Food security exists when all people at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient food to meet their dietary needs for a productive and healthy life. Food security has several important dimensions: (1)Availability — achieved when sufficient supplies of food of appropriate quality are consistently available to all individuals; (2)Access — ensured when households and all individuals in them have adequate resources to obtain appropriate foods for a nutritious diet. (3)Utilization — refers to the proper biological use of food through adequate diet, water, sanitation, and health care. The Administration acknowledges that world food security is important to the United States for humanitarian, economic, and national security reasons. The United States and other nations that signed the 1974 World Food Conference Declaration committed to achieving world food security within 10 years. More than 20 years later, the world still falls far short of this goal. Eighty-eight countries are currently classified as low-income and food-deficit states. According to FAO, close to 800 million people, or 20 percent of the developing world’s population, are chronically undernourished. Most of these people are in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, millions of other people in more affluent societies do not have enough food to meet their basic needs. And millions more experience prolonged hunger during part of the year, or suffer birth defects, growth retardation, mental deficiency, lethargy, blindness, or death because they do not have the diversity of food necessary to meet their total needs. An estimated 200 million children under the age of 5 suffer protein or energy deficiencies. FAO has projected that, unless the root causes underlying food security are addressed by 2010, 700 million to 800 million persons worldwide will still be chronically undernourished. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, FAO projects that the chronically undernourished will increase from about 200 million to more than 300 million people in the next 15 years (see app. V). Most of the rest of the chronically undernourished will be found in South Asia. Poverty is a primary obstacle to food security. Worldwide, 1.3 billion people, or nearly one-quarter of the world’s population, live on less than 1 dollar a day. Their low income makes them especially vulnerable when prices for basic commodities increase rapidly and sharply. Other important factors affecting food security include weather, civil strife and war, widespread unemployment or underemployment, inadequate returns to food producers, unsustainable use of natural resources, high debt service, overvalued exchange rates, and distorted international markets. Currently, world grain stocks are at a 20-year low, grain prices are at an all-time high, and world food aid is in a sharp decline (see apps. I-III). Food insecurity and food aid problems could increase significantly over the short, medium, and long run. There are several reasons why this is so. Although population growth rates have been declining , the world’s population is expected to increase by 2.6 billion people by 2025. As a result, even with modest income growth, world food supplies will have to at least double by that year according to the World Bank. The Bank concludes that due to land and water constraints, future increases in food supplies must come primarily from increasing yields, rather than from area expansion and more irrigation. This would require a doubling of current yields over the next 30 years, which is uncertain. (See also app. IV.) An October 1995 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS) study found that world food aid needs will nearly double over the next decade simply to maintain current consumption levels. This is even if one makes reasonably optimistic assumptions about recipient countries’ ability to produce their own food or to import food commercially. Far higher food aid levels would be required if the target was to meet minimum nutritional standards. The study concluded that there is a looming mismatch between food aid resources and needs. If global food aid budgets are maintained at 1995 levels, the gap between needs and resources will grow rapidly. Factors limiting food aid availabilities include changes in agricultural policies that will likely reduce agricultural surpluses, and reductions in aid budgets of donor countries. According to the study, funding will be the major factor affecting food aid shipments in the future. It noted that recent governmentwide budget reductions in the United States and in some other countries have already resulted in significant reductions in food aid donations. For example, food aid shipments of grain by donors peaked at 15.2 million metric tons (mmt) in 1992-93, declined to 12.6 mmt in 1993-94, and were estimated to have declined to 8.4 mmt in 1994-95. U.S. shipments peaked at 8.5 mmt in 1992-93 and were estimated to drop to 4.2 mmt by 1994-95. These reductions have already affected the food security of the recipient countries. Other factors affecting the future of world food security include the following: (1)Many major agricultural producers, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and the European Union, are implementing increasingly more market-oriented agricultural policies, partly in response to the 1994 Uruguay Round trade agreement of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). More market-oriented policies are likely to result in a reduction of agricultural surpluses and in less grain held in stocks, particularly in government-held stocks. Lower average stocks, in turn, may lead to more year-to-year volatility in grain markets. Current U.S. agricultural policy removes the link between income support payments and farm prices. As a result, incentives for surplus agricultural production are diminished. U.S. government-held stocks are likely to decline sharply. (2)Although signatories to the 1994 Uruguay Round trade agreement agreed to establish mechanisms to ensure that implementation would not adversely affect food aid commitments to meet the authentic needs of developing countries and stressed the need for bona fide food aid, the agreement was not specific on how this is to be accomplished. (3)To the extent that the trade agreement results in slightly higher grain prices than without the agreement, food aid availabilities may be reduced because a given budget will purchase less grain. In terms of food security and regions of the world, Africa faces the most difficulties. According to FAO, Africa currently accounts for about 200 million, or about 25 percent, of the chronically malnourished people in developing countries. However, if no action is taken to reverse the present trend, by 2010 this figure could exceed 300 million and as much as 40 percent of the chronically malnourished. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where chronic malnutrition is expected to increase between now and 2010. (See app. V.) According to one recent study, Africa’s agricultural production and trade have been affected by a variety of factors from the period following independence to the present, including: (1) the effects of the Cold War on agricultural and rural development policies, (2) chronic civil and social strife and the displacement of populations, (3) the mismanagement of national resources, (4) the failure to build capacity in critical areas such as policy analysis and entrepreneurship, (5) developments in the agriculture sectors and policies of industrialized countries, (6) the reduction in demand for primary commodities, (7) shocks caused by the oil crisis, (8) periodic droughts, and (9) the entry of the former Soviet Union into world markets. In May 1996 FAO designated 14 of 48 sub-Saharan countries (involving 22 million people) as facing exceptional food emergencies. The countries and the reasons cited by FAO for the emergencies are listed in table 1. FAO described the food security situation for sub-Saharan Africa as precarious, as global cereal supplies tighten and food availabilities shrink. Sharp increases in cereal prices on the world market and the consequent higher cost of cereal imports, coupled with balance of payments difficulties in food-deficit countries, will mean that a large proportion of food imports will need to be covered by food aid. However, FAO forecasts that global availability of food aid in 1995-96 will be only 7.6 million tons, down for the third consecutive year. The reduced availability and stiff competition for food aid from countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union suggests that Africa’s minimum food needs in 1996-97 will remain unmet. Unless exceptional food aid allocations are made, FAO said, undernutrition will rise further from its already high level. Our analysis of Department of Agriculture data indicates that sub-Saharan Africa’s grains food deficit relative to its nutrition-based food needs may have increased from as much as 12 percent in 1993-94 to as much as 17 percent in 1994-95. In other words, the hungry had even less food to eat. The data also indicate an increase in the deficit for Latin America from as much as 16 percent in 1993-94 to 22 percent in 1994-95. However, the deficit probably remained quite small for food aid recipient countries in Asia, at less than 3 percent. (See app. VI.) During 1994-96, countries in Asia and the Middle East received about 19 percent of all U.S food aid. Sub-Saharan Africa’s share increased from about 31 percent to 33 percent between 1994 and 1995, but may drop to 26 percent in 1996. The share of Latin American and Caribbean recipients dropped from about 21 percent in 1994 to 16 percent in 1995. (See app. VII.) Food security in sub-Saharan Africa is threatened by continuing and rapid population growth. It is the only region in the world where the growth rate, currently at about 3.2 percent, has not started to decline. (Latin America’s rate peaked at 2.9 percent in the early 1960s and South Asia’s rate at 2.5 percent in the late 1960s.) Population growth has important consequences for food security, since Africa’s food consumption currently exceeds its food production.