Food Security最新文献

Africa faces recurrent fertiliser shocks because much of its nitrogen supply depends on imported products, fossil energy, and exposed trade routes, while production, product mix, logistics, and farm-gate demand remain poorly aligned. Decentralised green nitrogen production – defined as small-scale nitrogen fertilizer synthesis powered by renewable electricity – could make a major contribution to addressing these challenge, but to go to scale it will need to lower delivered costs, improve farm returns, reach farmers with responsive crops, and manage product, safety, resource, and governance risks. This opinion piece argues for an Africa-wide prioritisation assessment that compares potential decentralised production with imports, regional trade, larger low-emission plants, blending, logistics, and advisory support. The goal is to identify intervention bundles that deliver the right nitrogen product to the right farmers at the right cost for the coming decades.

This study evaluates the application of quantitative network analysis as a novel approach to mapping interlinkages and identifying influential drivers within food systems, using Australia as a case study. Leveraging longitudinal data from 1991 to 2022 and employing ts2net package, we analyse 40 food system elements, spanning drivers, activities and outcomes. The analysis revealed that networks of associations in the food system vary in strength, with elements possessing numerous weaker connections exerting greater influence across the food system than those with fewer, stronger ties. Climate change and socio-demographic changes have been identified as key influential drivers in the Australian food system. Clustering analysis identified two distinct sub-systems: the Agri-food and the food and nutrition sub-systems. While network analysis uncovers structural interlinkages and suggests potential directional relationships, it does not establish causality; thus, identified connections should be treated as candidates for further investigation through rigorous econometric methods. As a complementary tool, network analysis can support food system transformation and foresight efforts by identifying key drivers, tracing cascading effects of changes in elements, and revealing weak or missing linkages. However, its effectiveness is constrained by data availability and the limitations of current metrics, emphasizing the need for improved data reporting systems to support comprehensive food system analysis.

Tropical river basins are biodiversity hotspots that critically support food and nutrition security for millions of people. However, the interactions between biodiversity, market dynamics, and food security in rapidly transforming riverine systems remain insufficiently understood, particularly in terms of how ecological diversity translates into actual food provisioning under market-driven conditions. This study addresses this gap by integrating basin-wide fish biodiversity surveys, market flow analysis, and a Food Dependence Index (FDI) within a system-level stress-testing framework to evaluate food-system structure and vulnerability in Thailand’s Yom River Basin. We find that despite more than 95% of fish species being native, food provisioning is overwhelmingly dominated by four alien aquaculture species—tilapia, red tilapia, pangasius, and hybrid catfish—which account for nearly 90% of total volume and over 93% of market value. This concentration results in a high FDI (0.92), indicating structural lock-in to aquaculture-based provisioning. Stress-test results show that moderate disruptions to alien aquaculture (20–40% supply reductions) lead to disproportionate declines in total fish availability (18–35%) and increased affordability pressure, while system dependence remains high even under severe shock scenarios. In contrast, native capture fisheries, although contributing limited market volume, provide critical ecological and livelihood buffering through biodiversity, floodplain connectivity, and seasonal harvesting. This reveals a dual-system dynamic in which aquaculture supports short-term stability, while biodiversity underpins long-term resilience. These findings highlight a fundamental trade-off between efficiency and resilience and underscore the need for portfolio-based governance that explicitly balances aquaculture efficiency with biodiversity-based adaptive capacity to sustain food security in tropical riverine systems.

Grain legumes play a multifunctional role in addressing food insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), yet they remain under-prioritised in agricultural policy and research. This opinion paper argues that grain legumes should be recognised as strategic crops in SSA because they greatly contribute to soil fertility through symbiotic nitrogen fixation, improve dietary protein, fibre and micronutrient intake, enhance crop and cropping system diversification, and strengthen resilience to climatic and economic challenges. Despite these benefits, poor seed systems, biotic and abiotic constraints, limited policy support, post-harvest losses, and uneven research investment continue to constrain their potential. Greater integration of grain legumes into national food security strategies, breeding programmes, extension services, and market development is essential for building productive, nutritious, and environmentally sustainable food systems in the SSA.

Challenges to global food security, such as rising food demand and food prices in developing countries, are a growing concern. Building food system resilience is becoming recognised as an important strategy to mitigate these challenges. However, despite numerous studies on food system resilience and food price volatility, there is no consensus on how to measure it. Therefore, this study seeks to enhance the measurement of food system resilience and investigate its role in stabilising food prices. Specifically, this work develops a Principal Component Analysis (PCA)-based provincial-level Food System Resilience Index (FSRI) using provincial panel data from 2018 to 2022 across 36 indicators in Indonesia. This work then uses a spatial panel model for analysing the relationship between food system resilience and price volatility. Our results show that Java has a stronger food system resilience than other Indonesian islands due to its large production capacity and distribution accessibility, leading to more stable food prices. Statistical analysis further suggests that higher resilience levels are associated with reduced food price volatility within a province and may stabilise prices in neighbouring provinces. Our results suggest that policymakers could strengthen food system resilience in less resilient areas by improving food production capacity and distribution networks to reduce food price volatility and enhance overall food price stability across interconnected provinces.

The global food shortage has threatened the people’s well-being and social stability. Harnessing forests as a food source offers substantial potential to leveraging food availability and human health. Rising health consciousness is driving consumers’ demand for forest foods. Using data from 7,210 individuals in Liaoning Province of China, this paper explores how health consciousness influences urban residents’ consumption behavior of various forest foods. The ordered Logit model estimates show a strong positive association between health consciousness and forest food consumption behavior. Accounting for psychological motivation of determining individual’s intentions, health consciousness indirectly shapes forest food consumption through its impact on healthy consumption attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control based on the well-established theory of planned behavior (TPB). Focusing on consumers’ intention, the willingness to pay (WTP) for forest food is confirmed as a partial mediator in this relationship. Further, considering the chain mechanisms from psychological motivation to WTP, estimation results of a bootstrap chain mediating model suggest that healthy consumption attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and urban residents’ WTP for forest foods collectively exert a chained mediation effect between health consciousness and their consumption behavior toward forest foods. Given an increased public acceptance, results suggest important policy implications focusing on new proposed policies and market initiatives to boost consumption of forest foods, thereby improving the people’s well-being and ensuring food security.

