Integrating Food Security Information in National Statistical Systems

Abstract

FAO has a global mandate to monitor progress made towards achieving the targets on hunger set by the MDG in 2000 and the WFS in 1996. It tracks this progress by providing regular estimates of the proportion and number of people whose daily dietary energy consumption (DEC) is less than the minimum daily dietary energy requirement (MDER). The methodology for estimating hunger, or the prevalence of undernourishment indicator, is a parametric approach based on the distribution of DEC. It uses agricultural and food data derived from several sources such as trade, crop surveys, national household income and expenditure surveys, etc. Global hunger estimates are based on food security indicators from each of the following three main pillars of food security: food availability, food access and food utilization. Those indicators are, respectively: the average dietary energy available for human consumption; the inequality measure of food access, which is the coefficient of variation (CV) of DEC; and a measure of food utilization, which is the MDER. Country hunger estimates use production and trade data provided by national institutions, as well as food consumption data from NHS, to derive those three food security indicators.