The new frontiers of food security. A prospective review

Abstract

The new frontiers of food security. A prospective review The struggle against food and nutrition insecurity has achieved relative success during the past few decades: the widespread use of technical innovations (in risks prediction, in agricultural intensification or in ready-to-use therapeutic foods) has been combined with the reshaping of the political and humanitarian environment. Still, as risky situations and food crises continue, these sectorial actions are no longer functional and effective. These "new or variant food crises'' are more difficult to anticipate and more complex to solve because of multi-dimensional and multi-level scales along with unpredictable interactions between risks, perceptions and actions, in addition to competition between actors. The challenges concerning securing food are so important that revising our way of thinking has now become a must. This leads us to reverse the perspective and to no longer consider the fight against food insecurity in terms of quantified targets and standards but rather as a process made up of uncertainties, trials and errors, and of various arrangements owing to existing power relations. Using the concept of "securing food'' seems more appropriate to give a full account of the diverse achievements as well as of the remaining challenges in this broadened field of inquiries, which encompasses the agro-environmental issue (related to future effects of climate change), the nutritional sphere, as well as problems of rights, inequality, vulnerability and resilience.