Agency and future food security

Begin with a local decision

Imagine a community discussing a food collection point. A supplier can report how many packages it provides, while users can explain whether the opening time, offered foods and carrying arrangements work for them. The discussion raises a question beyond supply totals: who can shape the arrangement?

The familiar four dimensions describe availability, access, utilization and stability. In its 2020 report, the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition proposed agency and sustainability as additional dimensions. This is a framework extension that highlights further questions, rather than evidence that every institution has adopted a replacement definition.

Explain agency in ordinary terms

Agency concerns the capacity of people and groups to make choices about food and participate in decisions affecting food systems. Choices can concern obtaining and eating food, as well as production, processing and distribution. A choice listed on a form may be difficult to exercise if the practical conditions are missing.

In the collection-point case, being invited to a meeting is not the same as being able to attend, speak or influence a decision. Relevant information, timing and ways to communicate can affect participation. The example identifies questions to investigate; it does not prescribe a legal governance arrangement or guarantee that all preferences can be met.

Follow what happens to feedback

Record which issue users raised, how it was considered and what decision followed. A reasoned explanation matters when an option cannot be adopted. Counting comments can show activity, but not whether people had meaningful influence or whether the change suited those who did not attend.

Suppose 12 households are invited, nine attend and six of the attendees speak. Attendance is 75% of invitations; speaking is about 66.7% of attendees, or 50% of all invited households. These figures describe different denominators. They do not measure an agency score, represent every household member or demonstrate equal influence.

Explain the future basis of food security

Sustainability asks whether food security can be maintained in ways that preserve the economic, social and environmental basis for future generations. A current supply increase can be useful while still creating a later constraint if its resource, financial or social requirements cannot be sustained.

The relevant boundary might include water, nutrients, energy, infrastructure, labour and affordability, as well as land and ecosystems. No single indicator answers all of these questions. A newer production process is not automatically more sustainable, and a traditional arrangement is not automatically secure; both need evidence about their actual inputs and outcomes.

Test a small resource account

Consider an invented storage reservoir supplying a production system. It begins with 100 m³ usable water;10 m³ enters and 20 m³ leaves during the period, with no other movement stipulated. Closing stock is 90 m³. The negative stock change identifies a drawdown under this boundary.

That one account cannot establish whether the withdrawal is sustainable. Later inflows, ecological needs, alternative users and water quality are unspecified. The diagram keeps the arithmetic separate from the longer-term judgement. Repeating a drawdown indefinitely without replenishment would contradict the finite-stock assumption, but a single period does not describe an entire watershed.

Combine questions without one score

The collection arrangement can improve participation and access while facing financial or environmental constraints. A water-saving process can have different energy or maintenance requirements. Describe these tradeoffs rather than adding unlike quantities into an unexplained score.

Use the extension to ask who makes decisions, who experiences the outcomes and what future conditions the arrangement depends on. Retain uncertainty and the people’s actual experience alongside measured quantities. Agency and sustainability complement immediate food-security questions; they do not replace the need for available, accessible and suitably used food today.

Worked examples

Check your understanding

1. Does an invitation or attendance count prove that users shaped a decision?

   Show answer and reasoning

   No.

   Practical participation and how feedback affects decisions need separate evidence.

2. Is an emerging production technology sustainable simply because it is new?

   Show answer and reasoning

   No.

   Its actual inputs, outcomes, boundaries and future requirements need assessment.

3. Does one water-stock account establish the sustainability of a whole food system?

   Show answer and reasoning

   No.

   Other periods, ecological/social conditions and resources remain outside that account.

Key ideas

• The HLPE extension adds questions about agency and the future basis of food security.
• Activity counts are not measures of meaningful influence.
• Resource accounts inform sustainability judgements while retaining their limits.