Food Security: access and quality

Contact:
FoodAfrica Secretariat
Natural Resources Institute
The University of Greenwich at Medway
Central Avenue
Chatham Maritime
Kent ME4 4TB
United Kingdom

Email: Keith Tomlins
Tel: +44 (0)1634 883360
Fax: +44 (0)1634 883567
Web: www.nri.org

Summary of main Food Security issues coming out of FoodAfrica discussions
1. Need to create local employment to generate income and support SMEs
2. Improve strategies to achieve functional marketing systems for food commodities that take into account market information and infrastructure.
3. Need to emphasize proactive research on post-harvest and marketing issues to ensure that future post-harvest and storage losses are reduced.
4. Identify and promote crops adaptable to different agro-ecological zones combined with good distribution systems.
5. Need to carry out dietary intake surveys and consumer studies
6. Standardise systems to assess food quality and nutritional value and validate methods
7. Identify existing food databases and complete where lacking; identify existing analysis capacity (sharing/networking)
8. Introduce early warning systems where they do not already exist.
9. Need to have supportive government policies and remove trade barriers
10. Improve grain storage, avoiding the use of ineffective pesticides that can induce the development of resistance amongst grain storage pest, and give rise to the risk of chemical contamination for consumers.

The working meeting used the definition of food security of “physical and economic available of acceptable, good quality food at the right time, in the right location and of the right quality.

Some of the main gaps/constraints to food security were identified as:
• Low incomes (socio-economic status) reducing access. In certain cases this was combined with impacts of urbanisation and low Government revenues reducing salaries.
• Skewed income distribution with many poor people and few rich
• Lack of market information or poor market infrastructure
• Limited knowledge on post-harvest processing and limited infrastructure and availability of financing
• Political instability and natural disasters
• Trade barriers between counties
• Changing food habits/taste and taboos e.g. preference for bread from wheat whereas millet is an important crop in semi-arid areas.
• Weak policy environment for non-export crops including poor agricultural planning (off season hunger, poor distribution systems, use of strategic storage of commodities)
• Poor health can reduce access to foods. Particular problems were considered to be HIV/AIDS, malaria and general nutritional status.
• The know-how among small farmers on agricultural planning, post-harvest handling and processing is poor.

Within the discussion of food security was a separate discussion on food availability. In this discussion it was considered that agriculture is an important, but not a sole condition for the food availability. Similarly self sufficiency can not be equated with food availability; this would only happen on a very small scale for subsistence farmers. The problem was how to move from small scale subsistence food production to a wider system that ensures food security. Three major constraints to ensuring food availability were discussed. These were (a) political related, (b) those related to HIV/AIDS and (c) those related to a lack on inputs. These inputs include infrastructure, credit, sustainable and appropriate technologies, In addition to these three issues were a number of overarching factors that include rural to urban migration, changing attitudes of the youth towards Western cultural attitudes and the issue of scientific capacity in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa to provide new knowledge and information.

The solutions to improved food availability were considered to be through both institutional and technological interventions. Institutional issues included technology transfer, financial support, political stability, training and research and the wider enabling political environment. The technological issues included the need for low cost preservation systems, improving the efficiency of the food chain, training, use of sensitivity analysis in priority setting, technology transfer, risk management for small-scale processors, development of appropriate technologies for small-scale farmers, use of appropriate biotechnology under African control and optimising the use of indigenous foods and technologies.

The overall summary of FoodAfrica can be downloaded here.