Having read through the other comments and realized that there is significant contestation surrounding the extension of the food security concept to agency and sustainability, I would like to add one more comment. The report fortunately applies this extended concept of food security, originally suggested by the HLPE-CFS itself.
While conceptualizing food security through global models, based on comprehensive data-sets, the anchoring of these models in bottom-up participatory approaches is crucial, not only in regard the reliability of the data, but also in regard the framing of the problems and the inherent assumptions in the models (cf: Kaiser et al 2021; Saltelli et al 2020).
Ref.:
Kaiser, M., Goldson, S., Buklijas, T., Gluckman, P., Allen, K., Bardsley, A., Lam, M.E. (2021). «Towards Post-Pandemic Sustainable and Ethical Food Systems”. Food Ethics, 6:4; https://doi.org/10.1007/s41055-020-00084-3
Saltelli, A., Benini, L., Funtowicz, S., Giampietro, M., Kaiser, M., Reinert, E., & van der Sluijs, J. P. (2020). The technique is never neutral. How methodological choices condition the generation of narratives for sustainability. Environmental Science & Policy, 106, 87-98.
There is substantial potential for improving the transparency of the data basis of global estimates of food security. In particular, the Prevalence of Undernourishment-model of FAO is dependent on household survey data to estimate the distribution and inequality of caloric consumption in the population. Yet timely survey data are infrequently available for many countries. As witnessed in the 2020 China revision of estimates, which substantially reduced the number of estimated undernourished in China and globally (Cafiero et al 2020), this lack of survey data can have dire consequences for the exactitude and uncertainty of estimates.
The significant instability that can be observed in historical estimates requires transparency in the data basis for the estimates of the PoU (Iversen in prep). Yet FAO does not publicly list exactly what survey data its estimates are based on. Such opacity breeds mistrust and uncertainty as evidenced by Pogge (2016), and would be easy to remedy by being much more transparent about the data basis of PoU estimates.
This commenter has repeatedly reached out to FAO to get an oversight into the relevant household survey data, with no response forthcoming from the agency.
References:
Pogge (2016) The Hunger Games. Food Ethics 1(1).
Cafiero, Feng and Ishaq (2020) Methodological Note on New Estimates of the Prevalence of Undernourishment in China.
Iversen (in prep) Chronology of Global Hunger Estimation. Manuscript in preparation.
Mr. Thor Olav Iversen
Having read through the other comments and realized that there is significant contestation surrounding the extension of the food security concept to agency and sustainability, I would like to add one more comment. The report fortunately applies this extended concept of food security, originally suggested by the HLPE-CFS itself.
While conceptualizing food security through global models, based on comprehensive data-sets, the anchoring of these models in bottom-up participatory approaches is crucial, not only in regard the reliability of the data, but also in regard the framing of the problems and the inherent assumptions in the models (cf: Kaiser et al 2021; Saltelli et al 2020).
Ref.:
Kaiser, M., Goldson, S., Buklijas, T., Gluckman, P., Allen, K., Bardsley, A., Lam, M.E. (2021). «Towards Post-Pandemic Sustainable and Ethical Food Systems”. Food Ethics, 6:4; https://doi.org/10.1007/s41055-020-00084-3
Saltelli, A., Benini, L., Funtowicz, S., Giampietro, M., Kaiser, M., Reinert, E., & van der Sluijs, J. P. (2020). The technique is never neutral. How methodological choices condition the generation of narratives for sustainability. Environmental Science & Policy, 106, 87-98.
Mr. Thor Olav Iversen
There is substantial potential for improving the transparency of the data basis of global estimates of food security. In particular, the Prevalence of Undernourishment-model of FAO is dependent on household survey data to estimate the distribution and inequality of caloric consumption in the population. Yet timely survey data are infrequently available for many countries. As witnessed in the 2020 China revision of estimates, which substantially reduced the number of estimated undernourished in China and globally (Cafiero et al 2020), this lack of survey data can have dire consequences for the exactitude and uncertainty of estimates.
The significant instability that can be observed in historical estimates requires transparency in the data basis for the estimates of the PoU (Iversen in prep). Yet FAO does not publicly list exactly what survey data its estimates are based on. Such opacity breeds mistrust and uncertainty as evidenced by Pogge (2016), and would be easy to remedy by being much more transparent about the data basis of PoU estimates.
This commenter has repeatedly reached out to FAO to get an oversight into the relevant household survey data, with no response forthcoming from the agency.
References:
Pogge (2016) The Hunger Games. Food Ethics 1(1).
Cafiero, Feng and Ishaq (2020) Methodological Note on New Estimates of the Prevalence of Undernourishment in China.
Iversen (in prep) Chronology of Global Hunger Estimation. Manuscript in preparation.