Co-authored by Kenneth M. Quinn Former Ambassador; President, World Food Prize Foundation
October is a busy month for food security awareness. Yet, increased awareness and action continue to be a necessity as malnutrition persists.
World Food Day is celebrated every October 16th. And, for the past 30 years, the World Food Prize awards those who have contributed to the advancement of human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food through its annual Borlaug Dialogue held in October.
The United Nations defines food security as the condition in which all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Although improvements in food availability and access have been made since the mid-1980s, the scourge of malnutrition continues in all its forms.
The World Food Prize theme this year, Let Food Be Thy Medicine, is as relevant today as when the phrase was first said by Hippocrates 2,400 years ago. The 2016 World Food Prize winners are four scientists who work in improving malnutrition utilizing biofortification—the process of breeding critical vitamins and micronutrients into staple crops. Through the combined efforts of the four Laureates, more than 10 million have been positively impacted by biofortified crops.
Despite successful nutrition interventions on the ground, 1.9 billion are overweight or obese adults, 795 million are underweight and 2 billion lack the necessary micronutrients for optimal human health—representing 43 percent of the total population. We live in a world where one child experiences stunting while his or her sibling is obese in the same household. Almost half of the world’s countries confront both under- and overnutrition.
Nutrition affects health at every life stage, from pre-pregnancy to the aging. Optimal nutrition improves cognitive development and function, prevents and manages many noncommunicable diseases, and provides the human body the tools to work to its potential. Food insecure children are more at risk for poor prenatal and early childhood nutrition during the most critical time for child development, the first 1,000 days. Conversely, these same children have access to highly-processed, high-salt and sugar foods, which often lack nutritional quality. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimated the yearly global economic cost of malnutrition is $3.5 USD trillion and undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies cost up to $2.1 USD trillion per year.
Food systems are complex and involve both supply and demand. However, additional variables affecting food security such as a changing climate, the growing population, food accessibility, the role of women and agricultural, food and health technology and innovation play important roles. As the world approaches 2050 with an estimated population of 9.6 billion, securing a nutritious and affordable food supply will continue to gain attention from policymakers and the public.
The United Nations moved from eight Millennium Developments Goals to 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), reflecting a new diversity of development priorities. Of the 17 SDGs, 12 include indicators that are significant to nutrition. Within the 17 goals, 242 indicators of success exist and 56 are relevant to nutrition according to the 2016 Global Nutrition Report. What do all these numbers mean? Nutrition and food security play an important role in almost every aspect of our lives, from reducing poverty to gender equality.
This is why the World Food Center at University of California, Davis, has assembled a plenary panel of leading nutrition and development experts to discuss the availability of a healthy global diet and progress on food and nutrition security at this year’s Borlaug Dialogue. The panelists, who represent organizations across disciplines and sectors, will discuss global measures of progress on food security and address the question of whether stakeholders are measuring the right indicators. The panelists also will review the priority opportunities for increased focus or collective action to improve how we measure food security progress.
The role of nutrition in food security is an important aspect of the World Food Prizes’ Borlaug Dialogue. The 2005 symposium focused on the dual global challenges of obesity and malnutrition, placing the World Food Prize out front in bringing the topic to the attention of the global development community. The World Food Prize also has been awarded twice for efforts to counter micronutrient deficiency and malnutrition to Dr. Nevin Scrimshaw in 1991 and to Drs. Evangelina Villegas and Surinder Vasal in 2000.
By engaging diverse stakeholders—from farm to health—the conversation of how we measure food security progress will (and should) continue. Many organizations are conducting cutting-edge research related to food security and working to advance policy. But, stakeholders across functional and geographic sectors agree that more work is needed to track food security progress globally.