Food and food security

The increase in global food demand (the world population has increased fivefold over the last 100 years), as well as demand for a diversified offer in the field have created the context for the birth of the concept of food security. According to the World Food Summit in 1996, food security involves a system formed of four fundamental components: food availability, food access, utilization and, most importantly, stability (the simultaneous existence of the above-mentioned components and sustainability).[read more]

Starting from these four fundamental components, we have built four indicators (one main indicator and three secondary indicators) that capture the essence of this subfield. The main indicator is food production index, a composite indicator, that takes into account the main food crops (cereals, vegetables, fruits, seeds, etc.) used in staple diet, calculated at average consumption prices in the year of measurement. Because similarity in reporting was needed, we have chosen the base period 2004-2006 and 100 units value as global reference. Over the last 20 years, Romania has been close to the 100 units reference value, which indicates a high level of stability in ensuring food.

The first two secondary indicators are: total food exports and total food imports. While in 1991 Romania imported approximately 2 times more food and livestock products than it exported, in the last 20 years the balance has almost doubled (because of exponential growth of imports). The third secondary indicator, food deficit index, is measured in kcal per person/day and establishes the difference between the average dietary energy requirement and the average dietary energy consumption. We need to underline the fact that Romania does not report data to international data bases, but takes into consideration the international situation for this parameter.