Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

"Resilience" to food security in relation to time is an important issue that can be debated from different perspectives. The capacity of human beings to be resilient when faced with certain conditions is a product of several factors.

Food as a biological product is subject to life cycles that are natural and this is related to time. Biological systems are often in cycles e.g carbon, nitrogen and other elemental cycles can have profound effects with time. Research that study these cycles can generate data to product likely events and how it can affect the food system. A case in point, is climate change and its adverse effects. How individuals  / communities/ regions will be resilient to such changes will be a product of how well they are equiped to deal with such. This is one of the reasons why food systems are often complex and need a very multidisciplinary approach.

In regions where there is a strong communal spirit to share traditional foods that are linked to the cultural lifestyle e.g in indigenous communities in the Arctic regions, the ability to cope with food insecurity is strengthened. The community will be less resilient when the opportunity of sharing traditional fish, games is limited especially in cases where there is limited income to purchase imported foods. "The ability to save for the rainy day" will depend on how the food system has been managed from the farm to plate.

Best,

Dele Raheem