Technical
background
document
Executive summary
© FAO, 1996
1. INTRODUCTION
Forms of food insecurity and hunger
The geography of hunger
Current levels of food security and the role of food assistance
2. FOOD ASSISTANCE TO SUSTAIN AND ENHANCE LIVES
Basis for food assistance
Food assistance for human development
Food assistance for increasing agricultural production and generating income
Food assistance and women: enhancing household food security
Direct assistance to the chronically hungry
Indirect forms of assistance
Protecting local food market systems
3. FOOD ASSISTANCE TO SAVE LIVES
Emergencies and food assistance
Timeliness of assistance to save lives
Post-emergency rehabilitation
Disaster preparedness and crisis prevention
The role of non-governmental organizations and civil society groups
Projections of future food assistance requirements
Mobilizing support to meet future food assistance needs
The preparation of the World Food Summit technical background documents (TBDs) has mobilized, in addition to FAO’s own staff contribution, a considerable amount of expertise in the international scientific community, drawn from partner international institutions and governmental or non-governmental circles. The process has been monitored at FAO by an internal Reading Committee, composed of staff selected ad personam and established to ensure that the whole collection meets appropriate quality and consistency criteria.
The present document has been prepared by FAO’s Chimimba David Phiri in collaboration with Barbara Huddleston. Rachel Bedouin, Amde Gebre-Michael and Jacques Vercueil made useful comments at various stages of preparation of the paper. Some sections of this paper draw heavily on the analysis of the role of international food aid and related issues in the paper Tackling hunger in a world full of food: tasks ahead for food aid, prepared by the World Food Programme (WFP) and distributed widely during the period of preparation for the World Food Summit. After initial review by invited colleagues and the Reading Committee, a draft was circulated for comments to intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as to peer reviewers in FAO, partner international institutions and relevant centres of excellence. Much appreciated comments and advice have been received from Diane Spearman, WFP; Prof. Hans Singer, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, United Kingdom; Dr M. Kassas, University of Cairo, Egypt; Pieter Bukman, the Netherlands; A.N. Hersi, Islamic Development Bank, Saudi Arabia; Duncan MacLaren and Karel Zelenka, Caritas Internationalis, Vatican City; and Russ Kerr and colleagues, World Vision International, United States.
While grateful for the contributions received from all reviewers, the FAO Secretariat bears responsibility for the content of the document.
The paper defines food assistance as all actions that national governments, often in collaboration with non-governmental organizations and members of civil society, and with external aid when necessary, undertake to improve the nutritional well-being of their citizens, who otherwise would not have access to adequate food for a healthy and active life. It identifies the main categories of people for whom food assistance is necessary, and focuses on the principal means by which it can be effective.
The chronically undernourished are people with a low and insecure income, with limited assets, few marketable skills, deficient purchasing power and a lack of powerful advocates. Hunger is debilitating; a manifestation of poverty, it is itself a cause of poverty. Removing current hunger contributes both to eradicating poverty and towards food security. Food assistance to individuals with critical needs at special times of the life cycle (the newborn, infants and pregnant and lactating women) or at certain times of the year has significant positive impact on their food security in the long term. Moreover, for people who have been hit by natural disasters or human crises, survival supersedes other considerations, and food assistance provides the only hope.
Hunger is found even amid affluence, and in cities as well as in rural areas. Nevertheless, hunger is more prevalent and intense in poor societies and among less affluent people. Thus, most hungry people are found in low-income food-deficit countries where most of the population is still rural, particulary in Africa and South Asia.
Table 1, which gives estimates of the population below the “hunger line” in developing countries (93 countries, representing 95 percent), illustrates the dimensions of the problem.
| Table 1 TOTAL AND UNDERNOURISHED POPULATION IN COUNTRIES | ||||
| Country group (average DES/caput) | 1990-1992 | 2010 | ||
| Total | Undernourished | Total | Undernourished | |
(million) | ||||
| < 2 100 Calories | 402 | 191 | 286 | 141 |
| 2 100-2 500 Calories | 1 543 | 371 | 736 | 186 |
| 2 500-2 700 Calories | 332 | 47 | 1 933 | 220 |
| > 2 700 Calories | 1 811 | 231 | 2 738 | 133 |
| 93 developing countries | 4 088 | 840 | 5 693 | 680 |
These estimates of the current and anticipated state of undernutrition take into account the results of efforts undertaken to improve the food situation, i.e. the positive impact of direct and indirect policies and actions to reduce poverty and its consequences; they show, therefore, the dimension of the remaining task, now and in the future. However, to the extent that they do not show the widespread incidence of malnutrition other than chronic undernutrition, the prevalence of seasonal or temporary food inadequacy or emergency-related malnutrition, they underestimate the true scale of the task ahead.
