Exploring global food security pattern from the perspective of spatio-temporal evolution

doi:10.1007/s11442-020-1722-y

Abstract

Abstract:

Food security is the primary prerequisite for achieving other Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Given that the MDG of “halving the proportion of hungers by 2015” was not realized as scheduled, it will be more pressing and challenging to reach the goal of zero hunger by 2030. So there is high urgency to find the pattern and mechanism of global food security from the perspective of spatio-temporal evolution. In this paper, based on the analysis of database by using a multi-index evaluation method and radar map area model, the global food security level for 172 countries from 2000 to 2014 were assessed; and then spatial autocorrelation analysis was conducted to depict the spatial patterns and changing characteristics of global food security; then, multi-nonlinear regression methods were employed to identify the factors affecting the food security patterns. The results show: 1) The global food security pattern can be summarized as “high-high aggregation, low-low aggregation”. The most secure countries are mainly distributed in Western Europe, North America, Oceania and parts of East Asia. The least secure countries are mainly distributed in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and West Asia, and parts of Southeast Asia. 2) Europe and sub-Saharan Africa are hot and cold spots of the global food security pattern respectively, while in non-aggregation areas, Haiti, North Korea, Tajikistan and Afghanistan have long-historical food insecurity problems. 3) The pattern of global food security is generally stable, but the internal fluctuations in the extremely insecure groups were significant. The countries with the highest food insecurity are also the countries with the most fluctuated levels of food security. 4) The annual average temperature, per capita GDP, proportion of people accessible to clean water, political stability and non-violence levels are the main factors influencing the global food security pattern. Research shows that the status of global food security has improved since the year 2000, yet there are still many challenges such as unstable global food security and acute regional food security issues. It will be difficult to understand these differences from a single factor, especially the annual average temperature and annual precipitation. The abnormal performance of the above factors indicates that appropriate natural conditions alone do not absolutely guarantee food security,while the levels of agricultural development, the purchasing power of residents, regional accessibility, as well as political and economic stability have more direct influence.

Key words: food security assessment, spatial pattern, changing characteristics, multi-nonlinear regression, influencing factors

CAI Jianming, MA Enpu, LIN Jing, LIAO Liuwen, HAN Yan. Exploring global food security pattern from the perspective of spatio-temporal evolution[J].Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2020, 30(2): 179-196.

Figures/Tables 10

Table 1

Table 2

The selection of influencing factors of food security and data sources"

Influencing factors	Methods and data	Data resource websites
Z₁: per capita arable land area (ha/person)	Z₁ = arable land area/total population	http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/
Z₂: per capita renewable water resources (m³/person)	Z₂ = renewable water resources/total population	renewable water resource：http://chartsbin.com/view/1469;population：http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/
Z₃: annual precipitation (mm)	Z₃: provided by the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia	https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/hrg/cru_ts_3.23/crucy.1506241137.v3.23/countries/pre/
Z₄: annual average temperature (℃)	Z₄: provided by the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia	https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/hrg/cru_ts_3.23/crucy.1506241137.v3.23/countries/tmp/
Z₅: coordination degree of land and water	Z₅ = renewable water/arable land area	renewable water resource：http://chartsbin.com/view/1469;arable land area：http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/
Z₆: chemical fertilizer applied per unit land area (kg/ha)	Z₆ = applied chemical fertilizers/arable land area	http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/
Z₇: CO₂ emissions (kt)	Z₇: from the National Greenhouse Gas Emission Dataset of the World Resources Institute. This dataset is a combination of data from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, FAO, International Energy Agency, World Bank, and Environmental Protection Agency.	http://datasets.wri.org/dataset/cait-country
Z₈: per capita GDP (dollar value in 2011)	Z₈ = GDP (dollar value in 2011)/total population	http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/
Z₉: the proportion of the population with access to clean water (%)	Z₉ = population with access to clean water/total population	http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/
Z₁₀: political stability and non-violence level	Z_10:World Governance Indicators Developed by the World Bank	https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/dataset/worldwide-governance-indicators

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Overall index	First layer factors	Second layer indicators	+/- influence	Measurement methods
Food security index	Food supply	X₁: per capita food production (kg/person)	+⁽¹⁾	X₁ = total grain production/total population
		X₂: per capita protein supply (g/person*day)	+	X₂ = supply of food protein/total population * days of the year
		X₃: per capita animal protein supply (g/person*day)	+	X₃ = animal protein supply/total population * days of the year
		X₄: rate of dietary energy supply (%)	+	X₄ = population with daily dietary energy greater than 2320 kcal⁽²⁾/total population
	Food access	X₅: food deficiency (kcal/person/day)	-	X₅ = 2320 - daily per capita dietary energy taken by malnourished populations
	Food access	X₆: per capita GDP (2011- dollar value)	+	X₆ = gross domestic product converted by purchasing power parity/total population
	Food utilization	X₇: the proportion of short children under 5 (%)	-	X₇ = number of short children under 5/number of children under 5
		X₈: the proportion of wasted children under 5 (%)	-	X₈ = number of wasted children under 5/number of children under 5
		X₉: proportion of population with access to clean water ( % )	+	X₉ = population with clean water/total population
	Economic and political stability	X₁₀: variability in food production per capita	-	X₁₀ = standard deviation of per capita food production/average of per capita food production
		X₁₁: variability of food supply per capita(kcal/person/day)	-	X₁₁ = standard deviation of per capita food supply
		X₁₂: political stability and non-violence level	+	X₁₂: World Governance Indicators Developed by the World Bank (WGI)⁽³⁾

