An Assignment

On
House Hold Food Security

Course No: FN-2211

Course tittle: Food Security

Submitted To: Submitted By:

Nasrin Nahar Begum
Head of Food and Nutrition
Department
KCC Women’s College, Khulna
Affiliated to Khulna University
Samira Rahman
Roll: KCCWC-FN-191007
2nd Year, 2nd Term
Food and Nutrition Department
KCC Women’s College, Khulna
Affiliated to Khulna University

Date of submission: 5th December,2021

 Content:

1. Definition of household security

2. Concepts
3. Importance of household security
4. Importance of nutrition security
5. Situation of household food security in Bangladesh
6. Groups at risk of food and nutrition security
7. Identification of food insecure households
8. Household food insecurity
9. Measures to improve household food and nutrition security

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Definition of household food security:
Household food security can be defined as a household having assured sets of
entitlements from food production, cash income, reserves of food or assets and/or
government assistance programmed such that in times of need they will be able to
maintain sufficient nutritional intake for physical well-being.
Households are food secure when they have year-round access to the amount and
variety of safe foods their members need to lead active and healthy lives. At the
household level, food security refers to the ability of the household to secure, either
from its own production or through purchases, adequate food for meeting the
dietary needs of all members of the household.
Household food security exists when all the people living in the household have
physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food at all
times that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy
life (World Food Summit Declaration, 1996). This definition is based on three core
concepts of food security:
 Availability (physical supply of food)
 Access (the ability to acquire food)
 Utilization (the capacity to transform food into the desired nutritional outcome).
If these conditions are not fulfilled then the household is said to be in the state of
food insecurity.

Concept: Food and nutrition security is achieved, if adequate food (quantity,

quality, safety, socio-cultural acceptability) is available and accessible for and
satisfactorily used and utilized by all individuals at all times to live a healthy and
active life.”
This definition combines food and nutrition security and emphasizes several
aspects, i.e., ‘Availability’, ‘Accessibility’, and ‘Use and Utilization’ of food. The
inclusion of the use and utilization aspect underscores the fact that ‘Nutrition
Security’ is more than ‘Food Security. ‘A holistic understanding of FNS stresses
the various dimensions of the concept:
1. categorical aspects,
2. socio-organizational aspects, and managerial aspects

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Importance of household food security: The ultimate objective is "to ensure that
all people at all times have both physical and economic access to the basic food
they need.” 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.
Food availability, food utilization, and food access are the principal variables that
define household food security and should guide interventions:
Food Availability: Sufficient quantities of appropriate, necessary types of food
from domestic production, commercial imports, or donors, are consistently
available to individuals, are in reasonable proximity to them, or are within their
reach.
Food Access: Individuals have adequate incomes or other resources to purchase an
appropriate food needed to maintain consumption of an adequate diet and
nutritional level.
Food Utilization: Food is properly used and many suitable techniques are
employed for storage. At the global level, Hunger results from political and
economic inequality, environmental degradation, unjust trade policies,
inappropriate technology, and other factors depending on local context. At the
local level, the food inequality results by the lack of nutritional education, poor
quality of food, and from inadequate quantities of the rights kinds of food.
Access to quality: nutritious food is fundamental to human existence. Secure
access to food can produce wide ranging positive impacts, including: Economic
growth and job creation. Poverty reduction.
Importance of nutrition security: Nutrition security means access to adequate
utilization and absorption of nutrients in food to be able to live a healthy and active
life. Availability, access and utilization are important for both food and nutrient
securities.
Nutrition security goes beyond food security by considering the nutritional value of
food and the systemic factors that determine an individual’s nutritional status. It is
about a community’s access to essential nutrients, not just calories. Undernutrition,
malnutrition and increasingly overnutrition are still pressing issue in many
developing countries. Promoting nutrition security offers several opportunities to
stimulate economic and pro-poor development in cost-efficient ways. Furthermore,

