CHAPTER 2.1: FOOD PRODUCTION AND FOOD SECURITY
reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses”. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated as a result of global food loss and waste are almost equivalent to those from global road transport (FAO 2015b; Hanson et al. 2015).
While climate change affects everyone, its impacts on food security are not gender neutral. Women in developing countries are often largely responsible for tasks such as procuring water and fuel for heating and cooking, which will become more difficult as the effects of climate change become more severe (Temm 2015; Habtezion 2013; Habtezion 2012). The need to better understand and respond to climate change can bring women and men together, including through becoming more aware of the importance of gender in regard to the causes of climate change and mitigation and adaptation strategies (Jin et al. 2015; Dankelman eds. 2010; Roehr 2007). The latest report by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2014) highlights vulnerability to climate change (and to the impacts of some mitigation and adaptation responses) due to gender and other factors, including class, ethnicity and age. A recent study by the RIO+ Centre and the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network which looks at the complex relationship between gender and climate- smart agriculture (CSA) emphasizes the need for both gender-smartness and people-smartness in achieving CSA’s aims of food security, higher farmer incomes, and low-carbon agricultural practices (Perch and Byrd 2015).
The 1996 World Food Summit defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life” (FAO 1996). Nevertheless, food security, as the World Health Organization (WHO) points out, is “a complex sustainable development issue, linked to health through malnutrition, but also to sustainable economic
development, environment and trade”
(WHO 2016). Greater gender equality is essential to achieve global food security (Carliez 2015; FAO and ADB 2013; Sachs 2013).
Food sovereignty was defined in the 2007 Declaration of the Forum for Food Security (Nyéléni Declaration) as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems” (Nyéléni 2007). Food sovereignty is “more fluid and nuanced than the concept of food security” (Sachs 2013). Its key
components include the right to food, valuing farmers and farmworkers, local production and control, and environmental sustainability (Sachs 2013; Patel 2012; Pimbert 2011). While women’s rights are central to food sovereignty in view of the key role they play in food production, procurement and preparation, family food security and food culture, attempts to systematically integrate gender into food sovereignty analyses have so far been inadequate (Park et al. 2015). In the context of globalization, a persistent focus on producing more food to “feed the world” can be seen as undermining the need to focus on local food availability (Billen et al. 2015). This focus may also detract from the importance of gender equality in production and distribution, as well as from the policy alternatives that would promote sustainable agriculture and local food security (UN Women 2014; Sachs 2013).
Both food security and food sovereignty are gender- differentiated and demographically differentiated. Although there has been progress in alleviating poverty and reducing hunger in the world, the number of undernourished people has increased in the last two decades in Africa (to 232.5 million) and Oceania (to 1.4 million) (FAO, IFAD and WFP 2015). Those most at risk of going hungry are often directly involved in producing food. Small-scale African farmers, around 70% of whom are women, are a prominent example. However, in every country food security is a challenge. No gender-disaggregated data exist for the total number of undernourished people at global or regional levels, but women are at higher risk of being undernourished than men; during periods of food scarcity they eat less than men in terms of both quality and quantity (Box 2.1.1) (Habtezion 2012; Sethuraman and Duvvury 2007).
There are clear gender differences in food security within households, even in predominantly food-secure countries (Box 2.1.2). In many cultures, perhaps most, presumptions are widespread that men deserve or need to have access to the best food, the most food, and the most protein-rich types of food. Periods of acute food scarcity and famine render such inequalities even starker (Bridge 2014). Greater empowerment of women can be a potent tool for combating hunger as women prioritize expenditures on food and health – especially for children – with consequent reductions of malnutrition (FAO and ADB 2013; FAO 2011). Food security is more precarious where men control the use of household income, as they tend to spend a smaller
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