Food early warning systems can stave off famines (SciDev.Net)

As reliable sources of quality food diminish and record numbers of people are driven to hunger due to conflicts, climate change and economic downturns, feeding the global population of eight billion poses a major challenge that demands better food early warning information systems.

In the past decade, several global initiatives have been launched by regional and international organizations and even by individual countries to address food security challenges such as the UN Global Crisis Response Group, the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, Global Alliance for Food Security (GAFS) in the G7, the Global Food Security Summit, and the Global Food Security Forum held on the sidelines of the Group of Twenty (G20).