Technical Guidance → Food security
Food security
Food security is the economic and physical access, now and in the future, to sufficient locally appropriate, safe and nutritious food.
Any intervention to meet food security needs should:
- Take into account how different groups among the affected populations normally obtain food, and the coping strategies used during shortages,
- Consider short term (acute) and longer term (chronic) food insecurity issues,
- Avoid negative effects on the local economy, social networks, livelihoods and environment.
What affects food security?
| Availability |
Access |
Use |
- Natural disaster - affecting harvests e.g. drought, locusts
- Conflict - affecting food importation, causing population movements
- Agricultural labour - e.g. affected by HIV/AIDS, migration, temporary displacement
- Agricultural inputs - e.g. insufficient or inadequate seed, fertiliser, tools
|
- Physical barriers - e.g. insecurity, poor roads or lack of transport, ill health
- Market price – increasing food prices or fall in income from sale of other goods affects ability to buy or exchange goods or services for food
- Land – people have limited or no access to land to grow food
- Income – unemployment or rising costs affect household income levels
|
- Ill health - e.g. HIV/AIDS affects the absorption of some nutrients and needs improved dietary requirements
- Food storage and preparation – can affect the quality and nutritional value of food.
- Culture, norms, beliefs – can affect the use and acceptance of some foods.
- Contaminated water – resulting in diarrhoea and loss of nutrients
|
Faced with these challenges, people’s coping strategies include:
- Reduce the amount and frequency of food eaten;
- Gathering wild food – roots, seeds etc.;
- Borrow money or sell other goods and services, including livestock;
- Sale or hiring out of productive land, tools, or livestock to others;
- Sending family members out to waged employment, including children;
- Prostitution.
Assessing food security
Assessing food security helps to understand how severe the situation is, and the reasons behind this. Key areas to consider include:
- how people normally make a living and meet their food needs;
- what resources they have available e.g. land, labour, knowledge;
- who can access these resources and how;
- how the ‘normal’ food security situation is, how it has changed over time and why.
| Phases of a food security assessment |
| Preparation |
- set objectives, involve stakeholders, select team, plan activities |
| Collection of secondary information |
- key informants, documents, websites |
| Collection of primary information |
- observation, interviews, focus groups |
| Analysis |
- compare situation before and after the emergency, assess whether coping mechanisms and the interventions of other agencies are adequate |
| Conclusions |
- decide whether to intervene, how and by whom |
Source: How to conduct a food security assessment - a step-by-step guide © 2005 IFRC
This page was last updated on 24 June 2011