“The Foodsecure project addresses the lack of food and nutrition security around the world,” says economist Thom Achterbosch of the Wageningen University & Research Centre, in the Netherlands. Achterbosch manages this large-scale research endeavour, which involves partners on five continents.
With two more years to go before the project ends in 2017, the Foodsecure team has already made a number of important contributions to the field. These advances include new insights into factors affecting food and nutrition security, as well as the development of a comprehensive toolkit for exploring future scenarios and policy reform. The project has also provided input for the fifth assessment report of the International Panel on Climate Change.
Examining policy recipes
As a third activity, Foodsecure is examining the impact of policy measures. “There is ample food on the planet to feed everyone,” says Achterbosch, “but it is very unequally distributed.” The decisions countries take regarding trade and agriculture, for example, can have significant implications for people’s access to food, and storage schemes need careful engineering to deliver stability of supply at value for money.
“The policy environment is very important. Sometimes policies may seem smart, but in the end they have a negative impact,” Achterbosch explains. “So policies can be seen as part of the problem, and we try to disentangle what has worked well and what has not.” Policy measures have complex ramifications, he notes.
Foodsecure aims to help the EU’s policy- and decision-makers separate the wheat from the chaff in the fight against hunger and malnutrition. In addition to gathering facts and insights, the partners intend to launch a broad dialogue across several policy areas to explore a coherent set of possible solutions. The project’s scope ranges from agriculture to aid, and from trade deals to science policy. All these policy fields are linked in the challenge of eliminating hunger within a generation.
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