Hunger and Malnutrition as Major Challenges of the 21st Century

The following sections are included:

• Preface
• About the Editor
• About the Authors
• Contents

This chapter provides an overview of the global food security challenge. It also summarizes the contribution of each of the chapters in the volume and assesses the prospects for attaining food security in the future.

Food security has a long history in Indonesia, stretching back to efforts by royal rulers to ensure reliable availability of rice to their subjects. The Dutch colonial powers followed more of a laissez-faire approach until the Great Depression in the 1930s, when they were forced to take over the rice economy to prevent widespread hardship. The Indonesian government largely followed in the Dutch footsteps, but devoted even more resources to keeping rice prices stable. The world food crisis in 1972/73 caused the government to devote substantial policy attention and economic resources to increasing rice production in an effort to achieve self-sufficiency. This goal has been increasingly elusive after it was reached temporarily in the mid-1980s.

Ever since, the debate over food security in Indonesia has been focusing on two different dimensions of this issue — urban and rural. The urban approach is the widespread, inclusive economic growth that brings the great mass of the population above a meaningful poverty line. Also, stable rice prices in key urban markets are really a guarantee of food security to a rising share of the population (as many rural workers move to urban jobs).

Two reinforcing factors eliminate rural poverty — migration to urban opportunities and stimulation of farm incomes (beyond the impact of higher productivity) for the remaining rural population via higher commodity prices. This approach necessitates a reasonably wealthy urban middle class that willingly pays for the higher food prices and a progressively smaller and more productive agricultural workforce, i.e. a successful structural transformation. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are countries that have followed this path.

But if farmers (especially, in Asia, rice farmers) become a very potent voting bloc in newly democratic societies, while many poor households still remain, in both rural and urban areas, the poor cannot outvote a coalition of urban middle-class households who want to guarantee supplies of rice in their local markets and farmers who want higher rice prices as a way to compensate for the loss of economic competitiveness in the production of labor-intensive crops (especially rice). This is the Indonesian story, but it also resonates in countries like Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and even China. Poverty is dealt with politically by distributing rice directly to poor households, and much of this chapter discusses Indonesia’s experience with public rice distribution.

Changes in the global food economy involve both supply-side and demand-side forces. This paper focuses on two potentially important demand-side shifters: urbanization and ageing. An analytical problem in the literature on this subject has been separating the effects of these shifters from the effects of income growth, which has been correlated with them. The evidence suggests that urbanization raises the demand for energy-dense foods that are more easily prepared than traditional foods such as staple grains. It does not seem to increase total intake of calories per person, but to substitute one source of calories for another, with more consumption per person of animal products, including meat and dairy products, more consumption of vegetable oils and wheat products, and less consumption of traditional staples, including most grains, other than processed products made from them, and pulses. In nutritional terms, urbanization leads to more consumption of animal and vegetable fats and less consumption of complex carbohydrates and fiber. The effects of ageing of the population are less well studied. They seem to be qualitatively similar to, though smaller than, the effects of urbanization: less consumption of staple grains and more consumption of wheat products, meat, fish and fruit.

Densely populated South Asia faces the challenge of reducing hunger and food insecurity while combating vulnerability to climate change, natural disasters and conflicts. Home to about 36 per cent of the undernourished people in the world, the region (along with Middle East and North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa) accounted for 84 percent of violent terrorist attacks and 95 percent of related fatalities in the world. Higher instances of temperature extremes and altered rainfall patterns accompanied with sea level rise are affecting livelihoods and pushing migration both at national and sub-national levels. In this context, the study examines conflicts (through dummies considering combinations of conflict/no conflict in the present and preceding years) and climate change (as captured by rainfall and temperature over the period 1901 to 2014) as correlates of food security using fixed-effects panel data regression analysis over the period 1991 to 2014. Our econometric findings indicate that both conflicts and climate change worsen the already precarious food security situation in South Asia. In fact, the impact is even greater when prolonged conflicts are considered. Analyzing conflict–climate interactions, food insecurity appears to further worsen with temperatures deviating from their pre-structural break averages, when considered along with prolonged armed conflicts. The study concludes by recommending policies addressing food insecurity, conflicts, and climate change adaptation and mitigation.

China has achieved huge success in alleviating nutrient deprivation over the past four decades. The prevalence of child undernutrition in terms of stunting, underweight and infant mortality has dropped well below the world average. This chapter reviews China’s successful experiences in improving health and nutrition, and points out the challenge of overnutrition in terms of child overweight and obesity. Income growth increases diet adequacy, while the westernized dietary transition during fast urbanization, preferences towards meat and oil, and the traditional social norm highlighting a fat body shape for children give rise to overnutrition. Children of rural or migrant families have higher prevalence of overnutrition than that of their urban counterparts. It is worth addressing dual malnutrition — remaining nutrient deprived as well as overweight and obesity — if China aims to realize its national blueprint “Healthy China 2030”.

