World Food Insecurity: A Policy Dilemma

Almost 1 billion people live in a state of food insecurity. The income earned by them is only slightly more than 1 percent of world GDP. Even though the resources required to feed these people adequately are small, their food deficit is persistent and difficult to solve. Solutions must involve a radical restructuring of government away from interventionist poli- cies and towards being a facilitator of economic growth and development focusing on over- coming market failures. Resources in support of agricultural research and development (R&D) have been declining worldwide and are undermining the growth in productivity that is required in order to have further declines in real agricultural prices. These lower prices would be one important step towards improving food security by increasing purchasing power of low-income households. Reducing the number of food insecure by half as recom- mended by the World Food Summit requires serious commitments from both the world food exporters as well as the food-insecure countries themselves.