Polytechnic University of the Philippines
Contemporary World
Global Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding the World
What is Food Security?
The availability at all times of adequate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a
steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices. (1974, UN
World Food Conference)
Pillars of Food Security
1. Availability
2. Access
3. Utilization
4. Stability
Food Security and Human Security
1. Safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression.
2. Protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life - whether in homes, in jobs
or in communities’.
3. Hunger - the most prevalent threat to human security, and one of the gravest.
4. Poverty - is the main cause of food insecurity, which is in turn linked more broadly to political security,
socio - economic development, human rights and the environment, placing it squarely at the heart of all
human security concerns.
5. The future of global food security relies on how states and other actors respond to range of complex,
interconnected and multifaceted forces affecting food systems around the world.
6. Artificial cheapening of traded food - the lower - cost and heavily subsidized food from developed
countries has been overwhelming the markets of developing countries, putting tremendous pressure on
smallholders in the latter to compete with cheaper food from abroad.
