Food Insecurity In Some Countries Will Intensify, Study Shows

August 9, 1999

Another new USDA study predicts that food insecurity in many of the countries studied will intensify unless performance trends of key contributing factors are improved. In the poorest countries, productivity is the key to improving food security.

In the poorest countries, imports are a small part of the domestic food supply, because foreign exchange availability is limited. "Raising productivity is not an easy task, however," the report cautions. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the region most vulnerable to under nutrition, grain yields must increase at a rate 60% greater than the growth achieved during 1980-97 to satisfy nutritional requirements by 2008. That will require "a substantial increase in investment."

In Asia, food security will improve if yields or imports continue to increase as they did during 1980-97. But the challenge is to overcome Asia’s recent slowdown in yield growth and external financial difficulties that may pose food security problems in the long term, the study says.

Projections indicate that food consumption will increase at a slower rate than population in many low-income countries during the next decade and lead to a decline in per capita consumption. Many countries also will be unable to meet the minimum nutritional requirements of their people.

In some countries, where national performance shows an increase in average consumption, low-income groups nevertheless remain vulnerable to food insecurity because of internal distribution problems. Forty-seven of the 66 countries studied will face a declining per capita consumption trend through 2008 which, in most cases, will lead to nutritional problems. By 2008, 39 countries will be unable to meet their nutritional food requirements.

The main factors influencing food security in poorer countries are domestic food production, foreign exchange availability, population growth and income distribution. OF those factors, domestic food production is the most crucial. Domestic production contributes to more than 90% of consumption in the most food-insecure countries.

To improve food security, policies must be promoted that accelerate agricultural growth, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, says the report. Foreign exchange availability is limited, which limits imports. Production increases would translate into a gradual increase in food supplies, a decline in population growth and an increase in export earnings to support food imports.

A significant improvement in agricultural performance, however, requires innovative technologies to increase productivity of both land and labor. Reports indicate that such technologies are available throughout the region but only experimentally and on a small scale.

The entire report is available at USDA's Economic Research Service web site at http://www.usda.gov.