Causes of food insecurity

 

First and foremost, poverty is the main cause of food insecurity.  Poor people cannot afford to buy enough food for nutritional diet. Their lack of social or economic access to adequate food  results in inadequate food utilization. Therefore, their bodies are prone to infection or disease due to weak immune system. Besides, an inadequate food utilization also reduces the ability of adults to work and to give birth to healthy children, and erode children's ability to learn and lead productive, healthy, and happy lives. This truncation of human development undermines a country's potential for economic development–for generations to come.

  In addition to that, harmful economic systems are also the principal cause of food insecurity. It is  believed that the principal underlying cause of poverty and hunger is the ordinary operation of the economic and political systems in the world. Military, political and economic power who live well by controlling over resources and income while those people at the bottom barely survive. Moreover, developed countries such as Japan and China have high technology in agriculture can produce excess food for their residents. In contrast, underdeveloped countries such as Africa and Asia have low income and cannot afford to buy high agricultural technology to improve the quantity of food produced. Therefore, a huge difference is created between physical condition of people in advanced economic country and traditional economic country.  

  Furthermore, climate change is increasingly viewed as a current and future cause of food insecurity. Increasing drought, flooding have brought a huge damage to the countries economic and threaten people lives. Government also shows their attitude of laziness to take the precaution steps and made the circumstance becomes worst. Meanwhile, earthquakes also destroy the paddy field which is the major source of food production. This delay the process of food production and lengthen the time for crop harvest. So, the amount of food produced becomes lesser and not enough for all the residents.   Unpredictable climatic patterns also force a shift in crops and farming practices to overcome this problem.

  Last but not least, gender inequality also causes food insecurity. United State government estimates that 60 percent of the world’s chronically hungry people are women and girls. This is due to women have lower lower agricultural knowledge compared to men. Besides, women have less access than men to agricultural assets, inputs and services. Analysts suggest that if women have the same access to productive resources as men, women could boost yield by 20-30 percent and raise the overall agricultural output in developing countries by two and a half to four percent.