure. Within these food insecure districts, 38 (46 percent) are extremely food insecure. The matter of food security in rural areas is of immense nature and needs to be probed. A number of factors are responsible for the situation. The current paper examines the determinants of three aspects of food security in rural areas of Pakistan, i.e. food availability, accessibility and absorption. For the purpose a series of models is applied on district level data of rural areas of Pakistan. The production of wheat, rice, maize, pulses, oilseeds, poultry meat and fish at the district level is found to affect food availability positively. All the district except of Sindh are more probable to be food insecure in availability. In the food accessibility electrification and adult literacy emerged as the factors having negative effect. Child immunization, safe drinking water and number of hospitals have shown positive effect on food absorption.

The role of agronomic research in climate change and food security policy

Societal concern is growing about the consequences of climate change for food systems and, in a number of regions, for food security. There is also concern that meeting the rising demand for food is leading to environmental degradation thereby exacerbating factors in part responsible for climate change, and further undermining the food systems upon which food security is based. A major emphasis of climate change/food security research over recent years has addressed the agronomic aspects of climate change, and particularly crop yield. This has provided an excellent foundation for assessments of how climate change may affect crop productivity, but the connectivity between these results and the broader issues of food security at large are relatively poorly explored; too often discussions of food security policy appear to be based on a relatively narrow agronomic perspective. To overcome the limitation of current agronomic research outputs there are several scientific challenges where further agronomic effort is necessary, and where agronomic research results can effectively contribute to the broader issues underlying food security. First is the need to better understand how climate change will affect cropping systems including both direct effects on the crops themselves and indirect effects as a result of changed pest and weed dynamics and altered soil and water conditions. Second is the need to assess technical and policy options for either reducing the deleterious impacts or enhancing the benefits of climate change on cropping systems while minimising further environmental degradation. Third is the need to understand how best to address the information needs of policy makers and report and communicate agronomic research results in a manner that will assist the development of food systems adapted to climate change. There are, however, two important considerations regarding these agronomic research contributions to the food security/climate change debate. The first concerns scale. Agronomic research has traditionally been conducted at plot scale over a growing season or perhaps a few years, but many of the issues related to food security operate at larger spatial and temporal scales. Over the last decade, agronomists have begun to establish trials at landscape scale, but there are a number of methodological challenges to be overcome at such scales. The second concerns the position of crop production (which is a primary focus of agronomic research) in the broader context of food security. Production is clearly important, but food distribution and exchange also determine food availability while access to food and food utilisation are other important components of food security. Therefore, while agronomic research alone cannot address all food security/climate change issues (and hence the balance of investment in research and development for crop production vis à vis other aspects of food security needs to be assessed), it will nevertheless continue to have an important role to play: it both improves understanding of the impacts of climate change on crop production and helps to develop adaptation options; and also – and crucially – it improves understanding of the consequences of different adaptation options on further climate forcing. This role can further be strengthened if agronomists work alongside other scientists to develop adaptation options that are not only effective in terms of crop production, but are also environmentally and economically robust, at landscape and regional scales. Furthermore, such integrated approaches to adaptation research are much more likely to address the information need of policy makers. The potential for stronger linkages between the results of agronomic research in the context of climate change and the policy environment will thus be enhanced.

Food security aspects of the impact of HIV/AIDS on rural women in smallholder agriculture

abstract This article explores the gender dimension of the impact of HIV/AIDS on agriculture, and whether the gender status of household head is important in accounting for observed differences in agricultural performance. The article quantifies this in terms of time and attempts to puts a monetary value to the costs of caring and caregiving. It indicates that rural women lose a substantial amount of time dealing with the disease and that this has a significant impact on their productivity, which directly affects their food security status. The Impact of HIV/AIDS on female-headed households was found to be compounded by external factors that interact with household characteristics.

Food security in the Baltic Republics.

