(An essay by Chris Low 2014)

Food security is an increasingly pressing issue in the world today.

Discuss.
Food security was, is and will be an important issue for mankind. In prehistoric
times, humans hunt animals (& collect fruits) for their food. When animals are
scarce or when the hunt was not successful, they go hungry. A certain level of
food security was achieved when humans discovered agriculture and
husbandry. In modern times, food security is more pressing we face, today
many additional challenges and pressures impacting on our food security.
One of the most obvious pressures comes from our population growth. The
human population remained relatively stable at below one billion for hundreds
of thousands of years. But, starting from around two hundred years ago, our
population exploded, from less than one billion to seven billion and this growth
has not slowed.
Another pressing concern is poverty an issue closely related to starvation and
food security. According to Jessica Williams, in a book published not too long
ago, one-in-five of the worlds population live on less than $1 a day. How
much food can we buy for one dollar? In our extremely monetised global
economy, poverty means hunger often starvation.
Children, often, are most directly affected by poverty and without proper food
and nutrition their physical and intellectual growth can become stunted. In
UNICEFs Children of the Recession study, it was reported that the number of
minors living in poverty in the 41 countries surveyed had swollen to 76.5 million
since the economic crisis of 2008.
Since the world became more industrialized and connected, we have become
increasingly specialized in our production of food, goods and services. Countries
tend to specialize in agriculture, in manufacturing, high technology industries
and services. We have become extremely interdependent. Even countries
which are specialized in agriculture tend to focus in certain areas and crops
rice, wheat, fruits or husbandry. This is partly due to their climate and other
historical reasons. This specialization introduces risk. Any crop failures for
whatever reasons will have widespread implications. Floods in Thailand and

(An essay by Chris Low 2014)

India may lead to huge price increases for rice in Singapore and (poor) people
going hungry in countries which import rice.
Our food security is threatened by a multitude of factors which include climate
change, diseases (such as the mad-cow disease and the bird flu), nuclear
contamination as exemplified by the situation Fukushima, Japan, wars and
increases in transportation costs. These factors are exacerbated by other
unforeseen and sometimes uncontrollable events such as labour strikes and
natural disasters, and political squabbles.
Specialization brings economies of scale but it also brought income inequalities
(albeit specialization is not the sole contributing factor leading to income
inequality). The very rich and very poor have vastly different consumption
patterns. The meat consumed by the rich requires hundreds of times more
water to produce compared to the grains consumed by the poor. With our
limited resources, the continued exploitation of our natural resources to feed
the appetites of the rich poses a serious threat to the food security of the
majority (the poor). As income inequality worsens, our food security will be
under increasing pressure.
On the flip side, the introduction of GM food, better farming and irrigation
techniques, development of advanced pesticides, more economical
transportation, advanced refrigeration and storage technologies all contribute
to a more stable global food supply and hopefully, food security for all.
However, all those advancements do not seem sufficient. The fundamental
pressures of population growth and resource-hungry consumption patterns
must be addressed before we can achieve a sustainable food productionconsumption balance which does not harm the environment. The food
produced must reach the right people it must be distributed in a fair and
equitable manner.
Whilst food security is an increasingly pressing concern today, there are other
equally critical issues education, social stability, global warming and world
peace. Though we need to recognize these critical areas, food is at the apex, it
directly satisfies a critical physiological need (without food, we will die, in a
matter of days). Food security deserves our fullest attention.