COMCEC Agriculture Outlook 2018
42
3.4. Stability
The definition of food security stresses the time spatial extent of food security by stating “when
all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to safe and nutritious food …
for an active and healthy life”. In this definition, at all times refer to the stability aspect by
covering the availability, access and utilization dimension of food security on a periodic basis.
Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of having to reduce the risk of adverse effects on the
other three dimensions, namely availability, access and utilization. Therefore, these three
dimensions should be stable over time and not be affected negatively by natural (drought,
floods), social (unemployment), economic, (rising food prices) or political factors (social
unrest).
Accordingly, FAO describes the stability dimension of food security such that a population,
household or individual must have acquire to adequate food at all times without any risk losing
access to food as a consequence of sudden shocks (e.g. an economic or climatic crisis) or cyclical
events (e.g. seasonal food insecurity). 17
In the FAO study of food security indicators, the access dimension of food security is measured
by various indicators such as cereal import dependency ratio, percent of arable land equipped
for irrigation, value of food imports over total merchandise exports, political stability and
absence of violence/terrorism, domestic food price volatility, per capita food production
variability, per capita food supply variability. In this study, among these indicators, per capita
food supply variability which compares the variations of per capita food supply across countries
and time is seen as the most useful indicator to assess the stability dimension of food security in
the OIC member countries.
Figure 37: Per Capita Food Supply Variability, kcal/capita/day
Source: Annex 41
17 FAO, 2006
32
30
23 23
4
13
10
7
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
2000 2005 2010 2013
OIC World