Food Security最新文献

Continuing risks, such as economic crises, climate change, and pandemics, have raised concerns about food issues in China and worldwide. The current food planning in China, which prioritizes food security, ignores the role of the informal sector in the resilience of food systems. This study examined the role of informal food systems in enhancing food security and explored the dilemmas of informal food systems in food planning through field and literature research. Taking Nanjing as an example, individual and city-level case studies collected data through face-to-face interviews, questionnaires, observations, and secondary data sources. The data were analyzed from three perspectives: food availability, accessibility, and utilization. The results indicated that small-scale food production and food vending contribute to food diversity, affordability, allocation, and nutritional and social value. Face-to-face direct marketing and cheap prices of local food increase the competitiveness of food in informal food systems. Informal food activities still have the potential to be improved by integrating into food security planning. Food security planning should consider the contributions of informal food systems and improve the current situation by appreciating small-scale agriculture, supporting local food supply chains, and providing a formalization procedure for food bottom-up food activities.

African agriculture faces multiple challenges, dampening its contribution to economic development, food and nutrition security, poverty reduction and resilience. Legumes are a necessary component of diversified maize-based cropping systems that are more resilient against climate change and can better deliver food and nutrition security while building soil fertility. Despite this potential, the uptake of legumes by smallholders in southern Africa remains restricted to small areas compared to areas under maize, and the uptake of improved legume germplasm remains low. However, amid rising chemical fertilizer costs and the increasing need to restore soil fertility, there is anecdotal evidence suggesting that smallholders are increasingly cultivating more legumes. This paper assesses the extent of changes in legume cultivation, drivers, and consequences on food security and welfare using secondary data spanning a 10-year period (2012–2023) and household survey data collected in 2023 from 1,100 farmers randomly selected from 14 districts in Malawi and Zambia. The total area under maize and legume cultivation increased between 2012 and 2023 in both countries. However, the share of cultivated land under maize declined, while the share under legumes increased over the same period. Proportionately, the area cultivated under legumes increased by 5percentage points in Malawi and 14 percentage points in Zambia between 2012 and 2023. About half of the surveyed farmers (47% in Malawi and 50% in Zambia) indicated they were cultivating more legumes in 2023 than before. The main factors driving the expansion of legume cultivation included the perception that legumes have higher producer prices relative to those of other crops, and the perception of increasing fertilizer costs. Cultivating more legumes was associated with higher income, especially for the low-income households, and higher expenditure in the mid quantiles. We conclude that there is a dawn of a quiet “legume revolution” in southern Africa. Significant technological innovations, e.g., increasing availability of improved germplasm, accompanied by institutional and policy innovations are critical success factors. There is also an urgent need to address the underdeveloped and informal legume seed systems, improve market access and postharvest handling and storage, foster value addition and encourage the adoption of improved agronomic practices. Strengthening the inclusion of legumes in national subsidy programs can contribute to improved soil fertility and overall farm productivity and environmental sustainability, while increasing farm income.

Since there is no clear understanding about whether and to what extent afforestation could affect grain production due to the squeeze it causes on arable land, taking the forestry carbon sinks (FCS) projects in pilot regions of China as a quasi-experiment, this paper evaluates the impact of the projects on grain production and its underlying mechanisms. The difference-in-differences method and the generalized synthetic control method are employed to address the potential selection biases originating from both the observables and the time-invariant unobservable. Based on panel data from the counties in Sichuan, we find that FCS projects have no significant impact on grain production. However, we do reveal that the FCS projects tend to reduce the area of the arable land devoted to grain production and to increase the number of agricultural labourers and the grain yield per hectare, while no significant impact on the mechanization of agricultural production and the use of fertilizers has been observed. We also demonstrate that the negative impact of FCS could be compensated by increasing the land production efficiency. Our findings provide the first evidence that FCS do not necessarily and negatively affect grain production and can even improve the efficiency of resource use.

The adequate production and supply of a diversity of foods will continue to be the foundation of food security. Constraints to food production are many and are intensifying, generating concerns about the ability of food systems to meet global food needs. An impressive array of agricultural technologies and management interventions is available to address many food production constraints in major farming systems. Yet, alone these solutions may be inadequate. For example, most of the interventions to sustainably intensify food production systems require repeated large investments in costly inputs and timely implementation across extensive land areas, which is challenging for farmers to consistently achieve. To increase food production and food diversity to better attain food security for all into the future will require far greater emphasis on farm management, on-farm participatory research, farmer capacity building and support to farms.

The Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan has raised significant concerns about its potential impact on living conditions, with fears of worsening food insecurity, economic instability, and access to essential services, although the full extent of these effects remains uncertain. This study examines the intricate relationship between socioeconomic factors, food consumption patterns, access to essential resources, quality of life, and food insecurity among Afghan households before and after the Taliban regime. Through interviews with 555 households, we assessed food insecurity (via the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale), quality of life (via the WHOQOL-100 framework), food consumption patterns (via Household Consumption Expenditure Survey), access to public resources (via a Likert scale questionnaire), and socioeconomic status (via Canadian Community Health Survey). Mediation modeling was applied to test the bidirectional association between food security and quality of life. Study findings revealed that approximately 90% of households experienced varying degrees of food insecurity, leading to reduced food consumption, and severely limited access to vital resources after the Taliban takeover in August 2021. Consequently, there was a significant decline across all measured domains of quality of life. Notably, a bidirectional association between food insecurity and quality of life was identified, suggesting that deteriorating living conditions may exacerbate food insecurity, and vice versa. These findings underscore the urgent need for coordinated efforts among policymakers and stakeholders to address the root causes of food insecurity and enhance overall well-being in Afghanistan during this challenging period. By shedding light on the complexities of these interconnected challenges, future studies can help inform targeted interventions aimed at fostering the resilience and recovery of Afghan households.

