By: Yahya Gulraiz, Asif Javed
Food security means the availability of enough food for every human being to live a healthy, active and productive life across all countries and regions without any discrimination of income groups, gender, and household members. It refers to the scale of an individual’s ability to access food which is nutritious in quality and sufficient in quantity. In such a context, the food should be free of any contaminants. This illustrates that the realm of food security and safety is complex, encompassing factors such as physical, social, and economic access. As a result, the difficulties impacting food security primarily centre around concerns related to the presence, attainability, and nutritional sufficiency.
Food security is a fundamental right of every nation, particularly the developing countries where people face multitudes of economic and climatic challenges. In the 21st century, the urgency of food security concerns has escalated due to population growth and the transformation of certain food crops into biofuels. Food security crisis has intensified in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan due to certain challenges, including climate change and population growth. Additionally, ethical considerations regarding the consumption of genetically modified organism (GMO) crops have magnified the susceptibility of numerous countries in their pursuit of achieving food security.
The modern and global world is facing four major crises of war, illness, economic inflation, and climate change, which contributes significantly to famine, extreme poverty, quality food shortage and insecurity overall. According to the World Bank: “The number of people suffering acute food insecurity, increased from 135 million in 2019 to 345 million in 82 countries by June 2022”. Destroying livestock, farms, and other infrastructure, conflicts turn into ashes the prospects of the victims to lead a quality life and eliminate their slightest hope of survival. As a result of displacement, people become more vulnerable to food availability and safe drinking water due to being away from their homes and supply chains not available to them at their doorstep or nearby areas.
A long period of conflict in Afghanistan has left its people with an inability to provide their families even one-time meal. People are more susceptible to the precarious conditions of food and drinking water in the conflict zones. Recent food crisis in Venezuela as a result of mass corruption at government level has left thousands of mothers uncertain to give their kids something to eat for even one time a day. The country has the largest oil reserves and abundant fertile land to grow its own crops, but high inflation, mismanagement, corruption, failure of government to control prices and seizure of farms and factories by the existing regime caused severe food shortage and food insecurity to its people.
As conflicts give rise to hunger, food insecurities can also induce violent political extremism. Vital investments have been done by Canadian people in Pakistan and Afghanistan to combat such crises. Hence, thinktanks should come up with innovative ideas and approaches to combat today’s challenges. Christopher MacLennan, the Deputy Minister for International Development, said on the occasion of G20 summit that Canadians have a long history of being on the forefront of solutions to world hunger and are committed to addressing the global food crisis.
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