Regenerative agriculture (RA) is a grassroot approach to farming that uses soil conservation as an entry point to regenerate and contribute to multiple ecosystem services. It has the potential to build farm system resilience, improve soil health and soil carbon sequestration, and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. RA can also increase land productivity with ensuing implications on livelihoods and welfare, but little work considers their food and nutrition security implications. This paper studied a bundle of soil-focused agronomic practices often framed as RA in recent policy debates and examined their association with diets and food security. Employing a two-wave panel data set from Zambia with well-suited estimation strategies, the paper shows a positive association between RA and household dietary diversity scores (HDDS). The paper also highlights a positive association between RA and a 24-hour weighted food consumption score. Practices such as contour farming, crop rotation, and mulching are positively correlated with improved dietary quality and enhanced food security. To explain the positive link between RA, diets and food security, the paper identified farm production diversity, market participation, off-farm participation, and income as potential pathways. Heterogeneity analysis of the HDDS food groups showed a positive association between RA and the consumption of eggs, pulses, roots and tubers, and fruits and vegetables. This strengthens the finding that farm production diversity could be one of the pathways linking RA and food security in Zambia. Relatedly, the negative association between RA and the consumption of dairy products bolsters the market participation pathway. These findings lend credence to the importance of strengthening RA and promoting its adoption in smallholder farming systems.

Slovakia experienced severe food price pressure from 2020 to 2023, placing substantial pressure on the economic access dimension of household food security, particularly among vulnerable households. This study aims to identify the socio-economic characteristics of households classified as belonging to the risk group. The risk group is defined as households in the top decile of the distribution of the ratio of expenditures on staples to disposable income, used as a proxy for food expenditure vulnerability. Using microdata from the Slovak Household Budget Survey (2020–2023), we employ the Categorical Boosting machine learning algorithm combined with SHapley Additive exPlanations to analyse complex, non-linear predictors of vulnerability. The results show that the income burden of essential food consumption rose markedly over the studied period. Food expenditure vulnerability is primarily concentrated among groups with limited earning capacity, specifically single-parent households, families with multiple children, the unemployed, the disabled, pensioners, and tenants. Furthermore, the analysis highlights significant regional disparities, with households in rural areas and eastern Slovakia facing a disproportionately higher risk compared to the capital. Notably, during the peak inflation years (2022–2023), food expenditure vulnerability expanded beyond traditional risk groups, making socio-economic profiles less distinct. The main findings are robust to alternative vulnerability thresholds and are supported by comparison with a weighted logistic regression benchmark. Interaction effects indicate higher predicted risk when disadvantages accumulate, such as among rural households in the Prešov region. These findings suggest that while universal support measures are necessary during shocks, policymakers must develop targeted interventions focused on specific demographic profiles and structurally weaker regions to effectively mitigate the adverse effects of food inflation.

Humanitarian assistance programs in low- and middle- income countries often depend on household surveys conducted at a single point in the year to identify which households are food insecure and eligible for assistance. Yet household food security can fluctuate substantially across seasons and weeks. As a result, a one-time survey conducted during an unusually good or bad week may misidentify households’ actual food security status, leading to targeting errors, either incorrectly including or excluding households from assistance. Utilizing unique year-long weekly financial diary data and Monte Carlo simulations that replicate single-round household surveys, we quantify misclassification rates for three widely used food security indicators. Misclassification rates for a single indicator are substantial, ranging from 15 to 48 percent. Combining multiple indicators reduces misclassification rates to approximately 6 to 15 percent, using data and tools already available to program implementers.

This study aimed to assess the prevalence, severity, predictors, and lived experiences of food insecurity among women enrolled in the Women’s Interagency HIV Study in the USA in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesized that pre-existing socioeconomic and health-related disparities would heighten the risk of worsening food insecurity during the pandemic. The 10-item US Household Food Security Survey was administered to participants three times between June and September 2020. Multilevel mixed-effects ordered logistic regression models were used to estimate the odds of worsening food security compared to pre-pandemic baseline data. Qualitative interviews were conducted among a subset of participants to add understanding of the lived experience of food insecurity during the pandemic, beyond what quantitative measures could provide. Among 1,506 women, 28% had marginal to very low food security at baseline, and between 13.6-17.3% experienced worsening food security during pandemic measures. Women with household incomes <$12,000/year were particularly vulnerable to worsening food insecurity, including those experiencing unemployment (OR: 2.06, 95% CI:1.36, 3.13), job loss (OR: 1.47, 95% CI: 1.04-2.06), loss of financial support (OR: 1.91,95% CI: 1.23, 2.97), and those with reduced access to usual sources of food (OR: 7.67, 95% CI:4.78, 12.30). While the quantitative data suggest that relatively few women experienced worsening food security during the pandemic, the qualitative data suggest that many more women had difficulty accessing preferred and healthy foods and experienced disruption to social services, which typically facilitate the ability to access food. Women described how informal social systems (e.g., neighborhood gardens, sharing resources) bridged the gap left by more formal systems during this time. Taken together, these findings suggest that women with pre-existing socioeconomic vulnerability were disproportionately and negatively impacted by the social and economic disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Interventions are needed to address structural vulnerabilities, improve safeguards to food security during times of distress, and harness the capacity of community-based support systems.