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Food security

Millennium Development Goal number one is to eradicate extreme hunger and reduce poverty by half by 2015. At the World Food Summit in 1996, 180 nations discussed ways to end hunger. Five years later, they met again to monitor progress. According to the State of Food Insecurity in the World 2006 report, today’s estimated 820 million undernourished people in developing countries represent a marginal reduction of three million as against the early nineties baseline of 823 million used by the Summit. There are significant disparities among regions; Asia and the Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean have seen an overall reduction in both the number and prevalence of undernourished people. Sub-Saharan Africa is worse off. What can be done to meet the World Food Summit’s target? What role do Science and Technology play in achieving food security? What response is needed from policymakers? This dossier focuses attention to these questions. This dossier has been prepared by KIT (J. Sluijs) in collaboration with CTA (J.A. Francis) - September 2007.


Science and Technology in improving food and nutrition security

by Dr Huub Löffler , Ir Niels Louwaars
In the last century, the rapid global population growth gave rise to serious concern about the ability of agriculture to feed humanity. The application of new technologies, however, showed that both the labour and land productivity could be increased dramatically. Figure 1 shows that the rapid increase in grain production in the Netherlands goes hand in hand with a dramatic decrease in the labour force. This exemplifies the potential of science and technology (S&T) for increasing food production and improving food security. 10/09/2007
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Achieving Food Security

by Prof. Richard M. Mkandawire
Although Africa has made significant strides poverty and hunger persist. The African Union (AU) estimates that 27 percent of Africans are under-nourished, representing a 2 percent decline since 1995. FAO (2004) reported that many sub-regions of Africa had made remarkable progress in reducing hunger, except in the Central African region, where the number of under-nourished people increased to 56% against 36% in the early 1990s (Table 1). Consequently, the estimated absolute number has risen from 176 million to 210 million; since Africa’s total population has increased from 589 million to 764 million over the same period. 10/09/2007
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