The statistics and numbers may vary from country to country, but the overall trend is the same. Those numbers indicate the importance of food production and food prices for people with low and subsistence incomes around the world. Higher food prices become not just an annoyance but an essential issue if the household spends a major part of its income on food. People who have to spend such a large proportion of disposable income on food are particularly vulnerable to crisis situations. For example, if they lose their jobs or food prices rise dramatically, there are few possibilities to cut back on other items.
Food insecurity Fighting food insecurity is therefore a major concern of developing countries.
There are many considerations when developing countries look for ways to improve food security and affordable food supply, such as higher productivity of agricultural production and other food producers, improvements in distribution systems, income levels, or infrastructure. There is certainly not one single measure that could improve those conditions overnight, since the problems are interconnected and the causes are complex. Political uncertainties, such as wars and civil strife, droughts and floods, and economic conditions can contribute and increase the problem of food insecurity in countries. The prices for major agriculture commodities obviously play an important role in the prices consumers pay for their foods. The world market prices for those commodities are often subject to large fluctuations depending on the harvests in the countries that are the main producers.