Introduction to livelihoods and food security

The 1996 World Food Summit report defined food security as existing “when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”.

Food security comprises 3 main elements:

• food availability - sufficient, appropriate food is consistently available
• access to food - people have the means to purchase, or barter for, the food they need to maintain an adequate diet and level of nutrition
• food utilisation - food is properly used. This requires use of adequate processing and storage practices; an understanding of basic nutrition and child care; and access to health and sanitation services.

Food security is a global challenge. According to the World Bank (2008) the 2008 food crisis risks plunging a further 100 million people into poverty. The main causes of rising food prices are contested but generally said to include:

• high fuel and fertiliser costs
• poor weather conditions in some major grain exporting countries
• a rise in demand for food including from the expanding middle classes in India and China
• an increase in bio-fuel production reducing the amount of land allocated to food production.

However, even without the combination factors that have caused the 2008 food crisis, many poor people are affected by predictable seasonal cycles of hunger and food insecurity. The multidimensional nature of food security points to livelihoods approaches as a lens for aiding understanding of food security issues. Livelihoods approaches can provide a useful analytical framework because of their focus on:

• assessing risk, vulnerability and resilience
• disaggregated analysis of issues and impacts on different groups
• both local factors that affect people’s lives and the wider institutional and policy environment.

This section on food security provides recommended reading and regularly updated documents.