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by addressing food systems, production systems, the collecting, storage, transport,
transformation and distribution of foods, diets and health can be improved while
the impact on natural resources declined. This Portal topic refers to publications
that highlight efforts promoting nutrition security in developing countries and
emerging economies. Food and Nutrition Security (FNS) exists when all people, at
all times, have physical, social and economic access to food, which is safe and
consumed in sufficient quantity and quality to meet their dietary needs and food
preferences, and is supported by an environment of adequate sanitation, health
services and care, allowing for a healthy and active life (CFS). Under the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)
Governments have committed themselves to respect, protect and promote the full
realization of the Right to Adequate Food (RtAF).
Food and Nutrition Security depends on the following four dimensions:
Availability – at national as well as local level sufficient cultural acceptable, good
quality and nutritious food has to be available. This can be supplied through
domestic production or imports, including food aid. Women make up 43% of the
overall agricultural workforce1, and in many societies they have the main
responsibility for food production as opposed to growing cash crops.
Accessibility - households and individuals need adequate resources (entitlements)
for acquiring appropriate foods for a nutritious diet. It is about affordability of
available food, besides access to natural resources and other necessary inputs for
production of food. Although across the world women still do most of the cooking,
they often have weaker access to productive resources and are more likely than
men to be malnourished.
Utilization of food by individuals depends on the quality of the diet, clean water,
sanitation and care to reach a state of nutritional well-being where all physiological
needs are met. This brings out the importance of non-food inputs in food security
such as personal hygiene, health status, feeding practices and care (including intra
household distribution of food), especially for infants and young children. Given
their specific needs for girls and women a lifelong scope should be applied in
which they are not only considered as mothers (to be) and/or wives.
Stability - refers to the time frame over which food and nutrition security is being
considered. The access to adequate food needs to be constant during the year and
in the long-term. That includes own food production, income and economic
resources. Households or individuals should not risk losing access to food as a
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consequence of sudden shocks (e.g., an economic or climatic crisis) or cyclical
events (e.g., seasonal food insecurity). It is important take into consideration
gender aspects in all these dimensions, recognizing and addressing the barriers and
challenges that girls and women face.
Situation of household food security in Bangladesh:
Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, IFPRI has been collecting data to
assess the effect of the pandemic on Bangladeshi households, and to chart the
recovery process. We have been interviewing households (over the phone) from all
districts of Bangladesh by using two national samples of Bangladesh – one for
rural households and another for urban households. The pre-pandemic in-person
collected data of these households was collected in 2019, while after the pandemic
started, we have been carrying out phone surveys in June 2019, January of 2021
and finally, now (September-October) in 2021. The data collection of the current
survey is still going on – we have finished about 75% of the sample. But since the
incoming data pipeline is automated (thanks to the prodigious coding skills of the
IFPRI-Bangladesh research team!), we can start visualizing some of the data as it
comes in. Food insecurity is an extremely important measure of household welfare.
We have been asking eight questions on household food insecurity which were
designed to elicit information on food behaviors and actions taken by households
when the resources needed to access food are constrained. Anyway, here is the
exciting news – despite the observed increase in food insecurity in the early
months of the pandemic (last year), the proportion of households reporting
moderate or severe food insecurity has NOT increased in September 2021, despite
the recent COVID-related surges and the national lockdown. It’s possible that
things were worse a few months ago (during the strict lockdown period), but in that
case, a rebound seems to be happening. The recovery of urban households seems to
be a bit slower than rural households. These are early indications of resilience
among Bangladeshi households. Although the incidence of moderate and severe
food insecurity has gone back to pre-pandemic levels, it is important to note that
overall food insecurity of Bangladesh has increased compared to pre-pandemic
times. This is because mild food insecurity has increased substantially compared
to 2019. In other words, a large number of households which used to be food
secure are now experiencing mild food insecurity. This shows up clearly when you
tabulate the incidence of any food insecurity reported by households (i.e., mild,
moderate or severe food insecurity).

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Due to the seasonal variation in agricultural employment and limited employment
opportunities elsewhere, millions of people in Bangladesh suffer from food
insecurity throughout the year.
Groups at risk of food and nutrition security: Food insecurity is a complex
‘wicked’ problem that results from a range of unstable and uncertain physical,
social, cultural, and economic factors that limit access to nutritious food. Globally,
800 million people are undernourished, around 1.9 billion are overweight/obese,
and 2 billion have micronutrient deficiency. Vulnerable groups include, but are not
limited to, migrant populations, Indigenous peoples, elderly populations, pregnant
women, those with disabilities, homelessness people, young children, and youth.
Poor nutrition during significant periods of growth and development and
throughout life impacts long-term health outcomes; increases non-communicable
disease prevalence, healthcare costs, and disease burden; and negatively impacts
economic and human productivity. However, the groups who are most at risk from

