Global Food Security Index

Food security is defined as the state in which people at all times have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs for a healthy and active life. Using this definition adapted from the 1996 World Food Summit, the Global Food Security Index considers the core issues of affordability, availability, and quality across a set of 105 countries. The index is a dynamic quantitative and qualitative scoring model, constructed from 25 unique indicators, that measures these drivers of food security across both developing and developed countries. The overall goal of the study is to assess which countries are most and least vulnerable to food insecurity through the categories of Affordability, Availability, and Quality and Safety.

While food security research is the subject of many organizations worldwide, this effort is distinct for a number of reasons. This index is the first to examine food security comprehensively across the three internationally established dimensions. Moreover, the study looks beyond hunger to the underlying factors affecting food insecurity. To increase the ongoing relevance of the study, the index will employ a quarterly adjustment factor for food price fluctuations to examine the risk countries face throughout the course of the year. Lastly, the EIU has created a number of unique qualitative indicators, many of which relate to government policy, to capture drivers of food security which are not currently measured in any international dataset.