• The state of hunger in the world commanded the “feeding imperative” as opposed to devoting equal efforts and resources to building long term capacity to contribute to food security and self-reliance over time.
• Efficiency and productivity as understood in OECD tool kit formed the basis of the feeding drive.
• Environment protection, good governance, gender equality, community-based tools and solutions have been, until recently, alien to this thinking.
• Funding and aid have followed these pillars.

Only in the past year or two, a clear, revolutionary approach seems to take hold at various levels be it international financial institutions, donor countries, NGO’s and other global bodies.

The new approach builds on earlier assessments but recognizes new challenges and priorities. It is often formulated under the concept of “theory of change” by leading research centers and multilateral institutions. It may be summarized as follows:

• Hunger remains a major challenge to humanity
• Poverty deprives more than 3 billion people from a healthy diet and affects global health to billions of humans
• Agriculture is a main cause for global greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and biodiversity losses.
• In turn, climate change disrupts food system chains from production to procurement.

As a consequence, repurposing agriculture is emerging as a new priority in support of sustainability in food systems and calls for a paradigm shift in the sector.

Therefore, a novel approach to food security indexing would build on the following principles:

Groupe A: Agronomic Indicators:

• Introduce indicators directly linked to the very nature to agriculture ie the nature and quality of soil.
• Define and apply indicators linked to water as a resource both as a direct food component to humans relevant to the definition of food security and as a vital asset in the food production process which entail assessing and measuring quality, availability, usage protocols.
• Assess agricultural practices and cultivation techniques towards more sustainable farming.
• Develop indicators covering fertilizers and pest and disease managements both from a productivity and sustainability viewpoints.
• Integrate post production indicators such as storage, trading, barter and in-kind exchange systems.
• Develop measurement tools for crop diversification and its impact on economic returns, diet in self consumption configurations and soil/crop management.

Groupe B: Economic indicators:

• Introduce elements based on the reality of informal economy in appreciating and assessing access to food and availability.
• Assess the real impact of tariffs on local food production, diet, health and crop diversification.
• Review the real impact of currency fluctuations on affordability taking into account the informal sector.
• Assess the impact of immediate affordability of imported food produces and its impact on suitability, self-reliance and longer-term health, diet, food security, security consequences.
• Focus on geo-political realities in assessing national indicators: cross border transactions volumes escape central government data collection as they are informal and conditioned by tribe affinities and demographics.

Groupe C: Quality Indicators

• Level of awareness on national and sub-national self-reliance at production and processing levels
• Capacity to identify, formulate and implement food security vision and strategy
• Level of awareness on health, diet and nutrition.
• Capacity to deal and adapt to chocks and stresses (both inherent to the farming operation or external as in climate change induced disruptions)
• Food quality/Soil
• Availability of education and training in food security related contexts.

The pillars of a new Food security index may therefore be the following:

• 1) Availability/Access
• 2) Quality/Value: Nutrition, diet and health
• 3) Affordability: Price structure, real economic value (informal, barter, in kind-payment, etc.) SME investments program and structure, Local vs Export strategy
• 4) Agri-scientific indicators (types of crop, soil, irrigation, quality of seeds and access to genetic innovations, technology transfer and up to date knowledge and training facilities.
• 5) Reliability, sustainability and resilience
• 6) Food system awareness; research, education, public opinion and advocacy

Moreover, instead of being an annual exercise, the new Index should be dynamic in nature reflecting on a continuous basis changes and movements. A natural disaster and/or sudden disruptions should be reflected immediately in the Index, thus offering accurate data and basis for policy and support needs.