Global Food Security

'Food Security' means that all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Especially in developing countries, many people are food insecure. Both undernutrition and overnutrition (obesity) are addressed. This interdisciplinary course focuses on what it means to be 'food insecure' and examines causes and solutions for this problem. The scope is from global to national, household and individual level. It aims at linking disciplines related to availability (production), sustainability/stability (in production and prices), access (distribution, entitlements) and quality (safety, nutritional composition, acceptability). Approaches come from the disciplines Economics, Nutrition, Social Sciences, Food Science, Plant Production, Plant Breeding, Animal Production, Disaster studies. The roles of multinational and national public policy and business and retail are investigated. The students play the Africulture game to experience the difficulty to achieve food security at farm household level in Africa. The second halve of the course is an intensive practical, devoted to hands-on project development, considering the complexity of food insecurity at district and household level. The students analyze a situation of regional food insecurity, and use a logical framework for designing a (better) project. The course has a tight schedule and the students get a high degree of exposure. Attendance is demanded. A reader can be obtained at week 3 of the course. Students also have to prepare a debate on contested issues related to food security.

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:

• Understand the concepts of food and nutrition security and food systems from social science and natural science perspective (L, IR, GD)
• Describe and evaluate a well justified science-based viewpoint on food security issues, based in gained knowledge (L, IR, GD, Debate)
• Analyse situations of food insecurity in different contexts, applying gained knowledge and using a method of causal analysis (L, IR, GD, RP, Case)
• Design solutions for averting food insecure situations, thereby integrating knowledge from different disciplines and using a framework for project planning (L, IR,GD, Case)

Assumed Knowledge:
Open for all MSc and BSc students but especially for those that follow one of the following minors Freedom from hunger, International land and water management, or follow MFS.