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malnutrition are: the elderly - particularly those who are in hospital, or
institutionalized, people with low incomes, or those who are socially isolated,
people with chronic (long-term) disorders - for example, eating disorders, such as
anorexia nervosa and bulimia.
Nutrition Care for special groups refers to the provision in the household and
community of time, attention, support and skills to meet the nutritional needs
of socio-economically deprived and nutritionally vulnerable groups
• Among these groups the growing child is the most vulnerable, but others
include women, the elderly and the adolescents
• The nutrient requirements during the four main stages of the human lifecycle
vary considerably (childhood, adolescence, reproductive period and geriatric)
• What infants and children require is different from what adults and the elderly
need.
• In addition, there might be specific nutrients which a pregnant women and
lactating mothers need in higher amounts than adult men.
Identification of food insecure households:
There are five commonly used methods that can be used to assess food security: i)
the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) method for estimating calories
available per capita at the national level; ii) household income and expenditure
surveys; iii) individual's dietary intake; iv) anthropometry; and v) experience-based
food insecurity measurement scales.
Household food insecurity: Household food security can be defined as a
household having assured sets of entitlements -- from food production, cash
income, reserves of food or assets and/or government assistance programmed --
such that in times of need they will be able to maintain sufficient nutritional intake
for physical well-being. The food security status of rural inhabitants of the hilly
region of the Uttarakhand State was poorly documented. This study aimed to
determine the extent and determinants of household food insecurity in rural-hilly
areas of Kumaun, Uttarakhand. A cross-sectional, interview-administered survey
was conducted among 155 households. Food insecurity, as measured by Household
Food Insecurity Access Scale, was found in a large number of households; 2.6% of
households were categorized as severely food-insecure, 53.3% as moderately food-
insecure, 7.1% as mildly food-insecure, and 36.8% as food-secure. Multivariate
logistic regression analysis revealed that food insecurity was significantly
associated with the poverty level of the family, number of children or adolescents

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in the household, educational level of household head, number of employed family
members, and social class (p < 0.05). The food security policies in India must
modify focus from food entitlement to include education, income, employment,
and household composition. Nutrition-sensitive interventions in agriculture to
promote the cultivation of fruits and vegetables in hilly areas. Promotion of poultry
farming, goat rearing, freshwater fish farming, and related training will increase
the availability of animal food sources. It is an urgent need to design and
implement location-specific programs and policies to address food insecurity and
food access.
According to the World Bank, mega-urbanization has become the most dominant
demographic process in Bangladesh which has resulted in an increase in the urban
population from 5% to 36% between 1950 and 2017 (The World Bank 2019). In
the capital city of the country, Dhaka, the mega-urbanization process often cannot
be controlled spatially, demographically, or structurally, as it has limited
infrastructural and public service provision capacity. On top of that, the city is
being crowded with the influx of poor migrants from rural areas due to
unemployment, river erosion, and limited access to quality education and health.
This marginalized section of the city generally fails to enter into the formal job
market and end up being the low-paid labor. They do not generate enough income
to pay for formal housing and create slums or informal settlements as their shelter .
Measures to improve household and nutrition security:
Food security is defined in its most basic form as access by all people at all times
to the food needed for a healthy life. Achieving food security has three dimensions.
First, it is necessary to ensure a safe and nutritionally adequate food supply both at
the national level and at the household level. Second, it is necessary to have a
reasonable degree of stability in the supply of food both from one year to the other
and during the year. Third, and most critical, is the need to ensure that each
household has physical, social and economic access to enough food to meet its
needs. This means that each household must have the knowledge and the ability to
produce or procure the food that it needs on a sustainable basis. In this context,
properly balanced diets that supply all necessary nutrients and energy without
leading to overconsumption or waste should be encouraged. It is also important to
encourage the proper distribution of food within the household, among all its
members. Bearing the above in mind, in countries where the food-chain is not
secure and household food insecurity is a problem, governments, NGOs and non-

