Hunger and malnutrition are long-term problems facing the world. Recent food price rises have greatly exacerbated the difficulties poor people face in accessing nourishing food and have dragged up to 100 million people back into poverty. The World Food Programme's (WFP) 'pipeline' of emergency food has never been more important. WFP does crucial work at the frontline of humanitarian emergencies and in building the resilience of communities to deal with long-term hunger. Up to 20 million tonnes of food may be needed to feed new groups of people being pushed into poverty by food price rises. Significant increases to the WFP's budget are likely to be needed in order to secure this additional food supply. The usual annual total of US$3 billion in voluntary contributions may need to double to US$5-6 billion. Malnutrition is responsible for one-third of child deaths, yet it is under-funded and under-emphasised by the international community and the UN system. The Committee is shocked that DFID lacks a specific nutrition policy and measurable targets for assessing progress in reducing malnutrition. The establishment of the UN Taskforce and its Comprehensive Framework for Action on food security are positive steps. Agencies such as DFID and the WFP must look beyond the current crisis and address long-term drivers of food security. DFID should re-focus on agriculture. Reforms to the UN system are another important factor in improving future responses to food insecurity. There is scope for far greater integration of the work done by the three Rome-based UN agencies. Identifying the WFP as the lead UN agency on hunger would contribute to a more coherent international approach.

With the global population projected to reach 9 billion by theyear 2050, the need for nations to secure food supplies for theirpopulations has never been more pressing. Finding better supplychain solutions is an essential part of achieving a secure andsustainable diet for a rapidly increasing population. We are now ina position, through methods including life cycle assessment (LCA),carbon footprinting and other tools, to accurately measure andassess our use – or misuse – of natural resources,including food. The impact of new technologies and managementsystems can therefore improve efficiencies and find new ways toreduce waste. Global Food Security and Supply provides robust, succinctinformation for people who want to understand how the global foodsystem works. The book demonstrates the specific tools availablefor understanding how food supply works, addresses the challengesfacing a secure and safe global food supply, and helps readers toappreciate how these challenges might be overcome. This book is a concise and accessible text that focuses onrecent data and findings from a range of internationalcollaborations and studies. The author provides both asnapshot of global food supply and security today, and a projectionof where these issues may lead us in the future. This book willtherefore be of particular interest to food policy leaders,commercial managers in the food industry, and researchers andstudents seeking a better understanding of a rapidly evolvingtopic.

At the global level, international actors have repeatedly expressed their desire to end hunger and food insecurity. However, food insecurity has persisted. More analysis is hence needed on the link between continuously high levels of global food insecurity and the ever increasing flow of development aid. Global Food Security and Development Aid investigates the impact that development aid has had on food security in developing countries and includes international case studies on Peru, Ethiopia, India and Vietnam. It examines the effect of development aid in general and the impact of aid divided into different categories based on donor, mechanism and sector to which it is provided. In each examined relationship between aid and food security, particular attention is paid to the potentially intervening role played by the quality of national and/or local governance. The book makes policy recommendations, most importantly that donors should take greater care in considering which types of aid are suitable to which specific countries, localities, and development goals, and account for expected developments in the complex relationship between aid, food security, and governance. This book will be of considerable interest to students, researchers and policy-makers in the areas of development aid and food security.

Food security will exist when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (as stated in the Rome Declaration in 1996). Given the dimension of the current global food crisis, food security means adopting effective and specific actions at individual, household, national, regional and global levels. Food security invites us to reflect upon ethical principles like human equity, justice between current and future generations, respect for human dignity and sustainable food production. We strive to maintain our basic ethical convictions and engage in societal debates about other important values. While we do this, we may have to change our ways of life and learn to create new priorities in the face of global responsibility. Science and technology are key tools to reach the Millenium Goals, providing both society and decision makers alike with relevant information and new options within an ethical framework. The contributions found in this publication bring together the perspectives of a diverse group of authors. Coming from the academic world, the public sector and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), they provide the latest views on ‘Global food security: ethical and legal challenges’.

OMICs-based Techniques for Global Food Security Forward-thinking resource discussing how to integrate OMICs and novel genome editing technologies for sustainable crop production OMICS-based Techniques for Global Food Security provides an in-depth understanding of the mechanisms of OMICs techniques for crop improvement, details how OMICs techniques can contribute to identifying genes and traits with economic benefits, and explains how to develop crop plants with improved yield, quality, and resistance to stresses through genome editing technologies, providing evidence on the developments of climate resilient crops via applications of genome editing techniques throughout. The text covers the application of OMICs in crop plants, the integration of bioinformatics and multi-OMICs for precision breeding, de-novo domestication, CRISPR/Cas system for crop improvement, hybrid seed production, transgene free breeding, regulation for genome edit crops, bioinformatics and genome editing, and other topics related to OMICs and genome editing. The text also includes a chapter on global regulations for genome edited crops, and explains how these regulations influence novel plant breeding techniques in their adopted countries. Edited by two highly qualified academics, OMICs-based Techniques for Global Food Security covers topics such as: Crops genome sequencing and their application for crop improvement, and functional characterization of cereal genome The role of OMICs-based technologies in plant sciences and utilization of different multi-OMICs approaches for crop improvement Genomic database and genetic resource of cereals, speed breeding for rapid crop improvement, and evolution of genome editing technologies CRISPR system discovery, history, and future perspective, and CRISPR/Cas system for biotic and abiotic stress resistance in cereals Providing a collection of recent literature focusing on developments and applications of OMICs-based technologies for crop improvement, OMICs-based Techniques for Global Food Security is an important read for plant breeders, molecular biologists, researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and students in disciplines for developing crops with high yield and nutritional potential.

Soil-The Basis of All Terrestrial LifeAncient civilizations and cultures-Mayan, Aztec, Mesopotamian, Indus, and Yangtze-were built on good soils, surviving only as long as soils had the capacity to support them. In the twenty-first century, productive soil is still the engine of economic development and essential to human well-being. The quality of

The agriculture system is under pressure to increase production every year as global population expands and more people move from a diet mostly made up of grains, to one with more meat, dairy and processed foods. This book uses a decade of primary research to examine how weather and climate, as measured by variations in the growing season using satellite remote sensing, has affected agricultural production, food prices and access to food in food-insecure regions of the world. The author reviews environmental, economics and multidisciplinary research to describe the connection between global environmental change, changing weather conditions and local staple food price variability. The context of the analysis is the humanitarian aid community, using the guidance of the USAID Famine Early Warning Systems Network and the United Nation’s World Food Program in their response to food security crises. These organizations have worked over the past three decades to provide baseline information on food production through satellite remote sensing data and agricultural yield models, as well as assessments of food access through a food price database. These datasets are used to describe the connection, and to demonstrate the importance of these metrics in overall outcomes in food-insecure communities.