Food Security: A Global Challenge

Food Security

In this course, Professor Peter Jackson (University of Sheffield) explores food security. In the first module, we think about food security as a global challenge, and how it relates to other issues such as health and the environment. We look in the second module at the ways in which food security has been defined, and contestations around what constitutes food security. The third and fourth modules examine how the present food system developed and problems within it, considering firstly the intensification of agriculture, and secondly the globalisation of food supply chains. In the fifth module, we turn to consumer responses to the increasingly complex, intensified ,and global food system, particularly alternative food networks (AFNs) and ethical consumption. We conclude with a sixth module on the future of food and how we might address issues of sustainability, health, and inequality within the food system.

Food Security: A Global Challenge

In this module, we think about what food security is, and the challenge of achieving it across the world. We focus on: (i) the basic concept of food security as the ability to produce sufficient food for every person, and indicators that humanity is falling short of this such as obesity and malnutrition rates; (ii) how this may worsen as populations increase, dietary patterns change and agricultural land availability reduces; (iii) geographical inequalities in access to food; (iv) how food security relates to major environmental challenges, such as climate change and biodiversity loss; (v) the link between diet and health, in relation to both obesity and malnutrition.