Food Security: Indicators, Measurement, and the Impact of Trade Openness

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.

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.