The Right to Food: Hunger and Food Security

1. The Right to Food:Hunger and Food Security HFA 4U/C

2. Ted Talk: Idea’s Worth Spreading • http://www.ted.com/talks/josette_sheeran_ending_hunger_now

3. Key Questions: • How far reaching is hunger? • How can hunger and food insecurity be eliminated? • What are the widespread causes of hunger?

4. Learning Goals: • Health issues related to the distribution and consumption of food • Current state of hunger and food security in Canada • Cycle of poverty and the ability to meet nutrition needs • Factors critical in attaining food security • Responses to local and global food security * Ensuring everyone has enough to eat on a daily basis is a complex task that is based on politics, economy, social, and family interactions as well as environmental factors.

5. Questions to Ponder… • How many times have you said “I’m Hungry? • Are there varying degrees of hungry? • Why do some people have so much food and others have none?

6. Advocating for the Right to Food • Complete the supplementary activity provided in class.

7. Food Security: A Human Right • The modern concept of human rights originated with the establishment of the United Nations in 1945. • It was founded after the Second World War in aims to stop wars between countries. • The Universal Declaration for Human Rights was a document that all nations including Canada signed in 1948 – stating that humans have the right to feed themselves in dignity – either by producing food or purchasing it.

8. Food Security: A Canadian Perspective • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBi4RTapxEg

9. What is Hunger? • Hunger is a symptom or sign of food insecurity. • Food Insecurity can be measured on a scale of 1 -4 1: Feeling anxious about a lack of food 2: Compromising on the quality of food by choosing less expensive options 3: Feelings of hunger (stomach pains, dizziness, feeling faint) 4: Not eating at all, or not having access to food (Barbolet, et al. 2005)

10. Food Security: A Broader Concept • Food Security is part of the concept of nutrition security • A household can be said to be nutritionally secure if it is able to ensure a healthy life for all its members at all times. • Nutrition security thus requires all members of a household to have access to food, and other requirements for a healthy life.

11. Factors Involved in Food and Nutrition Security

12. Critical Thinking • Other than food what is required for a person to have a “healthy life”?

13. Developing a Definition of Food Security

14. Micro Level Food Security • Individual and household food security • Year round access to an adequate supply of nutritious food • It depends on factors such as how people produce and acquire food throughout the year and how they store, process and preserve their food to overcome seasonal shortages, or to improve the quality and safety of their food supply. • Also concerned with equitable food supply among the members within a household.

15. Macro Level Food Security • National food security, ensuring a country has access to the supplies of food needed to meet the needs of all of its people • Requirements may include international trade, national agriculture, and economic interdependence. • Global food security means having sufficient food to feed all the world’s people and ensuring the right to food for all. • Global food security depends on equitable control of food production, processing, distribution, and fair and effective policies related to agreements, subsidies, tariffs, efficient responses to food crisis's, international food aid programs, sustainable agriculture etc.

16. Poverty and Povertyism • Povertyism is the discrimination against people on the basis that they live in poverty. • It occurs when people are unsympathetic or outwardly hostile towards those who are experience poverty. • It is manifested in how people act or speak. • It demonstrates a lack of understanding and respect

17. Components of Food Security • 1. Availability – sufficient food for all people at all times • 2. Accessibility – physical and economic access to food for all, at all times • 3. Adequacy – access to food that is nutritious, safe, and produced in environmentally sustainable ways • 4. Acceptability – access to culturally acceptable food which is produced in ways that do not compromise peoples dignity, self respect or human rights • 5. Agency – the policies and processes that enable the achievement of food security

18. Ways of Addressing Food Insecurity • Life Connection Activity (supplementary handout)

19. Whose Hungry in Canada? • Although it is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, people still experience food insecurity: • 2007-2008 1.92 Million people in Canada age 12 or older lived in food insecure households • 2007-2008 the overall prevalence of food insecurity was higher in homes with children • The prevalence of food insecurity among households led by single parents was two times greater than those with two parents, single moms being more prevalent then single dads. • Approximately 1 in 5 off reserve aboriginal households were food insecure • The prevalence of food insecurity was higher among recent immigrant households • Overall households in urban areas had a higher prevalence of food insecurity

20. People most likely to visit food banks… • Income assistance recipients: (50%)those who fall below the poverty line and receive additional income from the government • Working poor: (13.1%) people with jobs that have low wages and are unable to meet their basic needs despite a full time job • Seniors: (2.1%) • Children under 18: (40 %) • Lone mothers: female led single parent families

21. Food Insecurity in Northern Canada • Smaller more remote communities do not have food banks as an alternative. • The supply of commercial foods can be unreliable both in terms of quality and availability and the cost can be very high (it is cheaper across Canada to drink pop than it is to drink milk) • Access to food is sometimes interrupted by shipping or changes in animal migratory patterns so traditional foods such as caribou may not be available. • The cost of hunting for seal, fish, and other animals has risen substantially, such that it is only available to people who can afford the snowmobiles, gas, rifles, ammunition and gear needed to hunt and travel safely.

