Contemporary Social Issues

Food Security, Poverty and Inequality

Chapter one

1. Over view of Contemporary social issues

1.1. Concept of Social Issues

What is a social issue?

 A social issue (also called a social problem or a social illness or even a social conflict)
refers to an issue that influences and is opposed by a considerable number of individuals
within a society.

 Social issues (also social problem, social evil and social conflict) refers to any undesirable
condition that is opposed either by the whole society or by a section of the society.

 Social issues are those which affect the human society as a whole. These issues pertain to
human behaviour, including government policies, religious conflicts, gender inequalities,
economic disparities, etc.

 Personal problem VS public problem

Personal problems
 Are things that affect individuals and those around them.  If someone in a family attempts
suicide, that is a problem for the family

Public issues,

 On the other hand, involve much larger numbers of people.

 For an issue to become a social concern, it needs to have an influential group define it as
so.

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 An influential group is a group that can have a significant impact on public debate and social
policy.

 List of Social Issues in Today's Society

 Global warming

 Terrorism  Misuse of social networking

 Drug abuse  Anxiety/stress

 Gender issue  Poverty

 Abortion  Women’s rights

 Eating disorder  Religion-based discrimination

 Inequality  Unemployment

 Food insecurity  Civil rights

 Obesity

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 What is a Social Problem?
Objective Elements of Social Problems

 Awareness of social conditions through life experiences and through reports in the media.

 We see the homeless, hear gunfire in the streets, and see battered women in hospital
emergency rooms.

 We read about employees losing their jobs as businesses downsize and factories close

 What is a Social Problem?

Subjective Elements of Social Problems

 The belief that a particular social condition is harmful to society or to a segment of society
and that it should and can be changed.

 We know crime; drug addiction, poverty, racism, violence, and pollution exist.
 These are not considered social problems unless a segment of society believes these
conditions diminish the quality of human life.

 What is a Social Problem?

Objective and Subjective Elements of Social Problems

 By combining the subjective and objective elements, we arrive at the following

definition:

 A social problem is a social condition that a segment of society views as harmful to

members of society and in need of remedy.

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 Social problems can also be divided into following types in relation to their causative
factors:
1. Social problems due to social factors
2. Social problems due to cultural factors
3. Social problems due to economic factors
4. Social problems due to political and legal factors
5. Social problems due to ecological factors

1.2. Characteristics of Social Problems

1. All social problems are situations that have harmful consequences for the society
2. All social problems are deviations from the ideal situation
3. Social problems are caused by many factors
4. All these factors are social in origin
5. Social problems are interrelated
6. Social problems affect every individuals of the society
7. Social problems affect different individuals differently

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2. Issues in Food Security

2.1. Concepts and Definitions

FOOD SECURITY

Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to
sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an
active and healthy life.

Dimensions of Food Security

From this definition, four main dimensions of food security can be identified:
1. Food availability
 The availability of sufficient quantities of food of appropriate qualities, supplied
through domestic production or imports (including food aid).

 This is often confused with food security but should properly be seen as only a
part, albeit an important part of food security.

 The question is not only whether food is available in a country but whether it is
available in the right place at the right time and there must be a mechanism for
ensuring that food of the right quality is made available.

2. Food access
 Access by individuals to adequate resources (entitlements) to acquire appropriate
foods for a nutritious diet.

 These resources need not be exclusively monetary but may also include
traditional rights e.g. to a share of common resources.

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  Entitlements are defined as the set of all those commodity bundles over which a
person can establish command given the legal, political, economic and social
arrangements of the community in which he or she lives.

3. Food utilization
 Utilization of food through adequate diet, clean water, sanitation, and health care.
This brings out the importance of non-food inputs in food security.

 It is not enough that someone is getting what appears to be an adequate quantity

of food if that person is unable to make use of the food because he or she is
always falling sick.

4. Stability of access
 Are individuals at high risk of losing their access to food? An example of this
situation would be a landless agricultural laborer who was almost wholly
dependent on agricultural wages in a region of erratic rainfall.

 Such a person is at high risk of not being able to find work in a situation of
general crop failure and thus going hungry, i.e. is vulnerable.

 For food security objectives to be realized, all four dimensions must be fulfilled
simultaneously.

Major Challenges in achieving Food Security

There are three areas of global concern that impact food security:
1. overpopulation
2. climate change, and
3. urbanization

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1. Overpopulation
 Areas of the world with the highest birth rates and population, where demand often exceeds
supply, also have the greatest levels of hunger and disease.

