Showing papers in "Global Food Security in 2013"

TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify the elements of a strategy, built around a combination of short-term fixes and long-term methodological advancements, to reverse the existing trends of poor coordination and slow methodological innovation in food security measurement and monitoring.

TL;DR: The results of efficacy and effectiveness studies, as well as recent successes in delivery, provide evidence that biofortification is a promising strategy for combating hidden hunger.

TL;DR: In this article, sustainable intensification has a role to play, but this must be accompanied by fundamental change in global food systems, and alternatives such as management of food demand and waste reduction must be considered.

TL;DR: This paper traces the evolution of food security concepts and measures up through the first decade of the 21st century, proposes indicators to represent these five dimensions, and highlights areas where the development of new metrics is warranted.

TL;DR: For example, this article showed that in Asia as a whole has now passed this turning point so its average farm sizes can rise, while in Africa average farm size will continue to fall for many years, posing special challenges in both hinterland and commercialized areas.

TL;DR: In this paper, the severity of this drought event and the impact on grain prices in relation to previous droughts of similar magnitude and use this information to highlight priorities for global research on drought and crop productivity to help buffer against future climatic shocks to global food supply.

TL;DR: Wang et al. as discussed by the authors developed an integrated technology system in which the focus is on achieving both high crop productivity and high resource use efficiency (double high) to ensure food security and environmental sustainability.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review the national rice development investment strategies of 19 African countries and argue that in order to reverse urban bias in African rice markets, more resources will need to be allocated to value-add and demand-lifting investments.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the potential for a major expansion of arable crops in the Guinea and Miombo savannahs, tropical tree crops in Congo Basin rainforests and irrigated agriculture on the floodplains of several African river systems.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors suggest that there are four areas in adapting crops and cropping systems that crop modelling can contribute: determining where and how well crops of the future will grow; contributing to crop improvement programs; identifying what future crop management practices will be appropriate and assessing risk to crop production in the face of greater climate variability.

TL;DR: The authors argue that the price increase in the corn market had a spillover effect on the wheat market and caused policy responses and speculation, including hoarding, which caused rice prices to spike.

TL;DR: In this paper, a series of cross-country demand analyses conducted using International Comparison Program (ICP) data from 1980, 1996 and 2005 was used to highlight how consumer preferences for food evolve over time.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that second generation biofuel impacts depend critically on whether the feedstock competes with traditional crops or is a co-product in their production, and the extent that agricultural land is allocated to dedicated biomass, food prices will increase.

TL;DR: In Brazil, ethanol and biodiesel supply 25% of the road transport fuel consumed in Brazil as mentioned in this paper, and the land dedicated to production of these biofuels in Brazil was of 8.82 Mha or 11.8% of total cultivated area, a considerable fraction of the land available, considering improvements in cattle breeding and agro-ecological zoning for bioenergy.

TL;DR: The authors in this article describe the evolution in the use of HCES in addressing food and nutrition issues, identify HCES shortcomings and distill a shared agenda and a strategy for the nutrition community to work on, together with already existing HCES stakeholders, to strengthen HCES.

TL;DR: In this article, a detailed overview of production in the African, Asian and Latin American regions illustrating how the three regions of the developing world are working toward bioenergy development, the strategies and policies, and the main hurdles being encountered.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide a framework for analyzing the complex relationship among food, fuels, and bio-fuels, and argue that sustained high crude oil prices, in addition to rendering bio fuels profitable, could also induce innovations by increasing the energy content of (existing or new) crops grown on arable land, in turn causing further food price increases.

TL;DR: In this paper, a very extensive review of the theoretical and empirical literature on the management of agricultural price instability is presented, and a critical assessment of this doctrine as applied to grains is provided.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors conclude that expansion of irrigated rice area will likely be an essential component of achieving self-sufficiency in rice production by 2050 and for maize it is much less certain and depends on whether the climate and soils in major Sub-Saharan Africa maize-growing regions are more similar to the harsher conditions in the U.S. Western Corn Belt or to the higher-yielding more reliable Eastern Corn Belt.

TL;DR: This article surveys the evidence on market-mediated environmental impacts of biofuels, with special attention to the indirect greenhouse gas emissions stemming from land cover change in the wake of increased demand for biofuel feedstocks.

TL;DR: The authors argued that there are many causes for the increase in food commodity prices, including global supply and demand trends, regional or commodity specific supply disruptions, changes in the value of the US$, macroeconomic issues such as recession or financial crisis, trade policy changes, and bio-fuels.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors illustrate how using individual rather than household-level measures allows a better understanding of three dimensions of food security: agricultural productivity, impacts of development interventions on well-being, and coping mechanisms in response to shocks.

TL;DR: The article reviews the evolution of FNSI efforts in the context of emerging technology and data collection techniques and concludes the need to streamline and expand coverage of conventional information tools such as household surveys while facilitating the rapid uptake of analytical tools that leverage the novel, numerous, and rich data streams enabled by emergent information and communication technologies and dramatic increases in connectivity.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors estimate impacts of higher food prices on consumer welfare in poor countries by focusing on coping responses that involve downgrading food quality to maintain quantity and therefore overstate nutritionally harmful effects of rising prices.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors conducted a systematic realist review to examine how market engagement interacts with vulnerability to food insecurity after a climatic hazard event, focusing on rural areas of the developing world.

TL;DR: Overall, BMI continues to be a valuable measure in children if the underlying assumptions of the criteria and cut-off values are considered, however, where BMI is associated with height, in children, it is recommended using weight for height z -scores.

TL;DR: The use of market-based risk management is not widespread in the public sector, particularly by governments as mentioned in this paper, and it is important to identify trade-offs between expected cost and risk and to ensure that there is a strong institutional framework in place to support the strategy.