Food Security and the Millennium Development Goal on Hunger in Asia

The MDG on hunger requires that the proportion of people suffering from hunger be halved between 1990 and 2015. Behind this apparently simple statement lies much complexity: the food intake required to remove hunger is generally recognised to differ between rural and urban areas; the problem is not only one of supply of food (and the composition of supply), but of the reliability of supply, and of access: despite the fact that food is produced in rural areas, food security in many countries is higher in urban areas where power to access is higher. There are also serious questions of food utilisation, whether, for instance, micronutrient intake is sufficient in quantity and balance to allow adequate absorption of available macronutrients.