World Bank Perspective

Inevitably, the World Bank joined the chorus in addressing the issues and options for ensuring food security in the developing countries in a seminal study that appeared first as an internal report in 1985 (World Bank, 1985) and then as a Bank publication in 1986 (World Bank, 1986).47 The study noted that the world had ‘ample food’. Food production had grown faster than the unprecedented growth of population. World cereal prices had been falling. And there was enough food available worldwide so that countries that did not produce all the food they needed could import it, if they could afford to do so. Yet famines still occurred as part of the problem of widespread hunger and malnutrition. A ‘continuing tragedy’ was that over one-third of the population of the developing world, about 730 million people, did not have enough food, and some 340 million of them were acutely undernourished. But what were the causes of hunger? No doubt inspired by the work of Amartya Sen, the study emphasized that inadequate food supply was no longer the source of the problem. Food security, defined as ‘dependable access to enough food for an active, healthy life’, was the ‘most fundamental need’. But many countries did not have strategies for helping most of their people achieve food security. And of those which did, some had strategies that were ineffective or self-defeating in the long run.