Vocabulary


Famine is widespread and severe food insecurity, which particularly affects the elderly and children.
Food is any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink, or that plants absorb, in order to maintain life and growth.
Global is of or relating to the whole world; worldwide.
Local is belonging or relating to a particular area or neighbourhood, typically exclusively so. 
Production is the action of making or manufacturing from components or raw materials, or the process of being so manufactured. 
Requirement is the need for a particular purpose.
Security is the state of being free from danger or threat.
Subsistence Farming is farming that yields only enough to feed the farmer and his or her family, usually occurring on small plots of land and does not produce enough food to sell in the marketplace.

Purpose - 
Food Security

Picture
A food secure community is one where there is sufficient nutritious food for everyone. In this sub-unit, children identify what is meant by food security, and determine the degree to which their community is food secure by identifying how much food is produced locally and far food has to travel to get to them.
Child Asks: How food secure is my community?
Children's Rights Education: Enables the child to identify the level of food security in one's community.
Child Answers: A food secure community is one where there is sufficient nutritious food for everyone. 

Classroom Learning Activities

1. Food Security - What is this?
Food security means that everyone in the community has enough good, healthy, safe and culturally appropriate food to eat every day. For a nation, this means:
  1. How much food is in the country to feed everyone
  2. How much farmers harvest each year
  3. How much we import
  4. How much we export
  5. Whether the nation gets food aid
For a community or household, it is about how the family gets its hands on the food that is available. It depends on:
  1. Where we live
  2. Whether we have enough money to buy food
  3. What foods we choose to buy
When people in a home are well nourished and live without hunger or the fear of hunger, their home is regarded as food secure.

When identifying what is meant by food security, view the movies to the right and have the children answer the following questions:
  1. Do these people have enough nourishing food to eat every day? Explain your answer.
  2. What is the reason these people are not food secure?
  3. What solutions are being offered to ensure food security for these people (if any)?

Please Note: The World Food Programme has several of these short movies on their website and on Youtube. However, it is advisable that you preview them as some have disturbing images of malnourished children.
How food secure are these people?
World Food Programme
2. Food Travel Log - How far does your food travel?
It is estimated that the average American meal travels about 1500 miles to get from farm to plate. Why is this cause for concern? There are many reasons:
  • This long-distance, large-scale transportation of food consumes large quantities of fossil fuels. It is estimated that we currently put almost 10 kcal of fossil fuel energy into our food system for every 1 kcal of energy we get as food.
  • Transporting food over long distances also generates great quantities of carbon dioxide emissions. Some forms of transport are more polluting than others. Airfreight generates 50 times more CO2 than sea shipping. But sea shipping is slow, and in our increasing demand for fresh food, food is increasingly being shipped by faster - and more polluting -- means.
  • In order to transport food long distances, much of it is picked while still unripe and then gassed to "ripen" it after transport, or it is highly processed in factories using preservatives, irradiation, and other means to keep it stable for transport and sale. Scientists are experimenting with genetic modification to produce longer-lasting, less perishable produce.
Retrieved from 500 ECO
A really fun activity to do with children is the Food Travel Log. 
  1. Ask each child to record what they eat over a 24 hour period. If it is food with several ingredients, ask them to write down each ingredient in the food they ate. 
  2. After collecting this data, have the children work together to determine which countries the food was produced in.
  3. Then they calculate the distance in Km or Miles this food has travelled. It is best to use Google Maps for this.
  4. Once they have this data, they total up the data from the whole class.
They might be surprised with what they find out!


A great resource for this activity is: How Far Did It Travel?
Retrieved from 500 ECO

Relevant Convention Articles

Article 6
1. States Parties recognize that every child has the inherent right to life.
2. States Parties shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child.
Article 24
1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health and to facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health. States Parties shall strive to ensure that no child is deprived of his or her right of access to such health care services.
2. States Parties shall pursue full implementation of this right and, in particular, shall take appropriate measures:
(a) To diminish infant and child mortality;
(b) To ensure the provision of necessary medical assistance and health care to all children with emphasis on the development of primary health care;
(c) To combat disease and malnutrition, including within the framework of primary health care, through, inter alia, the application of readily available technology and through the provision of adequate nutritious foods and clean drinking-water, taking into consideration the dangers and risks of environmental pollution;
(d) To ensure appropriate pre-natal and post-natal health care for mothers;
(e) To ensure that all segments of society, in particular parents and children, are informed, have access to education and are supported in the use of basic knowledge of child health and nutrition, the advantages of breastfeeding, hygiene and environmental sanitation and the prevention of accidents;
(f) To develop preventive health care, guidance for parents and family planning education and services.
3. States Parties shall take all effective and appropriate measures with a view to abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children.
4. States Parties undertake to promote and encourage international co-operation with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the right recognized in the present article. In this regard, particular account shall be taken of the needs of developing countries.

Online Resources and References

CitizenKid Central - Learn: Food Security
Cuesa - Cultivating a Healthy Food System
Food Hub - Food Miles
Take Part - Food, Inc.
Leopold Center Marketing - How far do does your food travel?
Oklahoma 4H - How Far did it Travel?
Plan - Planned Lifetime Advocacy Network
World Food Programme