Global Food Security-Agriculture Policy Economics and Environment最新文献

Increasing vegetable consumption is being promoted as a critical step towards more nutritious and sustainable diets. Despite the recognition that context shapes food consumption practices, there have been limited systematic analyses of the role of social institutions in enabling or hindering consumption of vegetables. In particular, we focus on cultural, cognitive, socioeconomic, and contextual influences that shape local understandings, attitudes, and practices surrounding health and wellbeing. We seek to address this knowledge gap by exploring whether and how academic research has engaged this issue, with a particular focus on Africa. The analysis finds that a range of social institutions play a role in shaping vegetable consumption. Most publications focus on cultural norms and personal perceptions and beliefs, the latter also reflecting one's cultural conditioning and social positioning. Contextual factors such as education and economic status have been reported as having either positive or negative effects on vegetable consumption, depending on context. In terms of types of vegetables affected, traditional vegetables are featured more frequently rather than exotic (externally introduced) ones. The results of this analysis may contribute to informing agricultural and food security policies and programs aimed at promoting vegetable consumption in Africa.

Extensive food price data collected for three Fill the Nutrient Gap nutrition situation analyses were used to calculate two metrics – cost and affordability of nutrient-adequate diets – to assess food and nutrition security at subnational level in the late-dry season and beginning of the dry season in Mauritania. A unique market scoring classification was derived using retail food price data collected in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Mauritania to assess on food price and food assortment (availability) across markets in the three countries. Diet cost and affordability was examined alongside three structural drivers of food insecurity – rainfall, infrastructure (roads) and conflict – to understand how they may have influenced nutritious food prices, diversity and non-affordability during the late-dry season during the period of analysis. Results showed that more diverse low-cost markets and lower non-affordability of nutrient-adequate diets were observed in Burkina Faso's well-connected agricultural areas experiencing no conflict, while limited higher-cost markets were observed in central pastoral areas of Mauritania, and pastoral, agropastoral and some agricultural areas experiencing conflict in Burkina Faso and Mali. In agricultural Mali, despite having diverse low-cost markets, low nutrient-adequate diet cost, sufficient rainfall, seemingly well-connected road networks, these combined factors did not guarantee nutrient-adequate diet affordability, highlighting economic barriers faced by households. Regions affected by both harsh climatic conditions and conflict are at higher risk of high food prices and non-affordability.

Global food calorie supply per person is more than 2900 kcal per day on average, but we have failed to ensure equitable access to these calories. Yet how uneven food access is within countries has remained poorly understood, as has the progress made over the past five decades on closing the access gap. Using publicly available data, we developed a theoretically-grounded statistical model to estimate the cross-national relationship between average per capita expenditure and per capita food availability and used this to estimate within-country access to food for income deciles in 135 countries. We find that, from 1961 to 2013, despite between-country inequality declining by 48% (decline in Gini coefficient from 0.15 to 0.078), within-country inequality in food access increased by 25% for the countries in our study sample (Gini coefficient increased from 0.088 to 0.111). Furthermore, we find that the poorest 10% of the population in the majority of countries in South Asia, South East Asia and Africa—home to the majority of the world's food insecure—continue to access their calories primarily from staple foods and have extremely limited access to nutrient-dense foods, resulting in inequality in access to nutrient-dense foods that is even greater than inequality in access to total calories (within-country Gini coefficient of 0.2). These results strongly support continued investments in social safety nets targeted at the poorest half of the income distribution to swiftly reduce inequality in food access, and proactive programs that help vulnerable households build assets to sustain themselves through future food crises.

This paper seeks to enhance our comprehension of the interplay between COVID-19, international labour migration, and food security. The primary objective is to discern food security characteristics among female migrant workers (FMWs) returning to Kerala from Gulf countries, particularly under heightened social and economic uncertainties shared with male migrant workers (MMWs). This study conducted in the state of Kerala, India, examines the food security perceptions of Gulf migrants using the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS). Samples of both returning FMWs and MMWs were identified through snowball sampling from the latest Kerala Migrant Survey (KMS) 2018 and Return migrant survey 2021. Oversampling was conducted for return FMWs, otherwise only constituting 20 per cent of the random sample. A total of 1154 samples were collected across all 14 districts in Kerala. The analysis indicates that food insecurity was not prevalent among the majority but was significant among a minority of surveyed migrant workers. The results also show that while FMWs experience food insecurity as a lack of access to food variety, MMWs experience food insecurity in the access to food varieties and the absolute quantity of food.

The well validated Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale (EBIA) documented major reductions in moderate/severe food insecurity (FI) between 2004 and 2014 likely because of economic growth in the context of equitable social and economic policies. Coinciding with a change in political administrations, in about 2015, FI rates started to rapidly rebound, with the FI crisis becoming substantially worst during the COVID-19 pandemic because equitable social policies were weakened or eliminated during the economic recession and political crisis preceding it. Evidence suggests that EBIA has helped inform food security governance in Brazil by documenting changes in FI coinciding with major shifts in social and economic policies. Research is needed to understand to what extent these policy shifts may explain the FI fluctuations over time.

Since 2020, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) expanded its global food security metrics, adding Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet (CoAHD). In 2022, they introduced a global Healthy Diet Basket (HDB) standard to estimate countries' CoAHD. This study adopts the HDB method along with prices derived from expenditure modules of 2018-19 household surveys from Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal to compute subnational indicators. Findings reveal HDB's efficacy in capturing local consumption patterns when combined with household-level unit prices, making it valuable in the absence of national food-based dietary guidelines. Findings also show that CoAHD indicators derived from national defined basket should be interpreted as lower boundaries, advocating for subnational baskets to guide policies aimed at improving access to healthy diets.

Benchmark diets using the most affordable locally available items to meet health and nutrition needs have long been used to guide food choice and nutrition assistance. This paper describes the result of recent innovations scaling up the use of such least-cost diets by UN agencies, the World Bank, and national governments for a different purpose, which is monitoring food environments and targeting systemic interventions to improve a population's access to sufficient food for an active and healthy life. Measuring food access using least-cost diets allows a clearer understanding of where poor diets are caused by unavailability or high prices for even the lowest-cost healthy foods, insufficient income or other resources to acquire those foods, or the use of other foods instead due to reasons such as time use and meal preparation costs, or cultural factors such as taste and aspirations. This paper reviews the data, methods and results that have led to official FAO and the World Bank adoption of cost and affordability metrics for global monitoring, and the parallel use of similar methods to guide interventions in country studies led by the World Food Programme with partner agencies across Africa, Asia and Latin America. We conclude by summarizing how increasing availability of food price data, matched to food composition and dietary requirements, allows analysts to use recently developed software tools for least-cost diet assessment to improve food access in a wide range of settings.

We conducted a meta-review of consequences associated with food insecurity for children and adolescents, how these consequences occur, and what evidence is available that associations between food insecurity and child outcomes are causal. A systematic search in five databases identified 55 studies on child and adolescent food insecurity and potential consequences. Extensive literature accumulated over nearly 30 years has identified profound consequences for growth, diet, health, and psychological development for children and adolescents who experience food insecurity. Many of these consequences, particularly for academic performance, behavior and psychological development, and mental health, will affect the readiness of children and adolescents for adulthood and occur regardless of setting.