22. The Global Picture of Food Insecurity http://reliefweb.int/map/world/world-food-security-risk-index-2013

23. Food Insecurity: Five Phase Scale • This classification system was integrated in 2008; it was prepared by global partners: • Phase 1: Generally food secure – more than 80% of households can meet basic food needs. • Phase 2: Moderate/Borderline food secure – for at least 20% of households food consumption is reduced they cannot fully protect their livelihood. • Phase 3: Acute food and livelihood crisis – At least 20% of households have significant food consumption gaps, resulting in high levels of acute malnutrition. • Phase 4: Humanitarian emergency – At least 20% of households face extreme food consumption gaps, resulting in very high levels of acute malnutrition. • Phase 5: Famine/humanitarian catastrophe: At least 20% of households face a complete lack of food and/or other basic needs. Acute malnutrition prevalence exceeds 30% and mortality rates exceed 2/10,000 per day.

24. The Effects of Chronic Under Nutrition • Food insecurity on a global level is often defined as occasional, transitory, or chronic. • Chronic Under Nutrition: is the ongoing inability to access and consume sufficient nutrients to maintain health. • It claims more victims than famine each year. • It lacks the publicity needed to solve this issue. • Makes people susceptible to illnesses such as diarrhea, and malaria. • Women and children are most susceptible. • Leads to high infant mortality rates.

25. Deficiency Diseases • As we discussed in Unit Two nutrient deficiencies can have significant health consequences • In combination with chronic under nutrition nutrient deficiencies are more devastating because they affect the productive life of people and the economy of their communities and countries.

26. Protein-Energy Malnutrition • Also known as PEM, and micro nutrient deficiencies are what forms from chronic under nutrition. • PEM plays a roles in half the deaths of children under five each year in developing countries (WHO, 2000) • PEM occurs in two forms: • Marasmus: which literally means dying away it is the result of severe chronic deprivation its is caused by the deficiency of energy calories. • Kwashiorkor: which is the result of a more sudden and recent deprivation of calories and energy – often differentiated by physical symptoms such as the distended bellies and reduced pigmentation in their hair.

27. Micro Nutrients Lacking from Under Nutrition • Iron deficiencies affect human health and development profoundly/ In infants and young children iron deficiencies lead to impaired psychomotor development, coordination, and academic achievements, as well as decreased physical activity. • Iodine deficiency disorder occurs most often in people living in flood prone-areas where heavy rains wash away iodine in the soil. This can lead to goitres, impaired physical and mental development. In children iodine deficiency is a main cause of impaired cognitive development. • Vitamin A deficiency is the leading cause of preventable visual impairment and blindness – these deficiencies often lead to death in these unstable environments.

28. Response to Famine • Famines are represented by the 5th Phase on the scale of Food Insecurity. • While food provides temporary relief of hunger it does not solve the problem of famines. • Providing food aid in actuality can obscure political and economic factors that play a role in the famine. • Political and economical factors that play a role in famine need to be addressed in order to improve food security, ensuring that famine does not reoccur.

29. Global Hunger: Somalia http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/07/20/somalia-un-report.html

30. Strategies for Food Security • Growing Food: food gardens improve food security and nutritional status. • Vertical Gardens: also known as sack gardens use training and seeds provided by French non governmental organization Solidarites International. Women and children grow vegetables in sacks filled with soil. The sacks are a simple and effective design that includes a central column of stones to allow for water to reach the plants. More than a 1000 women were producing food this way in the 2007-2008 Kenyan food crisis when conflict in Nairobi prevented food from coming into the area.

31. Organic Gardens: Unemployed young men in Kibera, including some former criminals turned a garbage dump into an Organic garden – providing crops for themselves and for sale to others. • Rubbish is covered by tarps and compacted on one side of the plot. The newly revealed soil still contains traces of garbage, tests revealed that sunflowers planted among the vegetables would draw out the dangerous levels of zinc allowing vegetables to grow safely.

32. Food Security Continuum Where do you feel vertical gardens or organic rubbish gardens fit on this continuum?