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profit organizations, the private sector and international organizations should, as
appropriate, work in a collaborative manner to:
a) Adopt development strategies to create conditions for economic growth with
particular focus on the alleviation of poverty, food security and sustainable
agricultural systems.
(b) Strike an optimal balance between macroeconomic policy objectives and food
security needs, minimize the possible adverse impact of structural adjustment
programs on the food security of the poor and, where some negative effects are
unavoidable, introduce appropriate measures to alleviate these hardships. In the
countries concerned, governments and international organizations should promote
programs that will increase food production and, where appropriate, agricultural
trade, so that poor countries and poor segments of a population have improved
access to food. International lending practices should be re-examined and long-
term action must be planned to maintain food supplies at those levels required to
meet the needs of growing populations.
(c) Adopt and implement land-use policies where appropriate to enhance food
security through the setting aside of adequate areas of agricultural lands and
aquatic and other natural resources for the production of food and other sources of
nutrition.
(d) Adopt policies and programs to strengthen local leadership, including balanced
gender training; enhance community involvement; promote people's participation;
develop rural areas to stem rural-urban migration; and empower women, both as
producers and consumers. Women and women's organizations are often very
efficient, effective and fundamental in improving household food security.
(e) Adopt special programs that will enhance productivity with a view to reducing
costs and increasing and stabilizing production and incomes of the poor. Such
programs could include improving the access of small-scale producers to inputs,
credit and other essential services, as well as to markets through improved
infrastructure. The role of agricultural cooperatives and effective extension
services in increasing production and producer incomes should be stressed.
(f) Improve access to work opportunities or production factors for urban and rural
workers, female heads of households, those employed in the informal sector and
unemployed and underemployed people by stimulating the creation of jobs,

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increasing their skills, providing credit on easy terms and increasing the
availability of improved technologies, other inputs and means of production.
(g) Improve access to land and other natural resources by introducing and
implementing agrarian reforms and, in particular, through the effective
implementation of tenancy reforms and the promotion of efficient utilization of
agricultural resources and resettlement in new lands, wherever feasible. Such
actions must be taken in full compliance with applicable international laws and
agreements.
(h) Increase employment opportunities, particularly in rural areas, by encouraging
the private sector to augment such opportunities in agriculture, industry, handicraft
and business.
(i) Stabilize food supplies through adequate stockholding in the form of strategic
food security reserves as a first line of defense in emergencies; improve post-
harvest handling, packaging, storage, preservation, transport and distribution of
food to reduce losses at all stages; enhance animal health and production
possibilities including fish farming and attention to fisheries resources; ensure a
stable supply of fuel for cooking meals; carry out research and introduce
measures to improve production, utilization and preservation of indigenous and
traditional foods; improve rural food processing technologies; increase marketing
facilities at the village, cottage and industrial levels to smooth the food supply
flow throughout the year; introduce a variety of cropping strategies, such as crop
rotation, mixed cropping, biological inputs and planting of perennial fruit-bearing
trees, and develop other agroforestry approaches; ensure an adequate supply of
clean and safe water; promote household and community gardens; and ensure
the sustainability of food supplies by employing production and marketing
systems based on safe and renewable resources that protect the environment
and biodiversity.
(j) Improve emergency-preparedness planning through: effective early warning and
other information systems; food security reserves; preparation of contingency plans
of action to meet emergencies; and enhancing the entitlement of affected people
through, for example, public-works programs; as well as introduce measures to
prevent natural disasters, such as irrigation schemes, flood control schemes, etc. In
this respect, the international community can play an important role by providing
timely and well-targeted food aid and other technical and financial assistance,

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particularly in the form of food-for-work programs and for rehabilitation.
Coordinated action of relevant organizations of the UN system is of particular
importance in this context. Food aid should not interfere with, or be considered as
a substitute for, local food production. The special needs of refugees and displaced
persons, these include people affected by wars, civil unrest or natural disasters,
should be given priority attention in food aid programs. The provision of food
supplies should strive to meet minimal nutritional requirements. NGOs can also
provide significant help through effective and appropriate disaster management
training at all levels, early warning, food and nutrition surveillance schemes,
nutrition education, resource mobilization and action-oriented programmed
implementation.
(k) Strengthen planning of food-related assistance programs so that they reach the
population in need without disrupting the local economy or local food habits
including food production and marketing. Such programs could include food
distribution systems, particularly for the poor and unemployable, and income
transfer schemes, such as targeted food subsidies, food stamps and feeding
programs for vulnerable groups with a view to promoting nutritionally adequate
diets. In particular, introduce self-targeting food distribution and income transfer
schemes for those foods consumed primarily by the poor by locating public food
distribution centers in areas where the poor live, taking into account that these
populations should be able to select nutritionally adequate diets from the range of
foods available.
(l) Strengthen the coping mechanism of the household to meet emergencies by
improving its capacity to protect itself from the impact of an emergency through,
for example: household and community food storage; group savings and credit
schemes; diversification of income and employment sources; and improved
marketing infrastructures. Action could also include helping the household when
the emergency occurs, for example, by supplying seeds for growing short-term
crops, by providing food aid, livestock feed and water and, when the emergency is
over, by introducing rehabilitation measures to help the household recover from
adverse effects of the emergency.
(m) Adopt or strengthen a public sector policy supporting labor-intensive public
works programs and programs to reduce geographical isolation, especially in sub-
Saharan Africa where priority actions are needed to quickly alleviate acute
nutritional problems. Labor-intensive infrastructure programs are one of several