Despite gains on the economic front, India is facing huge crisis especially in ensuring food and nutrition security for its citizens. The country has alarmingly high levels of poverty and undernutrition, warning, that the benefits of demographic dividend would otherwise become a challenge. The country has been undergoing nutrition transition over the past 30 years, resulting in the change of food baskets with decreasing intake of cereals, pulses, fruits and vegetables, and increasing intake of meat products, fat and salt. The situation is further worrisome as levels of physical activity are declining and mental stress is increasing, leading to high levels of obesity and non-communicable diseases. It is worthy that the country has numerous policies and programmes in place to correct the food and nutrition security situation; however, due to critical gaps, the results are not so encouraging. Only recently is the multi-dimensional and multi-causal nature of nutrition increasingly being realized, and nutrition is also seen as being critical to the development of human capital. Although, the recent strategy papers clearly articulate the action points for revolutionizing the nutrition sector of the country, there is a need to scale-up nutrition services and improve feeding and caring practices in the home, improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the safety nets and work towards increasing farm incomes especially for small and marginal farming households.

This chapter departs from an influential study by Deaton and Dreze (2009), in which decline in calorie intake over the past few decades is attributed to lower calorie ‘requirements’ as a result of improvements in sanitation, health and more sedentary lifestyles, in order to address the central question of whether more diversified diets result in greater consumption of expensive calories and consequently in a reduction of calorie intake. We do so using the National Sample Survey (NSS) consumer expenditure data for 1993–1994, 2004–2005 and 2011–2012. Our analysis corroborates the fact that dietary diversification is associated with higher costs of calories, mainly because of reliance on more expensive calories (e.g., through a reduced dependence on cereals, which are the cheapest sources of calories), determined by a taste for variety in both rural and urban areas and across expenditure deciles over the period 1994–2012. Our analysis also confirms that higher costs of calories and greater affluence are associated with a reduction in calorie intake.

It is widely recognized that combating malnutrition for women is central not only for their own health but also for the attainment of nutritional adequacy for future generations, including infants, children and adolescents. Attaining adequate nutrition for women is necessary throughout their life, but particularly so before, during and after pregnancy, if intergenerational nutritional adequacy is to be attained. Adequacy of nutrition also helps an individual become more productive and saves medical treatment costs that may otherwise have occurred. However, India’s less than satisfactory record of female, infant and child nutrition underscores the need to take urgent steps, particularly if the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are to be attained. With this as the background the present chapter focuses on the role of agriculture in providing adequate nutrition for women and the methods through which women in the rural sector can leverage existing institutions and programs to ameliorate nutritional inadequacy. This would require the design of informative indices of nutritional attainment and close cooperation in policy between governments, civil society organizations and international advisory groups. The chapter reviews some ways in which these can be attained.

Despite impressive reduction in global hunger, a growing undernourished population with inadequate food security poses a serious challenge for Africa. In this chapter, I seek to examine progress of food insecurity in Africa and its determinants. I use fixed-effect panel data regression approach to analyse annual data during 1990–2016 for 59 African countries. The chapter finds that expansion of food production and agricultural output are strongly associated with reduced prevalence of undernourishment, depth of food deficit and prevalence of food inadequacy. While a higher aggregate income growth is associated with improved food security, rising rate of inflation and faster population growth have opposite effects. Remittances received by countries help to reduce prevalence and depth of food insecurity. Though not very consistent, better access to electricity, improved water sources and better road infrastructure are significant factors associated with better food security. The results add to the growing evidence on the importance of food self-sufficiency, rising aggregate and agricultural growth that could compensate for negative effects of rising rate of aggregate inflation and population growth.

The objective of this study is to examine the relationships between agricultural research, technology and nutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), drawing upon a rich and insightful literature. African agriculture has the lowest productivity compared with other regions of the world. Agricultural development has enormous potential to make a significant contribution to reducing malnutrition and associated ill health. An assessment is carried out through a review of a large number of studies. These examined the factors determining adoption of innovative agricultural technology; their benefits and the underlying mechanisms; sustainability of the benefits; empowerment of women farmers and child nutrition; and the prospects of youth employment in agriculture and elsewhere. A case is then made for greater investment in agricultural research.

Food security has eluded much of Africa over many decades. Despite remarkable GDP growth figures, millions of African suffer from both income and food poverty. Rapid population growth and climate change pose major threats and lie at the heart of many of the structural and developmental problems of the continent such as persistently low agricultural productivity, recurrent food shortages and malnutrition. Scanning the historical landscape covering the period from 1960 to 2015, we draw attention to the role of technology and research in transformation of the agricultural sector in Africa. We argue that science and technology strategies play a critical role and are the key to future improvements in agricultural productivity, diversification and food security in Africa. These desirous improvements and strides do not come cheap, and hence necessitate major, contextualized, strategic and sustained technological investments (e.g. in R&D). The economic history of successful regions of the world reinforce the case for investment in technology for sustained reduction of the high rates of poverty and food insecurity that stubbornly plagued the continent for centuries.

Ethiopia has been faced with major food insecurity problems over the last 4 decades with recurrent droughts affecting millions of households. This chapter examines the link between nutrition and productivity among urban residents who are differentiated by gender using a comprehensive panel urban household survey data collected covering the period from 1994 to 2000. Controlling for endogeneity of schooling and allowing for heterogeneity of returns to human capital investment, our estimated results showed the presence of significant and positive link between nutrition (e.g. BMI and height) and productivity, as well as schooling and productivity. The link is robust and significant under all specifications. In agreement with evidence elsewhere in the developing world, we got significant returns to schooling investment. Our findings can be used to highlight the importance of improving children’s nutrition from a policy point of view as it has productivity implications when children are adults. Improving access to food (e.g. food price subsidies), investment in health and ensuring agricultural productivity growth should remain a policy priority.

The following section is included:

• Index