Question

explain the shortage of food in annexure

Answer 1

Food shortage occurs when food supplies within a bounded region do not provide the energy and nutrients needed by that region's population. Food shortage is most easily conceptualized as a production problem - not enough food is grown to meet regional needs - but constraints on importation as well as storage can also cause or contribute to food shortage. Food shortage is also created where food is exported from areas where production is adequate or even abundant. Historically, the great hunger of Ireland (1845-1847) and the famine of Bengal (1944) have been attributed more to British political decisions to export locally produced grain supplies without compensating imports than to production shortfalls per se (Woodham-Smith 1962; Sen 1981).

Even when production shortfall is the primary cause of insufficient supply, the ecological and political reasons for production problems vary widely. They range from natural disasters such as drought, flood, or fungus, to political disasters such as civil conflict, to misguided economic policies such as price controls- all of which discourage production of essential foods.

In all situations of food shortage, many within the region's population are hungry; but in every food-short region, others still enjoy adequate access to food. Equally, although many are food secure in areas of adequate food production, some still go hungry. These variable patterns of hunger result not only from skewed food distribution within regions based on differential political and economic resources, but also from selective marketing, and from non-market political policies of food extraction or assistance.

This chapter begins with an overview of the evidence for global and regional food shortage and where it is most likely to occur. It then analyses the causes of country or within-country food shortages. Finally, it considers the relationship between drought and famine, using recent evidence to argue that food shortage is not inevitable even in areas of widespread production failures: political, not environmental factors are the primary causes of food shortages. This message is repeated in chapter 6, which addresses food shortage caused by armed conflict.

Is there a world food shortage?

World agriculture produces enough food calories to meet the energy needs of all the nearly 6 billion (6 x 109) people who are alive today. Increased production based on advances in seed, water, and environmental technologies, and their wider dissemination especially in developing countries, have removed insufficient production as a cause of food shortage for the world as a whole. Global agriculture has managed to keep pace with population growth, and world food security is also safeguarded by cereal carry-over stocks; 19-20 per cent of annual cereal consumption is carried over into the next year to provide food in case of disastrous production failure (FAO 1993).1Nevertheless, during any year in which enough calories are produced on a global level to meet the energy requirements of the entire population, food shortages can still occur under two situations. If the patterning of production directs too many calories into animals instead of humans, some enjoy meat while others lack calories. Alternatively, overemphasis on production of calories may jeopardize the production of other protein- or micronutrient-rich foods that also enter into the calculus of global food security or shortage. Both are production as well as distribution issues.