Better Than Sliced Bread? How Trade Integration Can Boost Food Security

We welcome 2015 confronting an all-too-familiar reality: there are still people in the world without access to sufficient and nutritional food. One in eight people go hungry every day, according to the United Nations, including an estimated one in six children under the age of five who is underweight. The situation is especially dire for those living in extreme poverty, whose inadequate access to technology, land, water, and other agricultural inputs routinely imperils their ability to produce or secure food for themselves and their families, especially as world food prices have risen in recent years.

On a scale of one to something-must-be-done-now, tackling this problem and ensuring food security remains among the most pressing development issues of our time. The good news is the first Millennium Development Goal to eradicate world hunger is achievable—and the target to halve it by the end of this year is close to being met. But governments have too often failed to meet their obligation to nurture an enabling environment for food security, and in some cases have actually made it worse.

Trade policy can be a proactive—rather than a reactive—tool in helping to ensure greater food security, a theme expounded in our recent publication entitled Trade Policy and Food Security: Improving Access to Food in Developing Countries in the Wake of High World Prices. Although world food prices have risen in real terms in recent years after three decades of decline, there is no global shortage of food. The problem is one of moving food, often across borders, from areas with a production surplus to those with a deficit, at prices that low-income consumers in developing countries can afford.