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The art of balancing food security: securing availability and affordability of food in Tanzania

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Abstract

Monitoring of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) indicates that a large number of countries are not on track to reach the hunger targets set out in Goal 1 (MDG1, Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger by 2015). The purpose of this paper is to assess the appropriateness of three underlying factors identified by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), misguided policies, failing markets and weak institutions, in explaining food insecurity in Tanzania. Our analysis basically supports UNDP’s emphasis on the importance of policy, institutions and market access when seeking to improve food security and reach MDG1, but underlining the importance of empowering people to hold the Government accountable for failing to deliver on their policies and plans. The main finding is that the Tanzanian Government is struggling with the difficulty of addressing the twin goals of balancing national food availability with affordable food prices for urban and rural consumers.

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Notes

  1. It should be noted that there might be some shortcomings regarding the quality of the data on which the statistics are based (URT/MFEA 2011a; Pauw and Thurlow 2011)

  2. 1 TSh = 0.000625 US$

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We declare that we have no conflict of interest in relation to this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric), Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB), P.O. Box 5003, 1432, Ås, Norway

    Ruth Haug

  2. Department of Agriculture Economics & Agribusiness, Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), P.O. Box 3007, Morogoro, Tanzania

    Joseph Hella

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  1. Ruth Haug
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  2. Joseph Hella
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Correspondence to Ruth Haug.

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Haug, R., Hella, J. The art of balancing food security: securing availability and affordability of food in Tanzania. Food Sec. 5, 415–426 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-013-0266-8

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