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valuable instruments that may be used to improve employment, income and access
to food. They transfer and stabilize benefits, thus decreasing the risk of
consumption shortfalls among the poor, and can strengthen needed infrastructure,
such as roads, to facilitate better trade and movement of foods from rural to urban
centers, promote resource conservation or irrigation and land development or
combat such problems as desertification.
(n) Encourage necessary research by governmental, international and private
institutions to promote household food security through better food production,
handling and storage and prevention of food losses, crop and genetic diversity, and
improved food processing, preservation and marketing. Research should be done
on household handling of food and intrafamily food distribution to assure adequate
food availability and to protect the nutritional value of food and prevent food
losses and wastage. Such research can enhance rural employment and promote the
role of women, in particular, in all aspects of food production, processing and
marketing. Research should also be carried out on appropriate cost-effective
indicators to measure household food security problems and to measure progress of
appropriate programs in solving those problems.
(o) Promote better general and nutritional education to eliminate illiteracy and
improve knowledge in the selection of a safe and adequate diet and of food
production, processing, storage and handling techniques at all levels, especially the
household level. Programs should be directed at household leaders, with particular
focus on women, and should also include home economics education for both boys
and girls. The awareness of men and women of the benefits of limiting household
size and the advantages of family planning practices should be increased. The role
of mass media in delivering positive nutrition improvement messages and
eliminating harmful food taboos should be emphasized. It is important to develop
and carry out public information campaigns to improve the quality of nutrition
through better use of available food supplies by the households and to promote
recognition of the fact that each member of a household should be able to share
fairly in available food resources irrespective of sex, age or any other individual
characteristic.
(p) International financial and specialized agencies should give high priority to
assisting countries with their programs for strengthening household food security.
The nature of such support may be increased investment in production
enhancement projects such as irrigation, soil fertility improvement and soil and
water conservation, intensification of agriculture or assisting countries undertaking
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structural adjustment. Assistance should also include technology transfer adapted
to the local conditions in developing countries to improve food production and
processing while protecting intellectual property rights as appropriate; the training
of personnel at all levels; and the establishment of a suitable economic
environment to improve the competitiveness of developing countries.
Reduce the risk of global food insecurity by tackling the food waste problem.
Almost 2,000 young people from around the world wanting to influence how the
planet will feed nine billion people in 2050 entered the competition. As we might
expect, we had a whole range of ideas put forward, but perhaps the most popular
suggestion was tackling food waste. It’s undeniably a huge issue, with losses in the
field to pests, weeds and diseases the main challenge in developing countries,
whereas in the developed world the focus is more on decreasing waste in the
supply chain after it leaves the farm.
We have chosen 10 of our favorite solutions to improving global food security:
1. Make better use of data
2. Start a “Love your ugly fruit and veg” campaign
3. Educate consumers
4. Train farmers to make most of new technology
5. Create more efficient food chains
6. Adopt more integrated growing practices
7. Invest in skills and training of women
8. Cookery lessons
9. Develop perennial cash crops
10.Reap the benefits of GM crops
 Counsel on doable actions to improve household food consumption and
dietary choices.
 Address illness and infections that worsen nutritional status.
 Counsel on improving food and water safety and sanitation.
 Refer to therapeutic feeding as needed.
 Link with and refer to an organization that provides food assistance,
micronutrient supplementation, food security, and livelihood programming.

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