Food security refers to the availability of food and one s access to it A household is considered food secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation According to the World Resources Institute global per capita food production has been increasing substantially for the past several decades 1 In 2006 MSNBC reported that globally the number of people who are overweight has surpassed the number who are undernourished the world had more than one billion people who were overweight and an estimated 800 million who were undernourished 2 According to a 2004 article from the BBC China the world s most populous country is suffering from an obesity epidemic 3 In India the second most populous country in the world 30 million people have been added to the ranks of the hungry since the mid 1990s and 46 of children are underweight 4 Worldwide around 852 million people are chronically hungry due to extreme poverty while up to 2 billion people lack food security intermittently due to varying degrees of poverty source FAO 2003 Six million children die of hunger every year 17 000 every day 5 As of late 2007 export restrictions and panic buying US Dollar Depreciation 6 increased farming for use in biofuels 7 world oil prices at more than 100 a barrel 8 global population growth 9 climate change 10 loss of agricultural land to residential and industrial development 11 12 and growing consumer demand in China and India 13 are claimed to have pushed up the price of grain 14 15 However the role of some of these factors is under debate Some argue the role of biofuel has been overplayed 16 as grain prices have come down to the levels of 2006 Nonetheless food riots have recently taken place in many countries across the world 17 18 19 It is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain food security in a world beset by a confluence of peak phenomena namely peak oil peak water peak phosphorus peak grain and peak fish Approximately 3 3 billion people more than half of the planet s population live in urban areas as of November 2007 Any disruption to farm supplies may precipitate a uniquely urban food crisis in a relatively short time 20 The ongoing global credit crisis has affected farm credits despite a boom in commodity prices 21 Food security is a complex topic standing at the intersection of many disciplines A new peer reviewed journal of Food Security The Science Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food began publishing in 2009 22 In developing countries often 70 or more of the population lives in rural areas In the US there are approximately 2 000 000 farmers less than 1 of the population A direct relationship exists between food consumption levels and poverty Families with the financial resources to escape extreme poverty rarely suffer from chronic hunger while poor families not only suffer the most from chronic hunger but are also the segment of the population most at risk during food shortages and famines Two commonly used definitions of food security come from the UN s Food and Agriculture Organization FAO and the United States Department of Agriculture USDA