Food Security Essay

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1. What is food security? Why is food security important, and how is it measured? In contrast, what is food sovereignty and how might it differ from food security? What are some contradictions and dilemmas inherent to these two concepts? In what ways might they be seen as contradictory to one another?
Food security represents the supply of food available at all levels- community, regional, national and worldwide. Whether or not a country has enough access to food for sustenance is used to define the term “food security.” The dilemma in deciding whether an area is food secure or insecure is defining what is ‘enough’ in regard to food supply (Maritzova, 2014). National food security means that a country can feed it’s own population solely with its own resources. All countries potentially have the ability to feed their populations if they leave their own domestic markets and enter global markets (Maritzova, 2014). However, this allows price fluctuations to occur based on supply and demand, thus acting as a barrier to countries that may be unable to afford certain imports.
Food sovereignty on the other hand is the ability for a country (national), region, municipality or the entire globe to meet food demands through domestic supply or imports (Maritzova, 2014). If demands cannot be met due to the population’s inability to purchase goods domestically as a result of low incomes and lack of hard currency to import missing goods, a country would cannot be deemed food sovereign.
In comparison to food sovereignty, food security is relies more deeply on supply; more specifically, whether or not there is enough food available to meet normal dietary requirement across the entire population. In turn, even if there is enough food available, ...

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... of a food system to global environmental change? Ecology and Society 13 (2), pp. 14-20. Retrieved from: http://www.gecafs.org/publications/Publications/Ericksen_Vulnerability_of_a_Food_System_to_GEC.pdf Maritzova, C. (2007). Food Sovereignty As a Way to Achieve Food Security. Glopolis.
Retrieved from: http://glopolis.org/en/articles/food-sovereignty-way-achieve-food-security/
n.a. What is Food Sovereignty. Food Secure Canada. Retrieved from: http://foodsecurecanada.org/who-we-are/what-food-sovereignty Reisch, L.A. & Scholl, G.(2014). Sustainable Food Systems. Corpus. Retrieved from: http://www.scpknowledge.eu/sites/default/files/CORPUS_poster_sustFoodsystem.p df

Zanoli, R. & Naspetti,S. (2002). Consumer motivations in the purchase of organic food-A means end approach. MPRA. Retrieved from:
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/32712/1/MPRA_paper_32712.pdf

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