Vegetables in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) play very important roles in food security and nutrition, household income, and livelihoods. The proportion of food-insecure people is higher in Africa than in other parts of the world, and one of the major factors attributed to this is food loss and waste. The green leafy vegetable rape (Brassica napus L), from the family Brassicaceae, is dominantly grown, traded, and highly consumed in Zambia. Yet, systematic evidence for food loss and waste of this vegetable in SSA remains limited. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the food losses, economic food losses and the critical loss points and underlying food loss causes in a rural-to-urban supply chain for rape in Zambia. Primary data was collected at the farm, transportation, and trading levels of the food supply chain using the FAO food loss assessment method, complemented by secondary data for the preparation of data collection tools. The study found that the harvesting stage incurs relatively high physical food losses, while the trading stage incurs the highest food losses in the supply chain. The quality, physical, and total economic food losses found for the supply chain are high, but within those reported in the literature. Based on the FAO guidelines, the harvesting and trading stages have been identified as the critical loss points in the supply chain. These findings suggest interventions that should include training in harvesting / postharvest handling, packaging in transportation, and product and environmental hygiene at the farm and trading levels.

The food environment is considered a key determinant of population diets. To identify opportunities for action to improve diets and food security, this study aimed to investigate the healthiness of retail food environments in Tonga. A cross-sectional assessment of the availability, placement, price promotion, and marketing of healthy and unhealthy foods in all eight supermarkets, and randomly selected samples of convenience stores (n = 30), small grocery stores (n = 20), and street food stalls (n = 10) was conducted between July and October 2023. We used adapted versions of tools from the International Network for Food and Obesity/NCDs Research, Monitoring and Action Support (INFORMAS). Our study found that far more shelf space in supermarkets and convenience stores was allocated to the unhealthy foods measured (83·9% and 88·2% respectively) in comparison to fruits and vegetables. All unhealthy categories (confectionery, soft drinks, savoury snacks, flavoured instant noodles, ice creams, and ice lollies) that were measured were available in 100% of small grocery stores and 80% of street food stalls sold fried foods. Supermarkets dedicated 52·3% and 95·6% of end-of-aisle and checkout displays to unhealthy foods, while comparable figures for convenience stores were 46·3% and 69·6%, respectively. Price promotions, in-store marketing and product placement in prominent displays all favoured unhealthy foods. Our findings will help identify opportunities to improve diets and food security; form a baseline against which to assess the effectiveness of any changes to retail food environments in Tonga and can act as a comparator for other countries in the Pacific region and elsewhere.

Food insecurity (FI) remains a major global challenge, deeply impacting health and well-being, particularly in vulnerable populations. In Brazil, regional disparities have led to significant shifts in FI levels from 2004 to 2022, driven by social, economic, and environmental factors. This study analyzes spatial and temporal correlations between FI and sustainable development indicators across Brazil’s 27 states to inform policies aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). An ecological and cross-sectional approach was used, combining FI data from national surveys with sustainable development indicators from public databases. Spatial analysis methods, including the Global and Local Moran Index, were employed to identify spatial correlations, using R, QGis, and GeoDa software. Results indicate a significant decrease in FI between 2004 and 2013, followed by a sharp increase after 2018, particularly in the North and Northeast regions. In 2022, these regions had the highest FI levels, exceeding 68%. FI showed positive correlations with inadequate water and sanitation access and a negative correlation with literacy rates. Mortality in children under 5 years of age shows a slight reduction in correlation coefficients from 2004 to 2022. High-FI clusters were concentrated in the North and Northeast, characterized by poor service coverage and greater vulnerability. These findings highlight that FI distribution in Brazil is not random but closely linked to socio-economic and environmental disparities. Understanding these patterns is crucial for guiding geographically targeted policies to reduce FI and support SDG achievement in Brazil.

Despite a broad consensus on the necessity of fundamental change, endeavors to transform food systems appear to have reached an impasse. Greater engagement with the uncertainty of food systems could open up new ways of triggering transformation directed towards achieving more sustainable and inclusive outcomes. As a way of reorienting current food system change efforts to better embrace uncertainty, we propose a framework for a transformative learning system that serves two aims. First, the framework highlights the importance of locally led action, experimentation, and learning, providing a way of focusing on the core capacities and skills needed to act in the face of uncertainty. Second, it outlines the different types of learning functions that need to operate at different scales of food systems to trigger disruptive, coordinated, and more democratic change processes. The operationalization of this framework necessitates shifts in roles and ways of working across the landscape of food system interventions. The discussion will address the who and how of this potential change, as well as its subsequent impact on the operational modalities of individuals, the process of change itself, and the structures and institutions involved in the process. We argue that embracing uncertainty and the focus on learning has the potential to facilitate a more agile and locally relevant change process. This would allow actors to learn from decentrally pursued food systems reforms, leading to the emergence of diverse pathways that complement on-going efforts and potentially accelerate transformation efforts.

More than 2.3 billion people globally experience food insecurity. Concurrently, rapidly increasing human populations and effective conservation have resulted in greater need for human-wildlife conflict mitigation. This opinion article considers how lethal control of some wildlife species during human-wildlife conflict management can simultaneously advance food security as a secondary benefit. In the case of the United States, one federal agency donated 117–148 mt of meat annually during 2020–2023 from wildlife killed during conflict mitigation to programs addressing food insecurity, providing up to 1.74 million meals at a replacement cost of $1.7 million US. Though limitations exist in providing wild meat to people experiencing food insecurity, such as palatability and disease risk which can reduce cost effectiveness, species generally used for human consumption (e.g., recreationally-hunted species) killed during human-wildlife conflict mitigation should be used when possible to advance food security.