Dual Nature and the Human Face of Food (In)security

Abstract

Purpose

This chapter proposes a novel nonnormative approach to evaluating quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of food security.

Methodology/approach

On the demand side, we consider the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of the food security system, whose mechanisms should be evaluated by their impact on the quality of life of an endangered population. On the supply side, the motives of food aid donors and food security providers (directly and via policy mechanisms) are discussed in the context of the deservingness heuristic.

Findings

The model illustrates three problems with measuring food security-related quality of life: peoples’ different expectations, the different points at which people stand on their food security trajectory, and the potential for an evolving reference value of peoples’ expectations. The deservingness heuristic is the mechanism behind the domestic and international food security aid that occurs via evolutionary forces, or cultural, institutional, and ideological forces.

Social implications

Food security is a problem that requires a humanistic approach rooted in the evolutionary process/development of the human race. Food security can be misused by the food aid/welfare recipients for their own purposes. Likewise, food security programs by food aid/welfare donors can be targeted unethically when used to achieve the ideological, institutional, and political goals of the donors. Differentiating between the behavioral causes of providing food security may be helpful in predicting whether aid/welfare will be provided to the needy at all.

Citation

Miljkovic, D. (2015), "Dual Nature and the Human Face of Food (In)security", Food Security in an Uncertain World (Frontiers of Economics and Globalization, Vol. 15), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 97-109. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1574-871520150000015007