• Household responses

Household responses

This paper provides an overview of food security issues in relation to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, China, Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam.

It identifies the key issues relating to food security in Asia, setting out progress and the prospects for achieving the MDG on hunger and analysing how these issues are likely to develop in 10 to 25 years time, in particular their effects on vulnerable groups. It also analyses current policies for targeting extremely poor and vulnerable people and the issues that need to be taken into account to improve this targeting as a means towards improving prospects of meeting the MDG on hunger.

Some of the main findings and policy recommendations include:

• The spheres of food access and utilisation offer most scope for innovative policies, for example through education and feeding schemes, cash transfers
• policies need to move away from the current sole concentration on one macronutrient, carbohydrate, to the neglect of others, essential fats and protein, and to the complete neglect of all micronutrients. Policies need to be put in place which will improve food supply, access and utilisation across the spectrum of macro and micronutrients
• urban slum dwellers and the more remote, weakly integrated areas are likely to have a chronic inability to access food. Policy recommendations include more progressive taxation policy, generating more funds for redistribution. At the national level, better identification is needed of chronically poor and vulnerable groups so that transfers, of food or cash, can be targeted better
• all countries have placed great emphasis on enhanced production as a means of increasing availability, with excessively expensive guaranteed purchase and buffer stock schemes. But some also recognise that regional trade has an important role in meeting food security requirements. Policy recommendations include: donors can engage in medium/ long term policy dialogue towards keeping stocks down to a reasonable level, relying moderately on imports, and dismantling guaranteed purchase schemes, especially where they cause major distortions in the location of food production and distribution of income among farm types
• intra household disparities in access to food, with women, and especially girls, accessing disproportionately less than men and boys need focused interventions such as school feeding for girls and improved education on childcare and general nutrition

[Adapted from authors]

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