Food Security mechanisms: making the poverty line a wall too high to cross back

After recent food crisis in 2008, particular intense in the horn of Africa, global Millennium Development goal have suffered a big setback regarding the attempt to reduce hunger by half by 2015. While many complex factors have the potential to cause a food crisis the only certainty is that the poor is becoming poorer.

The low-income portion of the population spends around 80% of its revenues in buying food. In addition (and as a paradox) the main source of income for poor people is usually food production, or agriculture.

As the proportion between what they are able to produce and what would be the necessary expenditure to sustain basic needs is negative, no matter the trends in food prices, this condition of high vulnerability experienced in least development countries brings catastrophic consequences in term of food security, if no measures are taken.

Let’s have a look at those countries hosting poorest population: among other conditions, they are usually net importers of food and lacking primary sources; They lack infrastructure development together with challenging environmental conditions; they are featured by high level of government corruption while forced to follow market rules dictated by foreign “partners” with extreme power of negotiation; they suffer from high rate of illiterates and no or little health assistance.

In such context, from a consumer point of view, high food prices for a low-income family means more income devoted to food supply so that other basic needs cannot be satisfied. Education and health care are first needs to be cut so that the situation becomes a poverty trap: while suffering from assuring food intake, people see its opportunity to improve condition of life quickly deteriorating as health and possibility of employment are affected. The vicious cycle drives poor people toward not being able to even satisfy food supply so that the number of people undernourished increase, as well as the number of people under poverty line.

When prices are low, the same standard of consumer may not face the mentioned challenges for food supply, but currently they have no possibility to reduce such vulnerability in case a shock in the price occurs: usually they cannot invest in acquiring more food supply because there is no surplus to be invested, nor facilitator to help financing or storing. Infrastructure’s lack doesn’t allow looking for a more diversified economy even if surplus is available and put constraints in achieving further needs so that the apparent beneficial circumstance is just temporary: with no improvement in resilience a small change in external factor can still drive such families under “the line”.

Reverse trend but same result for most of the families in same contexts, which depend on agricultural income as basis to sustain themselves.

If prices are high, it could seem that great possibility for prosperity are ahead. In reality, rest of people in internal markets are not able to acquire the goods. There is still the possibility to approach global markets: here they play against bigger producers, very productive and with the possibility to enjoy subsidies from their governments. It is still possible to sell goods for the small farmer here? The same lack of infrastructure described above doesn’t allow to save the surplus of production so that food is even wasted and no benefit are given by high prices. By contrast, if prices are low, the outcome is even more obvious: due to low productivity, low income and high cost of production give no margins for profit or continuance. Finally, again the number of poorer is bigger.

The simple examples treated mainly refer to two overall points:

• It is so easy to jump into the bottom pyramid while so hard either avoiding it or coming back. While to often poverty reduction is cheered around the world, the reality is that the huge gap between medium-low and very low income is increasing with more and more people falling down with no or little possibility to recover; the fact that also people in the medium levels are increasing, plus this widening gap between layers, make it misleading in the whole aggregation. Most of the poorer are joining the poorest while the rest rises leaving them behind.

• The key point in food security is vulnerability. How can it be reduced?  Starting from eliminating subsidies to create a real open market, invest in productivity and efficiency and long lasting practices to create a more resilient and less chemical-oriented agriculture, promote local-centered and diversified economy, promoting equality and education, and so on….

I start from this post raising awareness… as the road toward the targets of Millennium Development Goals is still long, I would like to remind people with a video most of us already know:

Pinche aquí para ver el vídeo

Comments Off on Food Security mechanisms: making the poverty line a wall too high to cross back / 01 Feb 2012 por Francesco Mazzeo
IMSD /

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