**2. Global food security challenges**

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) projected that the agri-food sector would need to generate 50 percent more food by 2050 in order to meet the demand requirements, thereby making food security to be a global serious threat to millions of households in developing countries [17]. In the FAO's 2019 Summit on Food Security and Nutrition in the world, several levels of food insecurity were identified: moderate food insecurity and severe food insecurity. Moderate food insecurity occurs when people face uncertainties about their ability to obtain food and thereby forced to reduce, at times during the year, the quantity and/or quality of food they consume due to lack of money or other resources. Severe food insecurity, on the other hand, affects a community or a nation when people have likely run

#### *Oil Palm (*Elaeis guineensis*) Cultivation and Food Security in the Tropical World DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98486*

out of food, experienced hunger and, at the most extreme, gone for days without eating, putting their health and wellbeing at serious risk.

Despite significant progress in recent decades by most countries in the oil palm producing countries of the tropics, hunger and nutritional deficiencies still constitute serious challenges in farm households. Indonesia, the leading oil palm growing country in the world, which was once self-sufficient in rice and sugar failed to keep up with demand in the face of rising population and there are doubts about the future stability in the country's food system. This could be linked to the farm decisions of most oil palm farmers. Plantation farmers, for example, hardly cultivate food crops for their own consumption [5, 18]. Most plantation farmers heavily depend on agricultural cash income to purchase adequately diverse foods from such imperfect markets [18, 19], which consequently makes them vulnerable to substantial income and price shocks. Moreover, cultivating perennial and non-food commercial crops—that do not directly add to household dietary diversity through own consumption, are claimed to compete for resources (e.g., land) with other food crops that in turn negatively affects food availability and increase food prices [20]. This has significant implications in terms of food and nutrition security. According to the 2015 Global Hunger Index (GHI), Indonesia reduced its GHI score by about 25% and the rate was found to be higher in other oil palm growing nations like Thailand and Vietnam [21]. As a result, many of the nations have to resort to reliance on foreign imports to meet demand for key food products to ensure some level of food security. Concerning nutritional deficiencies, about 40% of the Indonesian population is affected by under-nutrition and micronutrient malnutrition, and majority of the affected group are farm households [22, 23]. It is not unlikely that similar situations may be prevalent in other oil palm growing regions of the tropical world.

For instance, [12] observed that the Jambi Province on the island of Sumatra, like other rural areas in South East Asia, has high levels of underweight and stunted children, poor household dietary diversity and pervasive micronutrient deficiency. The diets of farm households in the tropics in general are highly vulnerable to food prices and income shocks, most times due to global drop in prices of oil palm and rubber [24].

Food insecurity has grave consequences on people and the economy. Food insecurity could lead to stunting in children which is a significant health challenge. Between 2005 and 2015, the rate of stunting in children under the age of five in Indonesia increased from 28.6% to 36.4% According to the World Bank, children that experience stunting in their early development are less likely to graduate high school and are expected to earn ten percent less during their lifetime than their food secure peers.

In the Buvuma area of Uganda in East Africa food insecurity has been reported to be high. Poverty in the area made some farmers to sell their land cheaply to large oil palm companies. When they spent the money, several residents resorted to stealing food [25].
