Seminar Project: Food Security

1. Seminar Project: Food Security • By: JP Chalupowski, Cale Potter, Evan Rice, Morgan Macmillan

2. What is Food Security? Food security is the availability of food and one’s access to it. • The opposite is food insecurity when you do not have the availability of food and access to it. • The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that is concerned with international public health.Their objective is to attain the highest possible level of health for all people. • The World Health Organization (WHO) define three factors of Food Security: • Food Availability-Having Sufficient amounts of food consistently, • Food Access- Having sufficient resources economic/physical and, • Food Use- Approximate use based on knowledge of basic nutrition and care. • The Food and Agriculture Organization adds a fourth fact: The stability of the first dimensions of Food Security over time.

3. Risk Factors • There are many risk factors that lead to food insecurity such as: Droughts, Fuel shortages, Shipping disruptions, Economic Stability, Wars and much, much more. • This photograph on the right displays the effects of a Drought. Extremely dry climate leads to many deaths from a lack of food and water.

4. MDCs & LDCs • Although countries may desire a high self-sufficiency rate to avoid transport risks, this may be difficult to achieve especially for wealthy countries, because there are higher regional production costs. • LDCs and MDCs both have food security and food insecurity. Part of that has to do with money, but it also has to do with population. For instance, MDCs will almost always have more money than LDCs, but if an MDC has a high population with high demand there will be some food insecurity. Or, LDCs might not have much money causing food insecurity but they could have a low population, therefore less mouths to feed.

5. Environmental Factors • Natural disasters have been constantly implicated in food insecurity. Climate change and disasters can destroy farm land, and slow the food distribution process. Other environmental factors such as degrading soil, erosion, soil pollution and desertification also create food insecurity. • Photo on the left is am example of the effects of Erosion

6. Industrialization • Food itself has become industrialized, factories making food and mass-producing. • Example: All the fast food in the world (Wendy’s, Mcdonald’s, Dairy Queen and more) • Food distribution and environmental factors are reasons behind lack of food access and food security.

7. Food Distribution • When you go to the supermarket, (Sobey’s, Superstore in our case) have you ever wondered how all the food got there? Food distribution is the term used to explain this. We get our food from all over the world, the food you eat is transported or distributed across the world to a supermarket near you. • It is typically transported by refrigerated trucks, mainly so that it can maintain high quality when it reaches the final desination.

8. Effects of Not Having Food Security • On an individual level food insecurity over time can cause physical, social, and physiological problems in both children and adults. Food insecurity on a bigger scale can also lead to political instability and conflict. This could lead to ‘food riots’ when the population of a country protests it’s lack of food. This on a huge scale could lead to war.

9. Animated Video • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiYDG11zIUs

10. Resources • http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02398/drought_2398818b.jpg • http://atlanticadaptation.ca/sites/discoveryspace.upei.ca.acasa/files/Erosion%20at%20Derby%20-%20GMacDougall%20(2003).jpg • www.gracelinks.org/280/food-security-food-access • http://csatimes.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Food-Security.jpg • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiYDG11zIUs • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization