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Division Director of Food Consumption and Nutrition

Division, IFPRI. Washington DC, USA

Food security and nutrition security are two complex, interrelated phenomena that result from a series of factors - some that are common to both conditions and others that are not.

In spite of the commonalities and close linkages between the two phenomena, however, in my view, it is unwise to combine the two concepts into one named “food and nutrition security”. I would prefer to see food security and nutrition (or nutrition security) remain as two distinct, yet clearly related phenomena.

The first reason is that the combined concept of food and nutrition security (as defined in this chapter) is very broad and may be difficult to operationalize. It may be particularly difficult, for instance, to define policies and programs that would encompass all the factors that need to be addressed to support both food and nutrition security, let alone identifying the right set of indicators to properly measure the impact of these actions on relevant food security and nutrition outcomes.

Secondly, not all food security and agriculture-focused policies and programs necessarily need to be accountable for improving nutrition. In some cases, it may be more cost-effective to co-locate programs aimed at tackling poverty and food insecurity with programs specifically focused on improving nutrition and to target the same households and individuals for maximum impact.

Even more importantly, by combining nutrition with food security, we run the risk of seeing nutrition lose its momentum and become absorbed by (and lost within) the broader umbrella of food security. We need to move away from food security being perceived as synonymous to nutrition, and for this, we need to keep the concepts distinct from each other. We also need to correct the wrong perception that if more food could be produced and food security ensured, malnutrition would automatically disappear.

As highlighted in this chapter, more food and more of the right quality foods are necessary, but not enough, to improve nutrition: investments aimed at boosting agriculture production and productivity and at ensuring food security of all people need to be accompanied by renewed efforts to reduce the burden of infectious diseases and increase poor people’s access to health, water, sanitation and education services. Most importantly, progress in nutrition will be made if we can tackle inequality in all its forms, starting with gender inequalities.