IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/wodepe/v30y2023ics2452292923000206.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The history of hunger: Counting calories to make global food security legible

Author

Listed:
  • Iversen, Thor Olav
  • Westengen, Ola T.
  • Jerven, Morten

Abstract

The Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU) is one of the most central indicators informing the international development agenda. Reported annually by the Rome-based UN agencies in their flagship report The State of Food Insecurity in the World, it is generally considered an authoritative statistic on world hunger. Based on archival research, this article chronicles and analyzes the development of its statistical model and the political and historical context of its revisions. We show that revisions to the PoU model have led to substantial changes in the estimates of the indicator and that this has underpinned shifting policy narratives and trends in the fight against hunger. Major changes in the statistical model inverted the PoU’s trend lines towards the end of the Millennium Development Goals period. In 2020, the year after China’s candidate became Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN organization accessed new historical datasets from China and dramatically reduced PoU estimates for the country and consequently also the global figures. A number of ad-hoc revisions have been made to render food security crises - associated with inflation, economic recession, and the Covid-19 pandemic - legible. The indicator has thus been shaped by the political and economic structures within which FAO is situated, serving as an important tool to legitimize shifting ambitions and strategies of the post-World War II development agenda. At the same time, the lack of access to national household survey data from the countries with the highest measured undernutrition makes the PoU estimates fundamentally uncertain. At a technical level, this study highlights the need for greater transparency in the data and modelling basis for the PoU. The entanglement of technical and political factors illustrates the necessity of critical research on food insecurity quantification. More multifaceted approaches to measure food insecurity are needed.

Suggested Citation

  • Iversen, Thor Olav & Westengen, Ola T. & Jerven, Morten, 2023. "The history of hunger: Counting calories to make global food security legible," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 30(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wodepe:v:30:y:2023:i:c:s2452292923000206
    DOI: 10.1016/j.wdp.2023.100504
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452292923000206
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.wdp.2023.100504?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thor Olav Iversen & Ola Westengen & Morten Jerven, 2023. "Measuring the end of hunger: Knowledge politics in the selection of SDG food security indicators," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(3), pages 1273-1286, September.
    2. Lance L P GORE, 2019. "A Watershed Year: Chinese Foreign Policy in 2018," East Asian Policy (EAP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 11(01), pages 44-58, January.
    3. Clapp, Jennifer & Moseley, William G. & Burlingame, Barbara & Termine, Paola, 2022. "Viewpoint: The case for a six-dimensional food security framework," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    4. Leach, Melissa & Nisbett, Nicholas & Cabral, Lídia & Harris, Jody & Hossain, Naomi & Thompson, John, 2020. "Food politics and development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    5. Dudley Seers, 1959. "An Approach To The Short-Period Analysis Of Primary-Producingeconomies," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(1), pages 1-36.
    6. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr & Amy Orr, 2014. "The MDG Hunger Target and the Competing Frameworks of Food Security," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(2-3), pages 147-160, July.
    7. Marcus Taylor & Remy Bargout & Suhas Bhasme, 2021. "Situating Political Agronomy: The Knowledge Politics of Hybrid Rice in India and Uganda," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 52(1), pages 168-191, January.
    8. Svedberg, Peter, 2002. "Undernutrition Overestimated," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(1), pages 5-36, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Florent Bédécarrats & Flore Dazet & Isabelle Guérin & Mireille Razafindrakoto & François Roubaud, 2023. "Tracking the Cost of Living, for Whom and at What Price?," Post-Print hal-04236884, HAL.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thor Olav Iversen & Ola Westengen & Morten Jerven, 2023. "Measuring the end of hunger: Knowledge politics in the selection of SDG food security indicators," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(3), pages 1273-1286, September.
    2. Kok, Kristiaan P.W. & Klerkx, Laurens, 2023. "Addressing the politics of mission-oriented agricultural innovation systems," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    3. Thor Olav Iversen, 2023. "Boundary experts: Science and politics in measuring the Sustainable Development Goals," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 14(4), pages 600-610, September.
    4. Stephan Klasen, 2008. "Poverty, undernutrition, and child mortality: Some inter-regional puzzles and their implicationsfor research and policy," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 6(1), pages 89-115, March.
    5. Diane Kapgen & Laurence Roudart, 2023. "A Multidisciplinary Approach to Assess Smallholder Farmers' Adoption of New Technologies in Development Interventions," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 35(4), pages 974-995, August.
    6. Bühler, Dorothee & Hartje, Rebecca & Ulrike Grote, 2017. "Can household food security predict individual undernutrition? Evidence from Cambodia and Lao PDR," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-594, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    7. Manipushpak Mitra & Debapriya Sen, 2022. "A microeconomic analysis of subsistence," Indian Economic Review, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 301-320, December.
    8. Mousumi Das & Ajay Sharma & Suresh Chandra Babu, 2018. "Pathways from agriculture-to-nutrition in India: implications for sustainable development goals," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 10(6), pages 1561-1576, December.
    9. Joachim De Weerdt & Kathleen Beegle & Jed Friedman & John Gibson, 2016. "The Challenge of Measuring Hunger through Survey," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(4), pages 727-758.
    10. Rieger, Matthias & Wagner, Natascha, 2015. "Child health, its dynamic interaction with nutrition and health memory – Evidence from Senegal," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 16(C), pages 135-145.
    11. Caroline Hambloch & Kai Mausch & Costanza Conti & Andy Hall, 2023. "Simple solutions for complex problems? What is missing in agriculture for nutrition interventions," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 15(2), pages 363-379, April.
    12. Carly Nichols & Halie Kampman & Mara Bold, 2022. "Forging just dietary futures: bringing mainstream and critical nutrition into conversation," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(2), pages 633-644, June.
    13. Wendy Geza & Mjabuliseni Simon Cloapas Ngidi & Rob Slotow & Tafadzwanashe Mabhaudhi, 2022. "The Dynamics of Youth Employment and Empowerment in Agriculture and Rural Development in South Africa: A Scoping Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-20, April.
    14. Prasha Sooful & Alex Hogan & Justine Williams & Renae Moore, 2021. "Escape into Culturally Safe Patient Centered Care," Noble International Journal of Social Sciences Research, Noble Academic Publsiher, vol. 6(2), pages 18-23, February.
    15. Ben Steichen & Ryan Lowe, 2021. "How do multilingual users search? An investigation of query and result list language choices," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 72(6), pages 759-776, June.
    16. Lange, Simon & Klasen, Stephan, 2017. "How the New International Goal for Child Mortality is Unfair to Sub-Saharan Africa (Again)," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 128-146.
    17. Olufemi Daniel Bolarinwa & Kolawole Ogundari & Adebayo B. Aromolaran, 2020. "Intertemporal evaluation of household food security and its determinants: evidence from Rwanda," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 12(1), pages 179-189, February.
    18. Morten Jerven, 2014. "A West African experiment: constructing a GDP series for colonial Ghana, 1891–1950," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 67(4), pages 964-992, November.
    19. Anthony B. Atkinson, 2014. "The Colonial Legacy: Income Inequality in Former British African Colonies," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2014-045, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Steckel, Richard H., 2009. "Heights and human welfare: Recent developments and new directions," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 1-23, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:wodepe:v:30:y:2023:i:c:s2452292923000206. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/world-development-perspectives .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.