 Local ecosystems provide the resources a population needs for food production, health,
environmental management and water. Examples include rangeland, fertile soil, nutrient
cycling, and wildlife for hunting, among others.

 The local ecosystem has a certain carrying capacity, and once this is exceeded the ecosystem
becomes stressed and begins to break down. This is defined as ecosystem vulnerability.

 The results can include over-farmed soils, denuded grazing lands and dried up or
contaminated wells, all of which contribute to an underfed population.

2. Climate change

 Climate change is having an impact on various regions of the world. In Sub-Saharan Africa
droughts are becoming more frequent and of a longer duration.

 The indigenous knowledge that developed to deal with less severe drought is no longer
adequate.

 The lack of water and continued grazing stresses the ecosystem and causes its disintegration
and a serious food security situation. The Borana tribe in Ethiopia, for instance, is currently
undergoing this phenomenon.

 As food sources become more limited, the lack of nutrition exacerbates health by causing
immune suppression and making the population more prone to illness.

 Increased disease puts a greater energy demand on the body and leads to a greater need for
nutrients that are not available.

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 This is a cycle of hunger and disease that reduces lifespan, productivity and the ability to
improve one’s position.

3. Urbanization
 Urbanization is also a contributor to food insecurity.

 Mega-cities, cities of ten million-plus inhabitants, are most commonly found in developing
countries.

 In fact, three-quarters of urban dwellers live in low- and middle-income countries.

 The world economy has taken advantage of the low-cost labor in these countries and this has
fuelled the rural-to-urban migration.

 Most manufacturing jobs are in the cities and as overpopulated and depleted lands fail to
supply basic economic needs despite typically being able to still produce adequate
sustenance, people turn to these urban jobs and opportunities.

 Thus far, rural farmers have kept up with the supply, but the economic access to foodstuffs
by urban dwellers remains a problem.

 The need to feed these mega-cities and the complications associated with economic access to
food is great. This was highlighted in 2007 and 2008 when rising oil prices led to food
becoming unaffordable to city-dwellers across the globe.

How can food security be addressed?

 The first issues of food security are availability and accessibility.

 These are exacerbated by the overuse of resources and poor distribution due to income
inequity or social disturbance.

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  Encouraging growth in agricultural sectors that focus on locally consumed crops rather
than export markets may stimulate an influx of rural and community-based development
funds and create a national market. Such projects would need to be based on local
structure, knowledge and priorities and operate within the capacity of the ecosystem.

 Education is also a key as it increases literacy, making it easier to standardize and

implement programmes during development.

 In addition, the education of women has been shown to lead to a reduction in family size
as well as a reduction in poverty, and these results in an improved nutritional status for
the family.

 Education on the identification of illness in animals, proper slaughtering, food storage,

food handling, food preparation and threats from food can also help.

 Making people aware of signs of illness in their livestock, setting up nationally or locally
regulated testing schemes for their industrialized food products, and encouraging
community awareness and vigilance will be the first steps.

 A combination of these efforts can reduce the stress on the environment and increase local
food distribution and availability.

 It will need international support and expertise.

 It must be supported at the national and local levels of every country that becomes involved
in addressing the challenge of food security.

 Political management of growing urban centers to reduce inequity and provide basic needs
for the poor will also be critical to success.

 Plans must be adapted appropriately to each place according to their needs and desires while
striving to meet standards that have proven effective.

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 In conclusion, food security is a multi-dimensional topic. It does not just address the
availability of food, but it also addresses its cost, cultural appropriateness, the balanced
nature of its protein, fat, carbohydrate and micro-nutrient make-up, its source and the
production practices used to cultivate and harvest food products, as well as freedom from
contamination after harvest. This relates to both animal and plant based foods and is an issue
across the globe. Food must not only meet our macro- and micronutrient needs, but it also
must not cause disease in those who consume it.

 Efforts to address these topics must take into consideration community-based approaches and
well-rounded interventions.

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2.2. Theoretical Framework for Understanding Food Insecurity

2.2.1. Concepts of Food insecurity

Food insecurity is a situation that exists when people lack secure access to sufficient
amounts of safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development and an active and
health life.

It may be caused by the unavailability of food, insufficient purchasing power,

inappropriate distribution or inadequate use of food at the household level.

Food insecurity, poor conditions of health and sanitation and inappropriate care and feeding
practices are the major causes of poor nutritional status.

Food insecurity may be chronic, seasonal or transitory.

The FAO definition of food insecurity is:

“A situation that exists when people lack secure access to sufficient amounts of safe and
nutritious food for normal growth and development and an active and healthy life.”

