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Many of the recent concerns about food security relate to perceived threats to current levels of food security, such as those due to price shocks or natural disasters. These threats concern the risk of food insecurity. This publication develops a risk-management tool to examine the robustness of policy responses to managing risks and uncertainty across a variety of different threats to food security, and applies the framework to an Indonesia case study.
Five risk scenarios were selected as major threats to food security in Indonesia, following a consultation process among stakeholders and policy makers, and assessed in terms of existing and alternative agricultural and social policies. The risk assessment shows that domestic economic and natural disaster scenarios are more important than global price hikes and that a policy strategy that concentrates on addressing a single source of risk, such as a price spike in international markets, may increase vulnerability to other sources of risk such as domestic crop failure. The analysis yields a number of specific policy recommendations, including targeting of social assistance programme using food vouchers or cash transfers.
This chapter summarises policy lessons from the OECD Framework for the Analysis of Transitory Food Insecurity and its application to Indonesia. It contains six specific policy recommendations to improve policy approaches to food insecurity risks in Indonesia.
Many recent concerns about food security focus on unpredictable but shorter-lived threats to current food security levels such as price shocks and natural disasters. Unlike chronic food insecurity, transitory food insecurity occurs because of a temporary decline in household access to adequate food. Shocks like droughts or economic downturns can affect individuals who normally have appropriate access to food, threatening the stability of food security which implies adequate access to food at all times. It is particularly relevant for emerging economies that are rapidly reducing poverty and the prevalence of food insecurity, but are still vulnerable to shocks that could bring transitory food insecurity. Developed countries also sometimes raise these concerns when justifying their agricultural policies.
This chapter presents the theoretical basis for analysing the stability dimension of food security at government level. First, the target variables defining food security are identified using the distribution of individuals or households. The food-insecure segment of the population is defined as those below a given threshold, and the instability of food security is analysed based on the distribution of prevalence of food security across different scenarios and risks. Second, the type of information required to define a scenario is discussed using stylised examples. The risk assessment process should lead to estimates of the likelihood of the threat and its impact on the prevalence of food security. Finally, a portfolio approach to policy decisions is explained with stylised examples. As part of the process, the effectiveness and efficiency of different policy measures in different scenarios need to be analysed and reconciled with the government’s attitude towards avoiding the risk of lower food security in different scenarios.
This chapter reviews the concept and definition of food insecurity, its various dimensions and how it has been measured in different contexts.
Many of the recent concerns about food security relate to perceived threats to current levels of food security, such as those due to price shocks or natural disasters. These threats concern the stability dimension of food security, increasing so-called transitory food insecurity. The present publication describes an approach designed to explore effective policy responses to this risk environment within a broader policy strategy for improving the longterm availability, access and utilisation of food.
The analytical framework comprises three steps: preparatory analysis, risk assessment and policy analysis. The preparatory analysis is technical in nature and involves identifying data sources, including household expenditure surveys, indicators and models. A consultation process is proposed for the second and third steps. Risk assessment draws on the perceived food security threats of experts and stakeholders and on available scientific and statistical evidence. This evidence is then transformed into a set of scenarios, each one corresponding to a specific perceived food risk, thereby allowing a rigorous assessment of its likelihood and its estimated impact on food security. The participation of experts and stakeholders is a key factor in identifying plausible food insecurity scenarios. The subsequent policy analysis focuses on existing and potentially new policy instruments, and their impacts on each scenario. A portfolio approach is then adopted to analyse policies and scenarios jointly