First layer indicators	Food supply				Food accessibility		Food utilization			Stability of the economic and political system
Second layer variables	X₁	X₂	X₃	X₄	X₅	X₆	X₇	X₈	X₉	X₁₀	X₁₁	X₁₂
Weight	0.21	0.28	0.33	0.18	0.51	0.49	0.39	0.31	0.3	0.27	0.31	0.42

Year	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Moran's I	0.22	0.22	0.22	0.23	0.24	0.25	0.28	0.27	0.28	0.26	0.29	0.25	0.27	0.24	0.27
z-score	14.00	13.84	13.71	14.40	15.14	15.39	17.12	16.51	17.69	16.44	18.27	15.44	16.68	15.04	17.04
P-score	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

Year	Multi-linear regression equations	R²	F
2002	FSI=0.26-0.14Z₄+0.60Z₈+0.42Z₉+0.39Z₁₀	0.78	114.45
2003	FSI=0.22-0.19Z₄+0.61Z₈+0.49Z₉+0.37Z₁₀	0.79	118.01
2004	FSI=0.19-0.19Z₄+0.56Z₈+0.52Z₉+0.39Z₁₀	0.78	110.60
2005	FSI=0.06-0.17Z₄+0.51Z₈+0.62Z₉+0.43Z₁₀	0.79	117.77
2006	FSI=0.31+0.14Z₃-0.32Z₄+0.71Z₈+0.43Z₉+0.33Z₁₀	0.83	124.08
2007	FSI=0.20-0.17Z₄-0.36Z₆+0.70Z₈+0.55Z₉+0.34Z₁₀	0.83	121.30
2008	FSI=0.32-0.24Z₄+0.68Z₈+0.47Z₉+0.28Z₁₀	0.82	147.35
2009	FSI=0.31+0.11Z₃-0.24Z₄-0.18Z₆+0.76Z₈+0.44Z₉+0.28Z₁₀	0.83	102.51
2010	FSI=0.26-0.16Z₄-0.45Z₆+0.86Z₈+0.48Z₉+0.24Z₁₀	0.83	124.83
2011	FSI=0.009-0.10Z₄-0.64Z₆+0.82Z₈+0.61Z₉+0.36Z₁₀	0.86	153.29
2012	FSI=0.23-0.10Z₄-0.59Z₆+0.83Z₈+0.40Z₉+0.31Z₁₀	0.86	152.71
2013	FSI=0.28-0.10Z₄+0.35Z₈+0.31Z₉+0.25Z₁₀	0.69	70.32
2014	FSI=0.25-0.12Z₄+0.39Z₈+0.36Z₉+0.28Z₁₀	0.72	80.87

Year	Transformation equations	R²	F
2002	FSI=-0.24+0.09T₄+0.57T₈+0.30T₉+0.29T₁₀	0.83	160.09
2003	FSI=-0.23+0.10T₄+0.55T₈+0.35T₉+0.30T₁₀	0.83	157.89
2004	FSI=-0.28+0.11T₄+0.54T₈+0.37T₉+0.29T₁₀	0.82	141.20
2005	FSI=-0.23+0.06T₄+0.47T₈+0.42T₉+0.33T₁₀	0.82	146.46
2006	FSI=-0.23-0.04T₃+0.16T₄+0.56T₈+0.34T₉+0.25T₁₀	0.88	185.76
2007	FSI=-0.22+0.14T₄-0.03T₆+0.53T₈+0.37T₉+0.28T₁₀	0.84	129.99
2008	FSI=0.20T₄+0.64T₈-0.03T₉+0.28T₁₀	0.85	186.05
2009	FSI=-0.31+0.04T₃+0.16T₄-0.02T₆+0.59T₈+0.28T₉+0.30T₁₀	0.86	128.65
2010	FSI=-0.29+0.15T₄+0.04T₆+0.60T₈+0.30T₉+0.23T₁₀	0.86	160.09
2011	FSI=-0.22+0.08T₄-0.06T₆+0.55T₈+0.35T₉+0.34T₁₀	0.85	147.59
2012	FSI=-0.24+0.10T₄-0.001T₆+0.60T₈+0.26T₉+0.33T₁₀	0.87	162.64
2013	FSI=-0.23+0.10T₄+0.37T₈+0.46T₉+0.39T₁₀	0.72	81.11
2014	FSI=-0.24+0.09T₄+0.52T₈+0.34T₉+0.37T₁₀	0.77	106.88