Food Security

Gays i have started a new community of food safety and preservation.I need help of you to grow this community .

A genral introction is given below

Food security is defined as the availability of food and one's access to it. A household is considered food secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Stages of food insecurity range from food secure situations to full-scale famine.

Some main things that should be consider

Food Availability:

Sufficient quantities of appropriate, necessary types of food from domestic production, commercial imports, or donors, are consistently available to individuals, are in reasonable proximity to them, or are within their reach.

ii. Food Access:

Individuals have adequate incomes or other resources to purchase a appropriate food needed to maintain consumption of an adequate diet and nutritional level.

iii. Food Utilization:

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Food is properly used and many suitable techniques are employed for storage. At the global level, Hunger results from political and economic inequality, environmental degradation, unjust trade policies, inappropriate technology, and other factors depending on local context. At the local level, the food inequality results by the lack of nutritional education, poor quality of food, and from inadequate quantities of the rights kinds of food.

Weaknesses in the variables of access, availability, and proper utilization of food lead to what individuals and households experience as hunger. There are considered to be two types of food insecurity: chronic and temporal.

Chronic food insecurity results from inadequate food intake over a longer period of time and is constant. Temporal food insecurity results from a temporary decrease in food intake due to price changes, production failures, or a loss of income. Temporal food insecurity can also be related to the hungry season.

i. The poor and rural are most likely to be hungry in any given country and situation.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

ii. Production, income, and the high price of food are the variables that contribute to hunger in rural areas.

Poverty leads to hunger and vice-versa; families caught in a cycle of hunger and poverty find their opportunities and resources further diminished in other areas.

iii. Hunger and malnutrition lead to poverty, which leads to:

a.) Unsustainable use of natural resources b.) Reduced capacity to access markets and resources c.) Reduced school attendance and learning capacity d.) Less education and employment for women and girls e.) Weakened immune systems and rising child mortality f.) Impaired maternal and infant health g.) Risky survival strategies, spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

1. Food Insufficiency:

ADVERTISEMENTS:

There are 6 groups of nutrients: carbohydrates, protein, fat, minerals, vitamins and water. It is essential to consume a percentage of each nutrient everyday for overall health, without any of these nutrients a person will be malnourished, undernourishment & malnourishment.

Undernourished – a person is lacking some essential nutrients.

Malnourished – they are almost without many essential nutrients to the point where it has become very dangerous for their health

i. Undernourishment:

Undernourishment is the lack of sufficient calories in available food, so that one has little or no ability to move or work. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimated that on an average minimum caloric intake on a global scale is 2500 calories/day. People receiving 2000-2200 calories/day are said to be undernourished, who suffer from various deficiencies and health problems.

ii. Malnourishment:

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Malnourishment is the lack of specific components of food such as proteins, vitamins or essential components. It is possible to have excess food and still suffer from malnourishment due to nutritional imbalance caused by a lack of specific dietary components

iii. Malnutrition:

Malnutrition is the lack of one or more essential nutrients in food. About 15-20 million deaths occur annually due to malnutrition. Human nutrition is the provision to humans to obtain the materials necessary to support life.

In general, humans can survive for two to eight weeks without food, depending on stored body fat. Survival without water is usually limited to three or four days. Lack of food remains a serious problem, with about 36 million humans starving to death every year.

Childhood malnutrition is also common and contributes to the global burden of disease. However global food distribution is not even, and obesity among some human populations has increased to almost epidemic proportions, leading to health complications and increased mortality in some developed, and a few developing countries. Obesity is caused by consuming more calories than are expended, with many attributing excessive weight gain to a combination of overeating and insufficient exercise.

Major causes of malnutrition include poverty and food prices, dietary practices and agricultural productivity etc. Malnutrition can also be a consequence of other health issues such as diarrheal disease or chronic illness etc.

Poverty and food prices:

As much as food shortages may be a contributing factor to malnutrition in many countries

Dietary practices:

A lack of breastfeeding can lead to malnutrition in infants and children. Possible reasons for the lack in the developing world may be that the average family thinks bottle feeding is better

Agricultural productivity:

Food shortages can be caused by a lack of farming skills such as crop rotation, or by a lack of technology or resources needed for the higher yields found in modern agriculture, such as nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation.

As a result of widespread poverty, farmers cannot afford or governments cannot provide the technology. The World Bank and some wealthy donor countries also press nations that depend on aid to cut or eliminate subsidized agricultural inputs such as fertilizer, in the name of free market policies even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. Many, if not most, farmers cannot afford fertilizer at market prices, leading to low agricultural production.