food security

Food security at the individual or household level means access to enough nutritious food to sustain an active and healthy life. The Community Food Securition Coalition defines community food security as a "condition in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice," which covers six basic principles:

• Low Income Food Needs - Focusing on meeting the food needs of low income communities, reducing hunger and improving individual health.
• Broad Goals - Addressing a broad issues, such as increasing poverty and hunger, disappearing family farms, urban food deserts, rural communities, suburban sprawl, and ag- and food-related air and water pollution.
• Community focus - Building up a community's food resources to meet its own needs, through farmers' markets, gardens, community-based food processing ventures and urban farms, for example.
• Self-reliance/empowerment - Building individuals' abilities to provide for their food needs.
• Local agriculture - Building stronger ties between farmers and consumers.
• Systems-oriented - Crossing many boundaries and incorporating collaborations with multiple agencies.

Blogs that address food security include World Watch Institute and U.S. Food Policy.

by Liz Marr, MS, RD Are you a writer, passionate about this or any other topic? Join Blogcritics!

Latest blogosphere posts tagged “food security”

• GLOBAL DAY-LONG FAST AS SYMBOL OF WAR ON HUNGER (UNNews)

  
  Desertification — Authority: 148
  Read at ; UNNewsUN AGENCY CALLS FOR GLOBAL DAY-LONG FAST AS SYMBOL OF WAR ON HUNGERNew York, Nov 11 2009  5:05PMThe United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today called for a day-long, global hunger strike in solidarity with the planet’s one billion people who do not have enough to eat, ahead of next ...
  3 hours ago

• GM Crops and the Principle of Population

  
  The Greenists — Authority: 124
    Over the next forty years, we are going to have to make room on our planet for another two billion or so people. By most reasonable estimates, the world population in 2050 will exceed nine billion. This is a source of all sorts of personal stress for a misanthrope like myself but, from a humanitarian point of ...
  5 hours ago

• Millions Fed

  
  ONE — Authority: 516
  Check out this video from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a research and policy organization that works to reduce poverty and cut hunger and malnutrition. In the video, IFPRI highlights a series of success stories in agricultural development.
  8 hours ago

• The Fight Over the Future of Food: Monsanto, GMOs, and How to Feed the World

  
  TreeHugger — Authority: 726
  Photo credit: KevinLallier via Flickr On the eve of the World Summit on Food Security, Reuters has an excellent two - part special report about the future of food. Specifically, it covers the intersection of two notions that are being linked with increasing frequency: Feeding the skyrocketing world population, ...
  10 hours ago

• Millions Fed: some solutions close at hand

  
  Africa Blog — Authority: 506
  More than a billion people go hungry each day -- about the same number as did in the late 1950s. Thats both a "tragedy on a grand scale" and an "astounding success," according to a new report called " Millions Fed ," produced by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the Bill and Melinda Gates ...
  12 hours ago

• The Copenhagen Conference on Food Security

  
  TreeHugger — Authority: 726
  Old Mother Hubbards Cupboard Was Bare. Image credit: StoryBookLane For the 193 national delegations gathering in Copenhagen for the U.N. Climate Change Conference in December, the reasons for concern about climate change vary widely. For delegations from low-lying island countries, the principal concern is rising ...
  14 hours ago

• Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) – “food with the farmer’s face on it” (Green living tips)

  
  Desertification — Authority: 148
  Read at : Green living tipshttp://www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/332/1/CSA-farms.htmlCommunity Supported Agriculture (CSA) – “food with the farmer’s face on it”Michael BlochGreen Living Tips.comA while back, I wrote about natural food cooperatives, where people band together to source organic produce grown ...
  1 day ago

• Community Food Gardens/Food Banks/Allotments (Google / Green living tips)

  
  Desertification — Authority: 148
  Read at : Google Alert – gardeninghttp://www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/352/1/Community-food-gardens.htmlCommunity food gardensBy Green Living TipsWhat is a community food garden?In previous articles I’ve covered “alternative” natural food sourcing and production arrangements such as CSA’s (Community ...
  1 day ago

• Genome sequence. Cassava. “… cassava is used for industrial starch production, and has potential as a biofuel source, there are commercial applications of these breeding tools.”

