Food, insecure food

It goes without saying that food is the most basic need of human beings. Survival, health, growth: all depend on sufficient quality and amounts of food. Indeed, human history can in part be seen as an effort to acquire adequate food, whether from gathering, hunting or growing.

But despite the advances in technology, plenty of people today still struggle to provide enough food for themselves and their family. They suffer from food poverty or food insecurity, which can be defined as ‘when a person is without reliable access to enough affordable, nutritious, healthy food’ (redcross.org.uk), or as ‘insufficient or insecure access to food due to resource constraints’ (sustainweb.org). This does not only apply in the global South, but in so-called developed countries too. It has been estimated that over seven million people in the UK were living in ‘food insecure households’ in the UK in 2022–3 (an increase of 2.5 million over the previous year). This included one child in six and one working-age adult in nine. One solution that has been proposed is to provide free school meals to all children. Things may get worse if some farmers reduce production, as may happen, largely due to labour supply problems.

In the US the situation is also deteriorating. In 2023, almost 18 per cent of households with children were food-insecure, a small rise from the previous year. In 2009, the proportion was just over one in five; the figure fell after the financial crisis but then began to rise again during Covid when school lunches came to an end.

Yet it is in underdeveloped parts of the world that food insecurity is at its most serious. A recent UNICEF report stated that 181 million children worldwide under the age of five lived in severe food poverty (one child in four). Global food security deteriorated between 2019 and 2022, worst of all in Syria, Haiti and Venezuela. Large parts of Africa are in really dire straits, as is much of South Asia. In Somalia almost two-thirds of children live in ‘extreme food poverty’, while in Gaza the figure is nine children out of ten.

Famine, as defined by the UN World Food Programme, involves such criteria as 30 percent of children suffering from acute malnutrition, which is far more severe than food poverty. No countries currently meet the definition, but that does not stop the overall food situation from being dreadful.

The UN Environment Programme recently issued a Food Waste Index Report 2024, which contains some quite astonishing facts and figures. Globally, over a trillion US dollars’ worth of food is thrown away each year; this leads to perhaps a tenth of greenhouse gas emissions and occupies nearly thirty per event of agricultural land. The waste occurs in various places, including households, retail and supply chains, though it has to be remembered that the data in middle- and low-income countries is probably pretty unreliable. And some inedible matter is included, as the distinction between edible and inedible is not always clear. Reducing food waste is obviously a good thing, but in a world based on profit and with billions of impoverished people it is not straightforward.

According to Action Against Hunger, 733 million people (one person in eleven) go hungry. Rising temperatures and extreme weather have worsened the crisis, as have Covid and conflicts. But, as they say, ‘There’s more than enough food produced in the world to feed everyone on the planet.’ It does not reach all those who need it, partly because of food waste, but also because of poverty. The UN Environment Programme states that it is perfectly possible to feed ten billion people, if the world population reaches that figure. Reducing CO2 ‘could positively impact the nutritional value of the food produced’, while restoring biodiversity would make it easier to cope with pests and disease. An increase in plant-based diets would produce less greenhouse gas and need less water. Replacing monoculture with regenerative farming, using rotational methods, would restore wildlife and soil.

One of the immediate priorities in a socialist world will be ensuring that there is enough food for everyone, that nobody suffers from food insecurity. We cannot say now just how this will be carried out, as we do not know what the food situation will be at the time that socialism is established. But we can say that scientists and farmers know how to go about growing enough good-quality food for all, and know how to co-operate with others to make food insecurity a thing of the past.

PAUL BENNETT

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