식량위기: 어떻게 정의할 것인가?

Abstract

This study attempts to define food crisis on the basis of food market indicators such as food price and food production, or their combination. For this purpose, we propose three indices to apply the data of different countries for the period 1961~2009. They are named as, respectively, nonlinear trend deviation index, food supply shortage index, and food market index. Key findings are as follows. First, many countries have experienced food crises of diverse degrees during the sample period, but the years 1973 and/or 2008 saw most of the countries afflicted by a food crisis in unison. The countries and years identified by, among others, the food shortage index for having experienced a food crisis most closely coincide with the actual incidence of food crises as revealed in previous researches. Lastly, insofar as food crises may strike globally rather than locally in the future, well-coordinated international cooperation seems imperative to better cope with them.

This study attempts to define food crisis on the basis of food market indicators such as food price and food production, or their combination. For this purpose, we propose three indices to apply the data of different countries for the period 1961~2009. They are named as, respectively, nonlinear trend deviation index, food supply shortage index, and food market index. Key findings are as follows. First, many countries have experienced food crises of diverse degrees during the sample period, but the years 1973 and/or 2008 saw most of the countries afflicted by a food crisis in unison. The countries and years identified by, among others, the food shortage index for having experienced a food crisis most closely coincide with the actual incidence of food crises as revealed in previous researches. Lastly, insofar as food crises may strike globally rather than locally in the future, well-coordinated international cooperation seems imperative to better cope with them.