Global Food Security

Global Food Security: What Matters? is a timely textbook on a topic that remains of utmost importance. University students and scholars gain tools and knowledge toward an understanding of how food security and food systems are related, with essential country case studies that are truly global in scope. - Dr Shenggen Fan, Director General, IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute), Washington, USA Zhang-Yue Zhou's Global Food Security: What Matters? is an amazingly complete and comprehensive reference text book on the subject of food security in the world today. It covers every aspect and dimension of the subject from history, concepts and experience to challenges, policy and institutions in an easy-to-understand way. What makes the book outstanding is also the clear conceptual presentation of policy choices and their consequences and impacts, with numerous real-country examples from across the world. I very strongly recommend this book as a complete international text and reference book on food security, as well as the related food policies and economics. Vasant P. Gandhi, PhD (Stanford), NABARD Chair Professor, Centre for Management in Agriculture, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India The issue of secure food supply across the world is often presented and explained in parts. The author has done an immense service by tackling the issue of global food security in a whole system, multi-disciplinary way, taking careful note of all the dimensions and influences involved in determining the access to daily food, or lack of it, of people all around the world. Solutions to parts are not solutions to wholes: this multi-dimensional problem of food security can only be understood, explained and solved using the comprehensive perspective presented in this extremely useful work. Global Food Security: What Matters? is a masterly primer with a whole-of-system, global perspective. A comprehensive work providing readers with a useful and useable understanding of the detail and principles - all that matters - about the scientific, economic and institutional factors that determine the current state and future of world food supply and demand. This succinct, well written book leads readers through the meaning, detail, determinants and solutions to problems of the current state of global food security. Readers are introduced, almost by stealth, to understanding the key economic principles at play. The importance of institutions and politics to causing problems of food security, and solving them, is prominent, while detailed carefully chosen case studies make the book an invaluable pedagogical source. - Dr Bill Malcolm, Associate Professor, Department of Agriculture and Food Systems, University of Melbourne, Australia Food security is a hot topic at public policy debates in many countries due to its importance in national security, agricultural and rural development, general welfare of the population, poverty alleviation, and more. As such, it has stimulated interest across different population groups. This book certainly meets the needs of a large audience, especially that of non-professionals. It provides a comprehensive and quite complete review of the evolution of the concept of food security, a set of widely accepted measurements of food security, a detailed comparative analysis of the status of food security across the globe, as well as major reasons behind the disparity of food security among nations and regions. The contents of the book will help readers understand fundamental information regarding food security, and the book also provides very useful information for those who are interested in further study in the field. - Dr Funing Zhong, Distinguished Professor, College of Economics and Management, Nanjing Agricultural University, China