Food security

Dr Som Dutt
The FAO celebrates World Food Day each year on 16 October to commemorate the founding of Food and Agriculture Organization in 1945.
Events are organized in over 150 countries across the world, making it one of the most celebrated days of the UN calendar. These events promote worldwide awareness and action for those who suffer from hunger and for the need to ensure food security and nutritious diets for all. The theme for this year’s World Food Day is “Climate is changing. Food and agriculture must too.”
Climate change is affecting the health of our planet and changing our world. It is causing more natural disasters and environmental problems, which make it harder for us to grow food. Growing food is part of the problem too, as we have been taking shortcuts and harming our planet, with the aim of producing what we need. In order to feed a growing population set to reach 9.6 billion by the year 2050, we will have to learn to grow what we need in a sustainable way, a way that does not continue to destroy our planet.
The FAO of the United Nations leads international efforts to end the hunger in developing countries to improve their agriculture, forestry and fisheries practices, and to make sure people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active and healthy life. Since its founding in 1945, the FAO has focused a particular attention on developing rural areas, which are home to nearly 80 per cent of the world’s poor and hungry people.
Our three main goals are: the eradication of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition; the elimination of poverty and the driving forward of economic and social progress for all; and, the sustainable management and utilization of natural resources, including land, water, air, climate and genetic resources for the benefit of present and future generations.
The biggest issue related to climate change is food security. The world’s poorest — many of whom are farmers, fishers and pastoralists — are being hit hardest by higher temperatures and an increasing frequency in weather-related disasters. At the same time, the global population is growing steadily and is expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050.
To meet such a heavy demand, agriculture and food systems will need to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change and become more Dr Som Dutt is Editor ICAR, Pusa, New Delhi resilient, productive and sustainable. This is the only way that we can ensure the wellbeing of ecosystems and rural populations and reduce emissions, according to a report of the FAO, Rome.
Growing food in a sustainable way means adopting practices that produce more with less in the same area of land and use natural resources wisely. It also means reducing food losses before the final product or retail stage through a number of initiatives including better harvesting, storage, packing, transport, infrastructure, market mechanisms, as well as institutional and legal frameworks.
The objectives of World Food Day are to:encourage attention to agricultural food production and to stimulate national, bilateral, multilateral and non-governmental efforts to this end;encourage economic and technical cooperation among developing countries; encourage the participation of rural people, particularly women and the least privileged categories, in decisions and activities influencing their living conditions; heighten public awareness of the problem of hunger in the world; promote the transfer of technologies to the developing world; and strengthen international and national solidarity in the struggle against hunger, malnutrition and poverty and draw attention to achievements in food and agricultural development.
Our everyday actions, decisions and behaviour all have an impact on the climate. Climate change is affecting the health of our planet and changing our world. It is causing more natural disasters and environmental problems, which make it harder for us to grow food.
Surprisingly, 1 in 9 people go to bed hungry every night. That is a total of around 800 million people.
We already produce enough food in the world to feed everyone so why are there still hungry people? Hunger exists for many reasons: poor people may not have the money to buy food, war can prevent people having access to food, natural disasters can cause hunger, and too much food is wasted. The good news is that leaders around the world want to end hunger. Last year, 193 countries committed to 17 sustainable development goals, with the overall aim being to end hunger by 2030. But leaders cannot to this alone.
They need the help of international organizations, farmers, schools, universities, companies and you. We can become the first generation to cancel hunger from the planet – Zero Hunger Generation – if we work together. Ending hunger is everyone’s responsibility and all of us have a role to play, even through changing our simple.
Many people around the world live in forests or depend on them for food. Forests not only provide shelter and food for people and other creatures, they also produce oxygen, clean the air we breathe by absorbing gases like carbon dioxide, and also give us plenty of fresh water. Our forests are quickly disappearing, with thousands of trees being cut down each year to clear land for farming, among other uses. We have to protect and care for our forests to keep our planet and those who live on it healthy.
As the climate changes, the way food is grown and produced must change too. Climate change is making it harder to grow food because of natural disasters, like floods, droughts and warmer seasons.
A large amount of greenhouse gasses are released to produce the food we eat every day. But the worst thing is that over one third of the food produced worldwide is lost or wasted each year.
Wasting food means wasting the money, labour and resources such as energy, land and water that go into producing the food. Wasted food usually ends up in landfills where it rots, and rotting food is harmful to our environment, because it releases methane gas, one of the most harmful greenhouse gasses. You can throw away less food by saving leftovers, freezing portions of food, helping your parents to plan your meals, buying only what you need at the supermarket and trying to buy.
At the moment, we are using far more natural resources than we need to produce food. There are only a limited amount of these resources and they need to be available for families in the future. We are also using the earth’s precious resources poorly and damaging important ecosystems. We are cutting down forests, polluting our water systems and ruining our soils. When managed sustainably, soils can store a large amount of carbon and therefore they have a huge potential to decrease the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
If we manage our natural resources sustainably, not only can we help to end hunger, but we can also fight climate change.

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