Food insecurity has become an important issue in many countries of the former Soviet Union following the transition to a market economy. This study examined three aspects of food security in the Baltic Republics: reasons for choosing foods; level of dependence on home-grown or raised foods; and use of home-grown vegetables. Cross-sectional surveys. Data from surveys conducted in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the summer of 1997 were used to describe the three aspects of food security and their socio-economic correlates (using descriptive statistics and logistic regression). Representative samples of adults were selected in each country (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, ). Cost was the most commonly reported reason for choosing foods, particularly in Lithuania (67%) and Latvia (60%) (Estonia 41%), and especially among people with lower income levels. In each country, large proportions of respondents depended partially or entirely on home-grown or raised foods (Latvia 47%, Lithuania 42%, Estonia 32%) or used home-grown vegetables frequently (Lithuania 66%, Latvia 53%, Estonia 29%); this was particularly the case in rural areas. The issue of food security needs to be examined further in the Baltic Republics and other transitional economies as increased access to safe, healthy foods for all could help improve dietary intake and reduce the high mortality from non-communicable diseases. Access to affordable, high-quality fresh foods by different social groups should be monitored and the potential contribution of home-grown and raised foods to reduce food poverty should be explored further.

Excluding the Needy: The Public Provisioning of Food in India

It is a great honour and privilege for me to deliver the Eleventh Daniel Thorner Memorial Lecture. Since my first introduction to economics as an undergraduate, the writings of Daniel Thorner have been a source of insight and inspiration as has been his life-long vision of progressive democratic social change. At the very outset, I would like to state that I have chosen to focus on the distribution aspects of food security in the lecture, and as result, certain very important and relevant issues relating to the new world trade order and its implications for food security are overlooked. I will make my presentation in the form of 12 propositions on food security. I want to begin by affirming that the provision of secure access to food still remains a relevant and critical issue for public policy in India. The Rome Declaration on World Food Security defines access to food as physical and economic access, at all times, to sufficient, safe and nutritious food (for people) to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. In other words, food security requires access to adequate quantity and satisfactory quality of food. As a country, we have failed miserably in ensuring access to food to all our people. Let me give a few illustrations of the scale of chronic hunger and nutritional deprivation in India. According to the latest National Family Health Survey, conducted in 1998-99, at the all India level:

Using group ratings to assess household food security: Empirical evidence from southern Africa

This article addresses the reliability and validity of household welfare rankings using the Group Ratings (GR) method. The GR aimed to measure the food security status of 142 households in seven villages in Malawi. Sets of informant groups rated households from their own community. Results show that the reliability of the method was no more than fair to moderate, and was particularly low for households falling in the middle category of 'intermittently food insecure'. Consensus ratings from the GR sessions were then compared with a number of alternative indicators of food security from a quantitative household survey. GR were associated with the more visible aspects of food security, such as household asset and livestock holdings, but associations with less visible aspects of food security were weaker. The strength of these associations varied from village to village.

La sécurité alimentaire, ses liens avec la nutrition et la santé

SUMMARY The paper addresses the complex interrelationships between food security, nutritional status and health. Food insecurity is an important factor in malnutrition, but to reduce malnutrition, nutritional security should also improve. This means that better food security must be combined with actions that enhance nutrition-relevant practices and care, as well as access to health services. Food security itself goes beyond access to enough food. It encompasses access to sufficiently diversified foods for an adequate nutrient mix, in addition to safe and culturally acceptable foods. The strategic importance of these qualitative aspects of food security are strategically important. They permit a better under-standing of food security issues where poor people may have enough to eat but lack access to an adequate diet, whether in the first or third world. Emphasis on qualitative food security stimulates the approaches of food systems to nutritional improvement, notably for the reduction of micro-nutrient deficiencies, thereby bridging the gap between food and health. Diversification of food crops, micro-nutrient fortification of staple foods through plant breeding, and improved food processing and storage techniques for better nutrient retention figure among qualitative food security strategies. Women play a key role in both providing and benefiting from the qualitative aspects of food security. As a nutritional and socio-economic development objective, food security is an ideal field for interdisciplinary or intersectoral research and action.

Understanding famine in Africa

This is an edited version of the 1990 Annual Report of the Food Security Unit of the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK. It describes the research conducted by the Unit into new aspects of food security, in particular the linkages between war and famine in Africa and the effectiveness of early warning systems, as well as more traditional elements of food security planning.