المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

The report states: "To reduce poverty and hunger, growth needs to reach the poor and the increased income needs to generate demand for the assets controlled by them. Poor households need to be able to use the additional economic assets to improve their diets both in quantity and quality". Not clear what this means and what assets are we talking about?

The quality of food and diet has been underestimated as a basic requirement for food security. Education is an important part of the solution to solving this problem. In regard to "policies that led to better nutritional status as a result of investment into agriculture" a key issue here is that attention has to be given to the whole food supply chain, not just the production end. Production is important but it's just part of the food supply chain, not the whole food chain.

In our study of food security and risk management we found very little investigation of the food supply chain beyond the farm gate. Sure, there are all sorts of value chain examinations etc. but not much into the food security aspects of the value chain. More about this at www.food-security.com.au and at LinkedIn group food security 2050.

But food security, being about access, has to deal better and more thoroughly with the whole food supply chain. The private sector dominates food supply chain activity in every country, irrespective of their development status and inclination towards command styled economies. So the real question is how to improve private sector performance in food supply chains that deliver food security. Investment and capital accummulation drive private sector capacity to deliver best practices along the whole supply chain. From my examination of the FAO database there is a very close correlation between capital investment in agriculture and the agricultural output index of production. It's a great pity investment and capital accummulation data is not available beyond the farm gate. Policy settings, including social protection, have to work closely with the privately driven food supply chains if they are to have any lasting impact.