  
  Biotech — Authority: 131
  Steve Rounsley, Associate Professor in the School of Plant Sciences from the University of Arizona has said:“With the first cassava genome in hand, we can cheaply and quickly sequence other varieties that will give us thousands of little signposts – mile markers if you like – that will help us identify key genes ...
  1 day ago

• Over 20 million people need food aid in East Africa: U.N (Google / Reuters)

  
  Desertification — Authority: 148
  Read at : Google Alert – droughthttp://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSTRE5A92TV20091110Over 20 million people need food aid in east Africa: U.NBy Silvia AloisiROME (Reuters) – Drought and war in eastern Africa have left more than 20 million people in desperate need of emergency food aid, the United Nations ...
  1 day ago

• CHINA-AFRICA FORUM’S COMMITMENT ON FOOD SECURITY (UNNews)

  
  Desertification — Authority: 148
  Read at : UNNEWSHEAD OF UN AGENCY APPLAUDS CHINA-AFRICA FORUM’S COMMITMENT ON FOOD SECURITYNew York, Nov  9 2009  5:05PMThe head of the United Nations food agency today welcomed the declaration by the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation underlining the critical role that investment in food security, agriculture and ...
  1 day ago

• White House Taps Former Gates Foundation Executive for Foreign Aid Chief

  
  American Conservative Daily — Authority: 501
  President Obama has chosen Rajiv Shah, a medical doctor and currently a senior official at the Agriculture Department dealing with food security, to run the U.S. Agency for International Development.
  1 day ago

• Food security: Feeling insecure?

  
  Gideon Rachman's Blog — Authority: 528
  By Alan Beattie, the FT’s world trade editor “Food security”: one of those infinitely malleable concepts, now to be defined at a UN summit next week. Does it mean self-sufficiency? No, say companies that make lots of money shipping food. Yes, up to a point, say governments with truculent subsidy-guzzling ...
  1 day ago

• UAE to fund dam in Burkina Faso

  
  Thaindian News — Authority: 708
  Abu Dhabi, Nov 10 (IANS) The United Arab Emirates (UAE) would finance the construction of a dam in Burkina Faso in west Africa, WAM news agency reported Tuesday.The loan agreement was signed at the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD) headquarters in Abu Dhabi by Mohammed Saif Al Suwaidi, acting director general of ...
  1 day ago

• 11 African Countries Sign CAADP Compacts

  
  Net News Publisher — Authority: 155
  In spite of the involvement of African countries in the establishment of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) to promote agriculture and reduce poverty, only 11 countries have signed the CAADP Compacts. The countries mostly members of the Economic Community of West African States ...
  1 day ago

• Escudero Cites The Weakness Of RP Agriculture And The Needed Reforms

  
  At Midfield — Authority: 130
  Opposition Sen. Chiz Escudero says the inability of government to ensure food security, particularly in rice, speaks volumes of its current policy on agriculture where almost 40 percent of the country’s estimated labor force of 36 million is engaged. Escudero told At Midfield that “only last month, the ...
  2 days ago

• Climate change will increase food insecurity

  
  Friends of the World Food Program: Uniting to End Hunger — Authority: 131
  Imagine the year 2050. Wheat prices have increased by over90 percent , child undernutrition has increased by 20 percent and crop yieldscontinue to decrease due to lack of water. These are just some of the ominouspredictions from a newstudy   that finds climate changecould have negative consequences for ...
  2 days ago

• Growing food (Springer)

  
  Desertification — Authority: 148
  Interesting book on food production :Growing FoodA Guide to Food ProductionPublisherSpringer NetherlandsDOI10.1007/978-1-4020-4975-0Copyright2006ISBN978-1-4020-4827-2 (Print) 978-1-4020-4975-0 (Online)Subject CollectionBiomedical and Life SciencesSubjectLife Sciences, Food Science, Nutrition, Plant Ecology, Plant ...
  2 days ago

• The baobab as a source of food (Springer)

  
  Desertification — Authority: 148
  Interesting publication :Chemical and Nutrient Analysis of Baobab (Adansonia digitata) Fruit and Seed Protein SolubilityJournalPlant Foods for Human Nutrition (Formerly Qualitas Plantarum)PublisherSpringer NetherlandsISSN0921-9668 (Print) 1573-9104 (Online)IssueVolume 59, Number 1 / January, ...
  2 days ago

• UAE to support dam project in Burkina Faso

  
  Thaindian News — Authority: 708
  Abu Dhabi, Nov 9 (IANS) The United Arab Emirates (UAE) will give about $9 million loan for a dam project in Burkina Faso in West Africa, WAM news agency reported Monday.Mohammed Saif Al Suwaidi, director general of Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD), and Omar Diawara, Burkina Faso’s envoy to Saudi Arabia, have ...
  2 days ago

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