Food and Nutrition Security in Odisha: A Case Study of Three Villages of KBK Region

Abstract

Despite steady economic growth and development in many parts of the world, a significant proportion of the global population continues to suffer from food insecurity and malnutrition (World Bank, 2009). The United Nation‟s MDG-1 recognizes that hunger and food insecurity are the core afflictions to the poor people, and specifically sets out to halve the proportion of extremely poor and hungry people across the globe by 2023. Although the situation has improved since the 1990s, the rate of improvement remains far short of that required to attain these targets (FAO, 2016). Nonetheless, over the past 10 years, the proportion of undernourished people in the developing countries fell to 17 percent, because the total population grew faster than the undernourished portion. There is increasing evidence that the number of people who remain vulnerable to food insecurity is considerably higher (FAO, 2019). The FAO (2017) estimated that there are 821 million people undernourished and facing chronic food deprivation in the globe and also calculated that more than one in every ten people is facing under nutrition in the world. The above report also mentioned that about 13 to 18 million people die from hunger due to unequal food distribution every year throughout the world (UN, 2020).