COMCEC Agriculture Outlook 2016
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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). 25
In the FAO study of food security indicators, the stability 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, the
domestic food price volatility which compares the variations of the domestic food price index
across countries and time is seen as the most useful indicator to assess the stability dimension
of food security in the OIC Member Countries.
Annex 36 illustrates the domestic food price volatility index that measures the
variability in the relative price of food in the OIC Member Countries and world. It is calculated
from the monthly domestic food price level index using monthly consumer and general food
price indices and purchasing power parity data. As seen in the Annex 36, food price volatility in
the world realized between 5-10 index number. Similar to the global trends, domestic food
price volatility in some OIC Member Countries such as Cameroon, Gambia, Mozambique,
Kuwait, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia
realized between these intervals. Nonetheless, Burkina Faso, Togo, Uganda, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran
and Maldives have experienced high domestic food price volatility which significantly damages
the stability dimension of food security.
3.5. Food Security Index
The Global Food Security Index, developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), is
an important study to understand the food security situation of countries across years. It
considers the core issues of food affordability, availability, and quality across a set of 113
countries, 37 of which are the OIC Member Countries. The index is a dynamic quantitative and
qualitative scoring model and is constructed from over 28 indicators that measure the drivers
of food security across both developed and developing countries. The overall goal of the study
is to understand which countries are the most and least vulnerable to food insecurity through
an examination of the three internationally recognized areas of assessment: Affordability,
Availability, and Utilization.26
25 FAO, 2006
26 EIU, 2015