Food security
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), food security exists if all people have physical and economic access to sufficient and safe food at all times and dietary needs and preferences for a healthy and active life can be ensured.
This definition has four dimensions:
- Availability
- Access
- Utilization
- Stability
The first two elements concern the actual availability of food as well as physical and monetary access to it. In this context, production-related aspects such as agronomic potential, investments in infrastructure and breeding play an important role. Other important influencing factors are global drivers such as population growth and global trade as well as general economic and technological developments. The third element, the utilization of food, includes both aspects such as quality, safety and the handling of food waste and loss, as well as the quantity of agricultural products that are used as energy sources or in plastics. The last element relates to the stability of the food system. From a short-term perspective, stability is about the political, institutional and economic framework conditions that promote investments and innovations. At the same time, the condition of natural resources and the influence of various environmental factors such as climate change, soil quality or plant diseases play a role. They all influence the long-term potential as well as the resilience of the food system.
Terms from the glossary
- Abiotic / Biotic Stress
- Agroecology
- Analytics
- Bees
- Bio-dynamic agriculture
- Biocides
- Biodiversity
- Biologicals
- Biotechnology
- Carcinogenic
- Causality
- Chemophobia
- Cisgenic Plants
- Climate change
- Conventional agriculture
- Correlation
- CRISPR/Cas9
- Digital Agriculture
- Flower strips
- Food Loss
- Food security
- Food Waste
- Gene editing
- Genetic engineering
- Hazard
- Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHP)
- Insect deaths
- Integrated Pest Management
- Limit values
- Metabolites
- Molecular Pharming
- Mutation breeding
- Organic farming
- Organic pesticides
- Pesticide
- Plant breeding
- Plant protection products
- Poison cocktail
- Population growth
- Precautionary principle
- Precision Fermentation
- Regenerative agriculture
- Resilience in the food system
- Resource efficiency
- Risk
- Rural exodus
- Seed treatment, seed dressing
- Species diversity
- Sustainability
- Synthetic pesticides
- Taxonomy
- The Green Revolution
- Transgenic plants
- Urban Farming
- Water scarcity
- Weeds