Op-ed by Paola Termine
©Hkun Lat
The definition of "food security" has evolved over the years in response to the changing economic and political landscape and the main issues affecting food and hunger. Today, food security is broadly accepted to include the four pillars of availability, access, utilization and stability. These four pillars emerged in the course of the past 50 years, and each of these took turns in assuming higher relevance depending on the historical moment. Today, the pillars are often seen as sequential: you need to have availability of food first, then guarantee access to food to everyone, then ensure proper utilization of food... while stability is seen as a cross-cutting dimension. In reality, the pillars are interconnected and all equally important for food security.
It is however interesting to look back at the evolution of the concept of food security in parallel with historical and economic events. From the aftermath of the II World War to 1974 tit focused on the availability of food, responding to concerns for a global food crisis linked to price increases in world markets, and considered more production of food the solution to the hunger problem.
Attention to the dimension of stability emerged also in those years, due to market fluctuations in food prices and quantity.
The importance of access to food – often referred to as the 'demand' side of food consumption – started to become central following the work of Amartya Sen, who showed - through a historical analysis - the persistence of famines even in contexts of sufficient availability of food. In 1982, FAO stressed that food security had three aims, availability, access and stability, moving from a macro view of food production and trade to consideration of micro issues (such as individual access) and the socio-economic circumstances that shape this access.
In the early 1990s the first international conference on nutrition introduced the concept of nutritional and preference dimensions of food, shifting from a concept of basic food calories to nutritional qualities which evolved in the concept of utilization. Finally, the 1996 World Food Summit took on board these insights and its commitment referred to the four pillars, as they are broadly accepted today.
The 1996 definition of food security, updated in 2001, states:
Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
This definition implicitly includes already a broader understanding and the dimensions of agency and sustainability.
Since the work of Amartya Sen, there has been increasing awareness on the need to approach food security from a human development perspective: ensuring that people have agency to shape their own relationships with food systems and to address power imbalances within those systems, as well as the longer-term considerations of sustainability.
The global hunger situation requires a shift in thinking: it is projected that almost 600 million people will be chronically undernourished in 2030, which is at stark contradiction with the SDG 2 goal of Zero Hunger (FAO et al., 20231).
Why agency matters
The 2020 HLPE-FSN report Food security and nutrition: building a global narrative towards 2030 elaborates on the importance of agency for food security. Agency can be defined as improving rights and capabilities of people to feed themselves with dignity and to engage with and shape their food systems. Agency empowers individuals and groups to make decisions about the food they eat, produce, and distribute. Agency is also the ability to effectively engage in decision-making processes and governance at local, national and global levels.
So, agency refers to the ability to exercise voice and make decisions, but also to act upon them to improve individual and community well-being. There is a focus on process, that is the participation in decision-making, but also the recognition that structural inequities and power differentials in society (based on gender, age, race, and other individual and community characteristics) can be barriers to the exercise of voice and participation, which in turn can undermine food security.
Agency is important at both individual and community levels, to move toward the idea of active ‘food citizens’ from that of passive food consumers. At the individual level, enhanced agency increases autonomy and self-determination over participation in food systems to ensure that foods produced and consumed are culturally acceptable and uphold human dignity. This includes also livelihoods in food systems, such as for example employment conditions and labour rights. At the community level, enhanced collective agency in food systems governance has been shown to result in better food security and nutritional outcomes.
Why sustainability matters
The sustainability dimension in the food security definition refers to “strengthening the economic, social, and ecological bases that generate food security and nutrition for future generations.” According to the HLPE-FSN 2020 report, sustainability refers to “food system practices that contribute to long-term regeneration of natural, social, and economic systems, ensuring that the food needs of the present generations are met without compromising food needs of future generations”. The main difference between the stability pillar and the sustainability dimension is that stability refers to short term disruptions, while sustainability aims at stressing the linkages between food security, ecosystems and food systems in the longer term. Food systems must respect the limits of ecosystems and restore them. Concerns for sustainability have evolved through time especially with increased awareness of climate change.
A broader understanding of food security including these six dimensions is not just a definitional issue; most importantly it has substantial policy implications:
Although the broader definition of the six dimensions of food security has not yet been formally endorsed by the Committee of World Food Security (CFS), agency and sustainability are already implicitly integrated into the definition of food security and codified in the Voluntary Guidelines on the progressive realization of the right to food, which this year celebrates its 20th anniversary, as well as in other human rights legal texts, as well as being increasingly adopted in policy documents and academic research.
Paola Termine is the Coordinator ad interim for the HLPE-FSN and has over 20 years of professional experience at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO), and has held an Adjunct Professor position at the American University of Rome (AUR).
1 FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. 2023. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023. Urbanization, agrifood systems transformation and healthy diets across the rural–urban continuum. Rome, FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cc3017en
