My name is Craig Gundersen and I am the soybean industry endowed Professor in Agricultural Strategy, in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at University of Illinois, and I'm also the Executive Director the National Soybean Research Laboratory. And on the steering committee for the International Food Security Initiative. So what I'm going to be talking about today is giving an overview of food insecurity over different dimensions. And then after providing that, what are some of the solutions that we can have to address food insecurity. So that's going to be the structure of the presentation today. Okay, so the first thing that we have to do is define what do we mean by food security? Then by defining food security is then we can begin to analyze what are some of the causes of it's converse family food insecurity. So, we state that the official definition as established in the 1996 World Food Summit. Is, 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. So that's the official definition, and we can think about that there's four key components to ensuring that food security exists. The first is that the physical availability of food, the second is the economic and physical access to food, third is food utilization and fourth is stability of each of these three over time. So, you'll hear a lot of talk throughout some of these presentations and in other context about how do we feed 9 billion people by the year 2050? Well, one thing that has to be done in order to do that is that we have to be able to produce enough food for 9 billion people, so the first dimension is that we have to have the physical availability of food. The second is that we have economic and physical access to food. So even if enough food is produced, if people do not have the ability to purchase that food. That would a hindrance to being food secure and/or if just in the area that they're living, there's not enough food available to them, even if there's enough food available in other locations even nearby it. So we have the economic and physical access to food. The next point is is that you have people who have the ability to utilize that food. So, in other words, they have the appropriate sanitation in order to prepare or the appropriate ability to prepare the food. That food be roughly consistent with their cultural preferences. All these things ensure that people are able to utilize the food that's been produced. And that they have been able to access it. And finally, we have to recognize the food security is something that we want to preserve over an extended time period. There's literally hundreds of millions of people across the world who are food insecure for a portion of the year, even if they're food secure for the rest of the portion of the year. So what we want to be able to do in say food security, it means that all times if people are food secured is that those episodic instances of food insecurity to be eliminated. So that gives you some sense about what we mean by food security and its converse of course, the absence of food security, namely, food insecurity. The following figure gives some information about food insecurity across the world. And what this has is the left axis is we have the millions of people who are undernourished, and on the right axis we have the percentage, and a few key takeaways from this. It first is that in 1990 is there was about 1 billion people in the world who are undernourished. By 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, is this has fallen by 20% down to 800 million people who are food insecure. So that's an amazing accomplishment. Is that 200 million people across the world are better off then they otherwise would have been due to advances, some of which I'm going to talk about later in this presentation, but that's the positive aspect of it. The negative aspect of it is that the World Food Summit set a goal of having there be 500 million people who are food insecure, or under nourished in 2015. And we're not going to be able to meet that goal. That's unfortunate, but on the other hand lets look on the bright side, is that we have been able to achieve quite a bit there's a lot more to be achieved. Looking at percentages is that the development goal target was that there be about 11% of the world be food insecure by 2015. And as you can see from the red figure on here, is that we're a little bit closer to meeting that goal. So that's a positive aspect. Okay, so this'll give you some sense about broad trends that we've seen over the past 25 years with respect to this, okay. Now there's been enormous variation across the world in terms of experiences of food insecurity and this next figure shows this. So what you see, for example, is that in Sub-Saharan Africa, from 1990-1992, is that about 1 in 3 persons in Sub-Saharan Africa were undernourished, and so, for example, in Southeast Asia, over 3 in 10 were food insecure in 1990. We've made enormous progress, again, as can be seen on this graph so take an example, South Eastern Asia, is that the millennium development goal was to reduce the extent of undernourishment in this area to 17% by 2012 and you can see from this figures it actually fell to 10%. So if we've made enormous strides in some parts of the world, and even in Sub-Saharan Africa, which has the largest percentages, this has fallen. It's fallen from about 10 percentage points from 33 down to 23%. So this is another amazing thing is that we've been successful over many dimensions. And what you can see is across the world, with the exception of Western Asia, which saw an increase, all other areas saw, in time, fairly dramatic declines in the extent of food and security. So, there's lots of good news with respect to that. One thing I want to emphasize about this is you can see the enormous variation, both in terms of what's happened to food insecurity over these time periods and also the level of food insecurity across different parts of the world. So of course, not all the world, there's a great deal of heterogeneity across the world in terms of what's going on. It's not the same everywhere. The next figure, which is especially important to emphasize, is that there's enormous variation within countries. So even if one part of a country is experiencing food insecurity in some degree or other, it doesn't mean the whole country is experiencing food insecurity, and that has implications for some of the films I'm going to talk about later with respect to what we can do. So, take this figure here from the Central African Republic and you can see across here is that there's areas of the country that are in what's deemed emergency situations, other parts that are crisis other parts that are stressed. And you can see within the providence of Bangui, which within this one area as you can see that three of the areas that are noted on here are in crisis. One is in an emergency situation, three are stressed, but two have minimal evidence of food insecurity. So there's quite a bit of variation, even within a country, that has to be recognized in thinking about how we address food insecurity. Without a doubt, one of the key ways that we can reduce food insecurity in the world is to increase incomes. I mean, there's a reason why the extent of food insecurity in better off countries is so low to almost be nonexistent where as in lower income countries, it can be quite high. Mainly, if you have people with more resources to purchase food Is, you're going to have lower rates of food insecurity. And this figure reflects that. So what we have on the y-axis is the prevalence of undernourishment. And on the x-axis we have the poverty head count ratio, namely the proportion of the population that's living at $1.25 a day, or less, and this line is as the poverty levels fall is so does undernourishment. Okay. That's exactly what would expect and the figure that's drawn through there, the line that's drawn through there shows that general pattern. However, we also have to recognize that countries are doing things that would make the people there less likely to be food insecure independent