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What you need to know about Food Security and its impact  

If you have even a casual fascination with the environment and agriculture, you’ve probably heard about something called food security. As you’ll soon see, the concept of food security is crucial, because it impacts people around the globe.

What is Food Security?

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Food security facilitates making enough food accessible, available, and able to be properly used. It seeks to minimize the reality that despite having an abundance of food on the planet, about 795 million people who inhabit it are undernourished. Government and international organizations work together to increase food security, but there is also significant progress being made by agricultural technology firms that invent hardier varieties of seeds, more effective pesticides, and improved methods of examining crop conditions to avoid failed harvests.

Food Security supports Local Economies

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One of the main goals of food security is to empower communities to grow food that’s enjoyed locally rather than forcing them to import items from thousands of miles away, or even further. Food security initiatives often work to equip local farmers to harness natural resources and use them to feed people in their communities.

As a result, there’s evidence of greater self sufficiency within communities. Over time, local economies improve too because farmers can support their livelihoods by feeding their fellow community members.

Food Security offers more control over the food we eat

Young Woman Cooking in the kitchen. Healthy Food - Vegetable Salad. Diet. Dieting Concept. Healthy Lifestyle. Cooking At Home.

Although there are national standards in place that dictate how food is grown, packaged, and labeled, it’s harder to ensure such rules are followed when food comes from far away. As food security improves in a particular country, a nation can exert a greater amount of control over what happens to produce before it reaches household dinner plates and school lunch boxes.

It may ultimately seem cheaper to depend on a distant country to get produce for reduced prices, but if it turns out that location has lesser standards that define the food production process, there’s a chance the food supply at home will get compromised. People could even become sick from consuming foods that weren’t carefully grown.

An Increase in the number of Food-Secure homes

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A food-secure home is defined as one where the occupants do not live under threat of starvation or even worry about going hungry. As the number of food-secure homes rises, the likelihood of issues related to malnutrition goes down. When people are consistently malnourished, they may have weakened immune systems, and become more susceptible to irreversible lesions in the brain due to iodine deficiencies. Vitamin A deficiencies can also result from malnourishment, and those are particularly of concern in children under five, but can cause blindness and death in population segments of all ages.

Lack of Food Security threatens future farming techniques

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If you talk to a person who’s involved in managing their family farm and ask that individual where they learned what they know, there’s a good chance they’ll say they learned it from other growers in the family, or perhaps from neighbors who had suggestions about improved ways to do things. If food security is limited in a community, farmers may break family traditions and decide they can no longer afford to make their livings through agriculture.

Fortunately, there are some companies and associated individuals working hard to develop new technologies that support farmers in improving food security. Jai Shroff UPL Limited CEO, is one executive that offers a wealth of experience on the topic of food security. Having worked in the agriculture sector for three decades, Shroff leads a company that focuses on products and techniques such as post-harvest preservation methods, effective herbicides, and high quality seeds, and then it makes those things available to farmers in sustainable ways.

UPL Limited is one example of a company that’s using today’s technology to tackle a prevalent problem. By targeted areas of highest need, such establishments could encourage a brighter future for farming.

We must increase Food Production to meet the world’s needs

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Another pressing reason why it’s so important to improve food security matters is because our success impacts not just current world inhabitants, but future residents as well. Statistics suggest if we’re going to successfully cope with the number of people on the planet by 2050, it’s necessary to ramp up food production by more than 60 percent.

It’s not wise to just figure there’s no need to make plans for the future until more crises arise. The sooner we discover feasible methods of growing safe, nutritious foods, the easier it’ll be to provide for people who need to eat, without worrying about importation concerns.

You’ve just gotten an overview of how food security affects people locally, but is also felt globally. Clearly, malnutrition and undernourishment is a pressing issue around the world, and if people don’t get the appropriate nutrients soon after they’re born, they may experience life-altering health problems. Greater security within the world’s food supplies supports farmers, too, which promotes stability within communities.

Article Submitted By Community Writer

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