Food Security Over the Last

Food Security

Over the last several years, the issue of food security has been increasingly brought to the forefront. Part of the reason for this, is because there has been major declines in fish production. To balance out this shortfall, farmers have been increasing their crop yields to ensure that major population centers have more than enough supplies. However, despite this upsurge, the underlying demand is continuing to rise exponentially. This is putting pressure on food supplies in some of the fastest growing regions of the world. For Asian countries, this is challenging as they have to balance out population growth. While at the same time, it is ensuring that there are enough resources to prevent any kind of shortages. To fully understand how this is happening requires looking at steps that are being taken on the local level to address these issues. Once this occurs, it will offer specific insights about how developing countries are dealing with this issue and the viewpoints of residents surrounding the current situation. This is the point that we will be able to see how countries are dealing with food security from a globalized perspective. ("Addressing Food Security," 2011)

The biggest problem that Asia is dealing with is that the region is growing so fast. That they do not have enough natural resources, to keep up with the demands of a growing economy and ensure the sustainability of the food supply. This is because there is a conflict that is occurring between many countries and localized regions for water. The reason why, is this natural resource can be utilized for: producing electricity, farming, transportation, fishing and for drinking. The combination of these factors means that there is a conflict about how these resources are being used. This is the point that competition will increase between the different factions for who will have access to the water. ("Water and Food Security," 2011)

A good example of this can be seen in 2009 with the Save the Mekong petition. What happened was citizens groups throughout Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam collected 11 thousand signatures. This prevented the construction of a dam on the river that was going to be used to produce hydroelectricity. This is significant because it is showing how there is tremendous amounts of competition over the natural resources. Once this occurs, it means that sustainable food supplies become more difficult to obtain, which will result in food security issues. ("Water and Food Security," 2011)