Explore BrainMass

Food Production, Food Demand and Food Supply

You decided to post the following provocative statement on your website this week for discussion, "In a market economy, food flows in the direction on economic demand. Need is not taken into consideration. To illustrate, in the event that there are hungry cats and hungry children, the food will go to the cats if the owners of the cats have money and the children's parents don't."

What is this asking?

Is food security a global issue?

What are the different levels of food security and how/why it affects the world in which we live?

Solution Preview

Food security describes a situation in which people do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. World-wide around 852 million men, women and children are chronically hungry due to extreme poverty; while up to 2 billion people lack food security intermittently due to varying degrees of poverty. (source: FAO, 2003).





Stunting and chronic nutritional deficiencies


* Premature failure of vital organs occurs during adulthood. For example a 50 year old individual might die of heart failure because his/her heart suffered structural defects during early development.

* Stunted individuals suffer a far higher rate of disease and illness than those who have not undergone stunting.

* Severe malnutrition in early childhood often leads to defects in cognitive development

Economic approaches


Westernized view

Conventional thinking in westernized countries is that maximizing the farmers profit is the surest way of maximizing agricultural production; the higher a farmer’s profit, the greater the effort that will be forthcoming, and the greater the risk the farmer is willing to take.

This view holds that it is the governments job to place into the hands of farmers the largest number and highest quality tools possible (tools is used here to refer to improved production techniques, improved seeds, secure land tenure, accurate weather forecasts, etc.) However, it is left to ...

Solution Summary

This solution provides a composition of referenced material on the major issues of food security in a globalized world today.