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4
THE WAY FORWARD
During the concluding session of the workshop, two breakout sessions were convened to
discuss how metrics associated with sustainable food security could be improved and made more
useful to policy makers. Each group was asked to identify the strengths and weaknesses of food
security indicators and priorities for further research and investment as well as possible new
institutional arrangements. The first breakout group examined metrics for food security,
nutrition, and poverty, and the second group examined metrics related to agricultural production
and natural resources. This chapter summarizes discussions during the breakout sessions as well
as other ideas mentioned during workshop presentations and the background paper on metrics for
food insecurity and malnutrition (see Annex A). It also includes a summary of Prabhu Pingali’s
suggestion to establish a peer review process to assess the methodologies used in developing
these metrics.
Many participants in both groups concluded that the quality of metrics is not as good as
it needs to be for accurately understanding, monitoring, or predicting food security. In particular,
they stressed the importance of strengthening national level statistics both as inputs to global
level indicators and more importantly for guiding and evaluating national level policies. Some
participants emphasized the need for good national and local data and encouraged international
funding organizations to find ways to better understand the needs of national and local decision
makers. They also expressed concern about the metrics used to measure the sustainability of food
production processes, given natural resource conditions, policies, and market incentives. Many
participants stated that suites of metrics and indicators are needed to understand the phenomena
associated with sustainable food security (both availability of food and access of poor
populations to it), although even existing suites of metrics are rarely integrated adequately for
decision makers today; and there are few integrated sets of relevant data that are widely
accessible and allow analysts to work at sufficiently broad scales and at more local (including
household) scales. Individuals from both breakout groups stressed the need for better spatial and
temporal data; good spatial level data was seen as critical especially in targeting humanitarian
aid. A number of participants suggested that an inventory of existing food security and poverty
indicators be created to provide better user access and to allow users to understand the
limitations of the data and methodologies used.
Some participants expressed concern about the different ways of understanding and
measuring these concepts and relating them to each other (e.g., household poverty and children’s
heights) in meaningful ways. The fact that indicators were often not available at the same
geographic scales, they said, was particularly problematic. For example, data on production and
productivity may be available at the level of households, fields, farms, landscapes, river basins,
nations, regions, or continents, while data on poverty or hunger may only be available at a
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60 A SUSTAINABILITY CHALLENGE: FOOD SECURITY FOR ALL
national or global level. Several participants emphasized the importance of collecting data,
stating that information at smaller scales could also be meaningfully aggregated to meso- and
macroscales.
Emmy Simmons provided highlights of the breakout session on agricultural productivity
and natural resources. She noted that most of the participants believed there were relatively good
data for six major categories of natural resources—habitat, soil health, water, chemicals, air
quality, and greenhouse gases―but that, for the most part, little of this information was linked to
economic or social variables. Several breakout session members suggested that future efforts
should focus on strengthening a limited set of indicators―those most likely to have the greatest
impacts, positively or negatively, on global food systems. There was also considerable support
for creating a dialogue between scientists, the public and key decision-makers to assure that the
science was well understood, and encouraging markets and governments to take action based on
the science.
Kostas Stamoulis briefly summarized the discussion from the food security, nutrition, and
poverty breakout group. He noted that most participants believed that the quality of
anthropometric data are generally good, but that metrics addressing micronutrient deficiency and
diet diversity are scarce and should be expanded, as they are important predictors of good
nutrition. Several participants complained that information on nutritional status is generally not
linked to important co-variates, such as family income or intra-household food allocation, nor are
data readily available to determine whether individuals suffer from acute or chronic malnutrition,
important measures for determining appropriate policy interventions.
Stamoulis described the discussion on the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
indicators, highlighting the need for better food balance sheets, since these are the basis for the
FAO hunger indicators. Many participants emphasized the point that the FAO hunger numbers
purport to provide information about food consumption, but in fact do not. They are based on 3-
year trend data on aggregate food supplies or food availability, and as such, they do not reflect
the changes in the number of people who are hungry because of price fluctuations or short term
food supply disruptions. However, the numbers are useful as a way to focus high level attention
on the problem of global hunger and to secure continued international financial support for anti-
hunger initiatives.
Several participants also noted that these measures are not useful for national level
decision-makers, who need to target specific anti-hunger interventions, and therefore other
metrics are needed such as those developed from household survey data or other national level
statistical collection efforts. Some participants suggested that household surveys, albeit costly,
can provide essential national level data on key measures not covered by the FAO data or other
global data sources―information on household level access and utilization of food as well as
measures of malnutrition. Several participants remarked that it would be useful to have a core set
of questions for household surveys that would allow for greater comparability across countries.
Also as part of the final workshop session, Prabhu Pingali of the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation discussed the need to increase the reliability and transparency of global food security
numbers and asked workshop participants to provide their views on the possibility of
establishing a peer review mechanism. He explained that global numbers on hunger and poverty
are important to target populations that need assistance, and indicators on natural resources and
productivity help to identify the long term impact of development and to identify needed
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THE WAY FORWARD 61
interventions. As a donor organization, the Gates Foundation uses these numbers almost on a
daily basis, but the reliability and credibility of these numbers are widely questioned. Pingali
noted that published worldwide hunger numbers can rise by 200 million in a matter of weeks and
then fall again in a matter of weeks. Published statistics on the number of underweight children
in India are increasing, but the country’s economy has been growing at a rate of 8 percent a year
for the last two decades. He also expressed concern that the institutions and governments
generating these numbers have certain self-interest in reporting specific magnitudes and trends.
To overcome these problems Pingali suggested creating a peer review process. It could be
modeled after the International Organization for Standardization, focused on certifying the
quality and reliability of statistics, or an international body of experts from science academies
around the world could be convened.
Workshop participants had numerous questions about the proposal, but many were
supportive of the idea of having a process for the peer review of methodologies used to develop
key global indicators, with some participants suggesting that a first step might be to compile an
inventory of indicators and provide a platform or portal which would provide easier access to
these data. Additional discussion of the proposal took place during the second workshop, and
Pingali talked with the staff of the InterAcademy Council (IAC) about the possibility of
managing a peer review for global statistics on food security. During the course of this project,
IAC has announced that it will explore potential new peer-review mechanisms for improving the
quality and reliability of statistics produced by international organizations which measure
worldwide poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and general food security.
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