of income level. So for example, take the case of Ghana. The poverty rate is about 22%, given this their food insecurity rate would be predicted to be about 18% as you can see from this figure. However, food insecurity rates there are about 5% so for those of you who have been to Ghana or experience with what's going on in Ghana, is there's a lot of really neat stuff going on there to make improvements in the lives of persons there. And that was one of the reasons why food insecurity rate is lower there. In contrast other parts of the world, so for example, Nicaragua, which given their povert ratey, we would anticipate that they would have lower rates of putting security, let's say Ghana but they actually have higher ones. So something is going on in Nicaragua that leads them to have higher rates of undernourishment than we were predicting. The reason I mention this is that there is a lot that can be done independent of increasing incomes. But we also have to also recognize the importance of increasing the incomes. Okay, so, after seeing all of this that I just presented, a key question that some of you may have, probably all of you have, is that what can be done? What can be done to address food security in the world? So, I want to talk about some of these things. So, the first is on the supply side, recall earlier when we talked about food security, is having people have the access to enough food. So, looking at this is we need to be able to use productive technologies. Whether those productive technologies are being used in the state of Illinois where we have amazing farmers producing soybeans and corn and other products for people across the world. We need to make sure that those farmers in Illinois and across the United States and in other areas across the world. For example Brazil and Argentina who are our leading producers of soybeans. They have effective technologies. But we also have to make sure the small scale farmers and lower income countries and lower to middle income countries also have effective technologies. One thing that I can't emphasize enough is that we need to be able to use In producing enough food. For those across the world, unfortunately, who are against the use of GMO products, what they re in essence are saying is they're willing to impede agricultural technology by impeding the use of GMOs. That means that tens of millions of people will suffer from malnutrition due to those decisions to not allow for the use of GMOs. We have to use GMOs if we are going to feed nine billion people by 2050. Of course, after harvesting is that a lot of these products are lost. And can't be consumed. And this can be, amounts to huge proportions of the food that's, you know, that's grown in these countries and so by reducing this, this means then that there is more food available to people. The next thing that's not unrelated to the post harvest loss is then enhancing the transportation infrastructures. For those of you familiar with the notions of public goods, one of the critical public goods that we have is to move things from one location to another. And coming back to what I mentioned earlier about there being wide variation within countries and across countries in terms of putting security. One of the reasons is is food just cant get to those locations. By enhancing transportation infrastructure we make it easier to bring food into those areas and we also make it easier to allow farmers in those areas to move the materials from where they are to somewhere else. Okay, remove trade barriers is I'm an economist and like all economists is we recognize the critical importance of free trade. By removing trade barriers across the world is that we improve, on average, the well being of billions of people, literally billions of people by removing trade barriers is we can have countries utilize their comparative advantages that they have, we can also allow consumers within countries to purchase, to consume food at lower prices. These are huge advantages and I can't emphasize enough the need to remove these trade barriers. Along with allowing for use of GMOs is removing trade barriers is critical. Whenever we remove trade barriers, whenever we promote free trade is there's always winners and there's always losers. And we have to recognize where people who will lose out in all of this but we also have to critically recognize is that on average people are better off once you remove trade barriers especially in the long term. Okay, the other thing is that In a lot of countries, is if we were to go, if I was to show you a map of areas across the world where there's severe problems with food and security as a lot of them have severe civil conflicts, and so by reducing the civil conflicts in these countries is that can also enable more food to be grown. It can also allow food to move more freely towards those areas. It can allow more people to earn more income to produce food. So there's lots of things. So reducing civil conflict is critical. I recognize it's very hard to do but it's something that we should seek to do in our efforts to reduce food and security. Now, I want to now talk about the demand side issues. So, earlier, part of the presentation is I talked about the economic and physical access to food. So, in other words, how do we make sure people have enough money to purchase this food? Some of the things we can do on the demand side then is to improve education access. You know, there's hundreds of millions of people across the world who are under-educated. If they were better educated, it would enable them to have more incomes for their families, but it would also help out the whole world. There are hundreds of millions of people who are not as well-educated as they could be. Who knows of all the important discoveries and the other things that they can do for the world by having more education? So that benefits everybody. The next thing is, remove trade barriers. Again, as I mentioned, that is a way of, early on in the supply side, I mentioned removing trade barriers as a way of enabling farmers in low-income countries and other places to reach new markets that they otherwise weren't able to reach. Is something similar happening up in demand side by removing trade barriers, this lowers prices in countries which means consumers can consume more food. And we also want to allow for more free movement across borders. Is that having immigration be more common is critically important, as there are lots of people who are in poor areas where, if they move to better-off areas, they could improve their well-being. They could improve their own well-being, and through remittances to their families who did not come with them is they can improve the well-being of those is well again, there's winners and losers with respect to immigration. Is that on average is that if we encourage the more free and open movement across borders, is that people will be better off and this will reduce food insecurity. Again as mentioned before, reducing civil conflicts is important. And, finally, I want to recognize the importance of food aid. There is billions of dollars every year spent across the world in terms of food aid. Some of this food aid is temporary, so, if a particular area is gotta go in a famine we bring food aid there, or if there's a refugee camp or something, we bring food aid out. Those are roughly designed as temporary and those are critical things is that to be able to bring those into areas where there's need over a temporary basis. But there's also lots of places where we have longer-term needs. So, one area which we have this is a lot of school feeding programs. A school feeding program, or longer-term programs, whereby we're feeding, you know, hundreds of millions of children across the world and in doing so is this improves their education. It improves there and also improves their food security status. So we have these longer term programs that are critical to helping out millions in these areas. That's will play a critical role in our continued efforts to reduce food insecurity across the world. [SOUND]
