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The many faces of food security

Bibliographic Data

ID4821460
AuthorsTim G Benton (0000-0002-7448-1973, Chatham House, corresponding author), Tim Benton (0000-0001-6403-3280, Professor of Population Ecology at the University of Leeds and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Energy, Environment and Resources Department at Chatham House.)
Year2016
Volume92
Issue6
Pages1505-1515
Publication date2016-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-5850 • E-ISSN: 1468-2346
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/1468-2346.12755
OpenAlexW2548235646
LanguageEN
Citations received2

Food insecurity occurs when people do not have secure access to food necessary for a healthy life. The food-insecure are typically the poor, and the traditional focus of food insecurity thinking has been the global poor. Increasingly, it is being recognized that in the rich world, food insecurity manifests itself in calorie-rich but nutrient-poor diets, leading to the linkage between poverty, obesity and its associated health problems. Furthermore, the historical link between income and diets, when projected forwards, shows a growth in demand that would be extremely challenging to meet with sustainable production. This is especially true given that emissions from the food system are significant contributors to climate change, perhaps more so than any other sector; and yet, probably less than half the world's calories are used directly for healthy diets (over half of agricultural production is lost or wasted, fed to animals or consumed in excess of healthy requirements). This review article, of a suite of four books, covers the way the food security argument is framed and how this is changing, food politics and justice and why our food system is as it is. The overall conclusion is that our food system is placing unsustainable demands on the planet, as well as creating injustice and inequity. The ‘productivist paradigm’ of growing ‘ever more, ever more cheaply’ while relying on international commodity trade and markets to solve the distributional issues, is unlikely to create a sustainable, just and food-secure world

Agriculture · Biology · Business · Commodity · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Food processing · Food security · Food systems · Geography · Injustice · Market economy · Natural resource economics · Political science · Poverty · Sustainability · Food Security and Health in Diverse Populations

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  • Breaking from the past? Environmental narratives, logics of power, and the (re)production of food insecurity in South Sudan

    Open Access•François Sennesael, Harry Verhoeven•Disasters•2025

Unique citing works2
Citations per year0.25
Citation span2018 - 2025 (8)
Citation velocityrecent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 2

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