World hunger is a local problem. National governments have the ultimate responsibility of ensuring that all their citizens are food secure. Worldwide, the amount of resources provided from domestic sources (both public and private) far exceeds the resources provided through international food aid. In developing countries, food assistance programmes rarely account for less than 5 percent of total government expenditure; they have reached as high as 45 percent (in Egypt, 1980-1981). In many developed countries even larger sums are spent on national food assistance programmes. The United States Federal Government, for example, spent about US$38 billion in 1995 on the 16 food assistance programmes administered by the United States Department of Agriculture. World international food aid was less than US$4 billion at its peak in 1988. Even in countries where external food aid accounts for a sizeable proportion of total food assistance, national resources are usually the first to be amassed to save the lives of those caught up in emergency situations.
In both developed and developing countries, national food assistance programmes generally suffered reductions during the 1980s and 1990s. Policies associated with macroeconomic stabilization in many developing countries have resulted in higher food prices as a result of exchange rate realignments and reduction in food subsidies. Cuts in social expenditures and services have affected the poor, who are most dependent on public support; economic adjustments have resulted in increases in sectoral or overall unemployment and a decline in incomes for many. Of late, emphasis has been renewed at the international level on poverty reduction and safety nets for those unable to take advantage of opportunities provided by economic reform programmes.
Local hunger is a world problem. The individual’s right to food is enshrined in a number of United Nations declarations and covenants. Acting upon basic humanitarian considerations, the international community provides food aid to assist in combating hunger. However, food aid has also been declining, from almost 17 million tonnes (cereal equivalents) in 1992/93 to around 9 million tonnes in 1994/95, and from over 11 million tonnes to around 6 million tonnes for the low-income food-deficit countries. Meanwhile the increase in the number and complexity of emergencies has resulted in a growing proportion (from 30 to 50 percent in two decades) of targeted relief and development food aid in the total food aid basket. Moreover, food aid is becoming less of a means to dispose of the surpluses of industrialized countries; it is increasingly provided through cash purchases of food in developing countries, and it must now compete in tight aid budgets with other forms of development assistance.
An important underlying reason, beyond the general drive for tighter budget behaviour, for changes in the structure and size of both national food assistance programmes and food aid has been a widespread perception that some past programmes had been wasteful and inefficient. Indeed, unwisely designed and implemented food assistance programmes can have deleterious effects on development and future food security: financial unsustainability, depressed domestic production, missed target beneficiaries, dependence upon assistance and extraneous dietary habits. Simply put, abuse of food assistance can be counterproductive.
Future food assistance programmes will have to become more efficient and effective in order to do more with few resources. The driving principle of reaching the people who need it most, at times when they need it most and in ways that achieve lasting impact as well as short-term help, translates into three goals.
The first goal at any moment is to provide timely, appropriate and adequate relief interventions. The main victims of emergencies are women and children. Women must be brought into the design and management of food assistance and must become its direct beneficiaries. Emergency interventions must shift progressively, as early as possible, into post-crisis rehabilitation, leading to improved resilience of households and the affected segments of the economy, for development to take hold. Where agriculture proves the best, or only, avenue to alleviating post-crisis food insecurity, food assistance for agricultural recovery can foster rehabilitation of the agricultural sector in the aftermath of an emergency.
The chronically hungry are handicapped in fulfilling both their human and their economic potential. The second goal is therefore to provide food assistance to those who would not otherwise have access to this essential means of life, giving special attention to people with critical needs at certain times of the year or at certain stages of the life cycle.
The third goal is to make food assistance a tool for development, with a focus on people. Through interventions for enhancing nutrition, hungry people can benefit from health, education, skills and income-earning initiatives. In this sense, food assistance is a preventive medicine.
In certain countries and circumstances, national efforts cannot suffice. Table 1 shows the limits for redistribution in countries with very low average dietary energy supply. If additional food assistance were fully targeted on needy individuals, and consumed entirely by them as food, the value of purchasing power to be transferred to undernourished people would be equivalent to a world average of around US$13 per hungry person per year. The effort required to eliminate current hunger and to check it in the future is far beyond the resources now devoted to it. It cannot be said, however, that this goal is beyond the world’s reach. This should encourage all governments and their partners engaged in humanitarian and social welfare assistance programmes to make an increased effort to identify where and who the hungry are and to devise cost-effective schemes for providing direct food assistance. National and international resources flowing into redesigned food assistance programmes would themselves accelerate the progress to a time when they could decline as fast as the need for them in the twenty-first century.
