Food security measurement and governance: Assessment of the usefulness of diverse food insecurity indicators for policy makers

Abstract

Improving food security governance depends largely on the identification of food insecurity (FI) indicators that are useful for policy makers to improve their targeting and monitoring efforts. We conducted electronic searches and reviewed the authors’ files to identify peer reviewed journal articles that have previously synthesized the literature on FI indicators. We developed a consensus survey tool to assign SMART scores (i.e., utility) for each of 12 FI indicators examined for 5 alternative scenarios. Our findings indicated strong agreement across 4 raters for the top FI indicator choice for each scenario and strongly suggested that the evidence-based decision making methodology developed was helpful to eliminate FI indicators for further consideration. Future studies are needed to confirm our findings and, most importantly, to document if our decision-making tool helps improve food security governance in different contexts.