Food safety and ensuring future world food supplies is becoming more and more critical. This is made worse by predictions of climate change and the ongoing uproar about genetically modified food.
Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
Food security and nutrition is everyone’s business. The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) is a multi-stakeholder platform which enables all viewpoints to be considered when deciding on concrete actions to address issues affecting food security and nutrition such as the economic crisis and the rising demand for food.
The CFS was set up in 1974 as an intergovernmental body to serve as a forum for review and follow up of food security policies. In 2009 the Committee went through a reform process to ensure that the voices of other stakeholders were heard in the global debate on food security and nutrition. The vision of the reformed CFS is to be the most inclusive international and intergovernmental platform for all stakeholders to work together in a coordinated way to ensure food security and nutrition for all.
Potatoes Against World Hunger
And the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN, in its latest (2012) report entitled The State of Food Insecurity in the World, presented new estimates which show that progress in reducing hunger has improved over the last 20 years.
Could this be where the potato can play a major role?
The United Nations FAO reports that the world production of potatoes in 2010 was about 324 million tonnes. Just over two thirds of the global production is eaten directly by humans with the rest being fed to animals or used to produce starch.
In 2008, several international organizations highlighted the potato’s role in world food production, in the face of developing economic problems. They cited its potential derived from its status as a cheap and plentiful crop that grows in a wide variety of climates and locales.
Only about 5 per cent of the world’s potato crop is traded internationally.
Due to perishability, only about 5 per cent of the world’s potato crop is traded internationally; its minimal presence in world financial markets contributed to its stable pricing during the 2007–2008 world food price crisis.
Global Crop
The potato is the third most important food crop in the world after rice and wheat in terms of human consumption. More than a billion people worldwide eat potato, and global total crop production exceeds 300 million metric tons.
Meanwhile, a new study, published in August in Science, has called for a ‘climate-smart food system’ to prevent climate change from slowing progress in eradicating global hunger.
The researchers carried out a review of key scientific papers on food security and climate change since 1990. It confirmed a robust and coherent global pattern of climate change impacts on crop productivity that could have consequences for food availability.
