Food Security Indicators, Measurement, and the Impact of Trade Openness

by Guha-Khasnobis, Basudeb; Acharya, Shabd S.; Davis, Benjamin

• ISBN13: 9780199236558
• ISBN10: 0199236550
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-02-25
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

What are the implications of the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture for food security in poor countries? Are economic reforms and high growth rates in some countries protecting the well-being of the poor by improving the status of nutrition? Are we measuring hunger adequately? Do we need new toolsand indicators? Does women's socio-economic status matter for child-health? Are targeted programmes successful in identifying and helping the truly needy?Despite the scale of human suffering inflicted by malnutrition, the fight against world hunger has recently been overshadowed by the campaign to end poverty. The emergence of the WTO and the freeing of agricultural trade, for example, have serious implications for hunger and food security in manycountries, yet this is an area that is relatively understudied. This book aims to fill this gap by providing a significant collection of essays from mainstream academia and prominent international organizations working for food security. Examining food security across regions, the book tackles foodsecurity at three distinct levels-national, household, and individual. Other topics included are: attempts to improve measurement tools; the applications of existing tools for empirical analysis using household data, and; the impact of trade openness on national food security.

Author Biography

Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis is a Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER. He is a PhD from the University of Rochester and worked for IGIDR (Mumbai), ICRIER (New Delhi) and The Exim Bank of India. His research interests include international economics, development economics and financial economics.
Shabd S. Acharya is Honorary Professor at the Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur, Vice President of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and President of the Agricultural Economics Research Association of India. He is published extensively in agricultural economics, agricultural marketing, and agricultural development and policy.
Benjamin Davis is an economist with the Agricultural Development Economics Division of the FAO. His research focuses on the interplay between off farm activities, migration, food security and rural development.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. xi
List of Tables	p. xii
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations	p. xvii
Notes on Contributors	p. xxi
Introduction	p. 1
Issues in Measurement and the Quantitative Analysis of Food Security
Measuring Food Security Using Respondents' Perception of Food Consumption Adequacy	p. 13
Measures of Food Insecurity at the Household Level	p. 42
Tomorrow's Hunger: A Framework for Analysing Vulnerability to Food Security	p. 62
Women's Status and Children's Food Security in Pakistan	p. 95
The Changing Pattern of Undernutrition in India: A Comparative Analysis Across Regions	p. 109
Food Security in Vietnam During the 1990s: The Empirical Evidence	p. 129
Measuring the Efficacy of Targeted Schemes: Public Works Programmes in India	p. 150
Trade Openness, the WTO, and Food Security
The Impact of Domestic and International Commodity Price Volatility on Agricultural Income Instability in Ghana, Vietnam, and Peru	p. 179
Agricultural Support Measures of Developed Countries and Food Insecurity in Developing Countries	p. 206
An Analysis of the Potential Impact of the Current WTO Agricultural Negotiations on Government Strategies in the SADC Region	p. 239
International Trade, Food Security, and the Response to the WTO in South Asian Countries	p. 262
Does the WTO Agreement on Agriculture Endanger Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa?	p. 284
Food Retailing, Supermarkets, and Food Security: Highlights from Latin America	p. 322
Index	p. 345
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