Do you know what is really implied by the term "food security"? Do you know who are the key organizations supporting international food aid? What can you do to help sustain food security? Did you know having sufficient food is not always equal to food security? Read on to find out more.

What does food security imply?

Food And Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) states that food security exists when:

All people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

In other words, these three conditions must exist simultaneously, at the same time before a country can be said to have attained food security.

How do countries tackle the issue of food security?

There are two fundamental approaches on tackling food security, namely food self-sufficiency and income self-sufficiency.

When countries adopt a food self-sufficiency policy, this means it :

1. Intentionally attempts to increase scale of domestic production to match domestic consumption, and then store the surplus of food produced locally for domestic use.
2. When a famine breaks out, the surplus stored is then given out to the public by the government at low, affordable prices if not otherwise free.
3. In short, domestic production of food accounts for a huge proportion of domestic consumption in the country.

1. Intentionally attempts to increase the real income of its people through job creation or any other means.
2. Regardless of the current situation (e.g. famine, disease outbreak etc.), its people will still have enough income to support himself or herself despite of the hyper-inflated price of food.
3. In short, countries that adopt this policy fully are often those who are geographically disadvantaged in being food self-sufficient, so they have no alternative but to increase real income. China, with its food self-sufficiency level at 95%, is a classic example of a country that embraces a food self-sufficiency policy. On the other hand, Singapore, whose geographical conditions (i.e. small land size, warm weather etc.) does not favour it to follow suit, has managed to assure its citizens of their stable food supply by raising the real income of the people through implementing an income self-sufficient policy. These two countries show the vast difference in how countries worldwide grapple with food security.

Countries in the world are not alone in tackling the problem of domestic food security.

The United Nations has two sub-organizations that assist countries in doing so: The World Food Programme (WFP), and the Food and Agriculture Organization of The United Nations (FAO). The earlier is one of the biggest food aid supporters globally, while FAO acts as "a neutral forum for nations to negotiate agreements and debate policies."

What can YOU do?

Food security concerns not just the political bigwigs, but it also affects us directly, the man on the street. Thus, it is of vital importance that people know what they can help out with.

In their report "Together We Can!", The United States Department of Agriculture has suggested in detail what the individual can do on their part. For instance, you could promote the cause by:

1. Holding a walkathon
2. Holding a food drive
3. Grow a community garden ...And so much more.

The writer based this article's findings and conclusions on how six different countries tackled the issue of food security, after 2 weeks of intensive research.

These countries are namely: Singapore; China; Philippines; America; Britain, and Australia. Given the wide differences between national income, current political situation and other factors that were taken into consideration, these nations were chosen so as to provide a realistic scope and depth for the article. This article is not an official representation of food security planning for any country used in the article.