Food Security: Indicators, Measurement, and the Impact of Trade Openness(WIDER Studies in Development Economics)

What are the implications of the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture for food security in poor countries? Are economic reforms and high growth rates in some countries protecting the well-being of the poor by improving the status of nutrition? Are we measuring hunger adequately? Do we need new tools and indicators? Does women's socio-economic status matter for child-health? Are targeted programmes successful in identifying and helping the truly needy?Despite the scale of human suffering inflicted by malnutrition, the fight against world hunger has recently been overshadowed by the campaign to end poverty. The emergence of the WTO and the freeing of agricultural trade, for example, have serious implications for hunger and food security in many countries, yet this is an area that is relatively understudied. This book aims to fill this gap by providing a significant collection of essays from mainstream academia and prominent international organizations working for food security. Examining food security across regions, the book tackles food security at three distinct levels-national, household, and individual. Other topics included are: attempts to improve measurement tools; the applications of existing tools for empirical analysis using household data, and; the impact of trade openness on national food security.

Table of Contents:
1: Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis, Shabd S. Acharya and Benjamin Davis: Food Security: Indicators, Measurement, and the Impact of Trade Openness Part I Issues in Measurement and the Quantitative Analysis of Food Security 2: Mauro Migotto, Benjamin Davis, Calogero Carletto, and Kathleen Beegle: Measuring Food Security Using Respondents' Perception of Food Consumption Adequacy 3: Indranil Dutta and Craig Gundersen: Measures of Food Insecurity at the Household Level 4: Christian Romer Løvendal and Marco Knowles: Tomorrow's Hunger: A Framework for Analysing Vulnerability to Food Insecurity 5: Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis and Gautam Hazarika: Women's Status and Children's Food Security in Pakistan 6: Brinda Viswanathan and J. V. Meenakshi: Changing Pattern of Undernutrition in India: A Comparative Analysis across Regions 7: Vasco Molini: Food Security in Vietnam during the 1990s: The Empirical Evidence 8: Nilabja Ghosh and Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis: Measuring the Efficacy of Targeted Schemes: Public Works Programmes in India Part II Trade Openness, the WTO, and Food Security 9: George Rapsomanikis and Alexander Sarris: The Impact of Domestic and International Commodity Price Volatility on Agricultural Income Instability in Ghana, Vietnam and Peru 10: Michael Herrmann: Agricultural Support Measures of Advanced Countries and Food Insecurity in Developing Countries: Economic Linkages and Policy Responses 11: James Hodge and Andrew Charman: An Analysis of the Potential Impact of the Current WTO Agricultural Negotiations on Government Strategies in the SADC region 12: Ramesh Chand: International Trade, Food Security and Response to WTO in South Asian Countries 13: Samuel Gayi: Does the WTO Agreement on Agriculture Endanger Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa? 14: Mehmet Arda: Food Retailing, Supermarkets, and Food Security: Highlights from Latin America

About the Author :
Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis is a Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER. He is a PhD from the University of Rochester and worked for IGIDR (Mumbai), ICRIER (New Delhi) and The Exim Bank of India. His research interests include international economics, development economics and financial economics. Shabd S. Acharya is Honorary Professor at the Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur, Vice President of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and President of the Agricultural Economics Research Association of India. He is published extensively in agricultural economics, agricultural marketing, and agricultural development and policy. Benjamin Davis is an economist with the Agricultural Development Economics Division of the FAO. His research focuses on the interplay between off farm activities, migration, food security and rural development.

Review :
An apt and timely book as global food security today engages the attention of the world as never before. The Hindu This wide ranging and forward looking set of studies is a must read for policy makers, analysts and students of food security. Containing contributions from leading thinkers and doers in multilateral and developing country organizations, the volume critically examines the relevance and accuracy of available and proposed tools to measure food security, and explores their application in several dynamic contexts. Important new insights are contributed towards a better understanding of the complex pathways through which trade liberalization and farm support programs impact on the nutritional status of the poor in developing countries. Highly recommended. Dr. Peter Matlon, Managing Director, The Rockefeller Foundation, Nairobi, Kenya This is a valuable contribution to the literature on food security for many reasons, including: it analyzes food security trends over time, which is relatively under-studied; food security is examined separately from poverty, which is unlike most previous studies; its focus on ex ante analysis of vulnerability to hunger and malnutrition, and the policy implications at the local, national and international levels is new and highly valuable for policy makers and practitioners; the analysis of the multiple and intertwined links between poverty, growth and hunger are clearly examined; the editors of the volume should be commended for including case studies undertaken by researchers from developing countries directly affected by food (in)security. The much too important local perspective is captured in this volume. Dr. Gobind Nankani, President, Global Development Network, New Delhi, India