Causes of Food Insecurity

There are numerous causes of food insecurity. These include;
 population growth and rising food
 transportation
 agricultural costs, and
 As well, the recent economic downturn has resulted in reduced global investment in food
and agricultural development.

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THE DURATION OF FOOD INSECURITY
Food security analysts have defined two general types of food insecurity:

CHRONIC FOOD INSECURITY TRANSITORY FOOD INSECURITY

Is... Long-term or persistent. Short-term and temporary.

People are unable to meet their There is a sudden drop in the ability to produce
occurs minimum food requirements over a or access enough food to maintain a good
When... sustained period of time. nutritional status.

Extended periods of poverty, lack of Short-term shocks and fluctuations in food

results assets and inadequate access to availability and food access, including year-to-
From... productive or financial resources. year variations in domestic food production,
food prices and household incomes.
Typical long term development Transitory food insecurity is relatively
can be measures also used to address poverty, unpredictable and can emerge suddenly. This
overcome such as education or access to makes planning and programming more
With... productive resources, such as credit. difficult and requires different capacities and
They may also need more direct access types of intervention, including early warning
to food to enable them to raise their capacity and safety net programmes
productive capacity.

The concept of seasonal food security falls between chronic and transitory food insecurity.

It is similar to chronic food insecurity as it is usually predictable and follows a sequence of

known events. However, as seasonal food insecurity is of limited duration it can also be seen
as recurrent, transitory food insecurity.

It occurs when there is a cyclical pattern of inadequate availability and access to food. This is
associated with seasonal fluctuations in the climate, cropping patterns, work opportunities
(labor demand) and disease.

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 2.3. Climate Change and Food Security

 Climate change happens in different ways, ranging from increased climate variability and
gradual changes in temperature and precipitation, to increased frequency and intensity of
extreme events.

 What are the Impacts of Climate Changes on Agriculture & Food Security?

 Agriculture production will be affected by increasing temperatures, changing rainfall

patterns, and more frequent and intense extreme weather events.

 These will have direct effects on crop growth and their need for water, as well as soil
fertility, water supply for irrigation, and prevalence of pests and diseases.

 In terms of livestock, climate change also will affect the quality and amount of feed
supply and water.

 Climate hazards will affect agriculture through;

 heat stress on plants
 changes in soil moisture and Temperature
 loss of soil fertility through erosion of top soil
 less water available for crop production
 changes in height of water table
 salinization of freshwater aquifer, and
 Loss of land through sea level rise.

 How does all of that impact food security?

1. Impacts of climate change on agriculture

 Let’s focus on the agricultural sector, including crops, forests, livestock and fisheries.

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 Can you imagine how changes in climatic conditions constitute major challenges for
agriculture productivity?

 Climate change will affect:

 Availability of good quality water
 Habitats and species distribution
 Timing and length of growing season
 Distribution of agro-ecological zones
 Ecosystem stresses (erosion by water and wind, acidification, salinization, biological
degradation)

2. Impacts on climate change on vulnerable people

 Climate change affects everyone. But worst hit will be those who are already vulnerable.

 Climate change impacts affect people differently depending on their livelihoods and socio-
economic status.

 People depending on climate-sensitive livelihoods and poor or marginalized groups, with

limited access to resources and information sharing, are the most affected by climate
change.
 For example, women in rural sub-Saharan Africa are one of the groups most
vulnerable to climate change. They depend on rain fed agriculture which is highly
climate sensitive.
 Further, women are among the poorest and most marginalized.

3. Climate change impacts on food systems

 Effects of climate change go beyond individual households.

 To understand the effects on food security in a country or a region, the “food system”
concept is useful.

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In a narrow sense, a food system is a set of activities from production through to
consumption. For example, think about cassava flour: someone has to grow cassava
(production), dry, mash and package it (processing), deliver it to a market (distribution), where
someone buys and eats it (consumption). Food systems go beyond individual food products.

 In a broader sense, a food system also includes interactions with environmental and socio-
economic drivers.
 Food security is an outcome of a food system.

 Climate change is one of the environmental drivers interacting with a food system. It will
affect not only food production, but also food processing, distribution and consumption.

Summary
 Climate change has significant implications for agriculture and food security, creating new
risks and challenges and exacerbating existing vulnerabilities from the local to the global
level.
 Rural livelihood systems and poor or marginalized groups that mainly depend on
agriculture, forestry, fishery sectors, are the most vulnerable and strongly affected by
climate change.
 Climate change can affect all dimensions of the food security of vulnerable groups as well
as different elements of food systems.
 Climate change and food security are twin challenges which need to be addressed
together.

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