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A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Global Health".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (29 February 2020) | Viewed by 24172

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Dr. Ganesh C. Bora

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Guest Editor

Deparment of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA
Interests: food security and safety; bio-imaging; digital agriculture; big data; climate change

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

It is important to have sustainable access to nutritious and affordable food throughout the world. Agriculture is the prime source of food, but complicated biological, environmental, cultural, political, and financial factors influence agricultural production. All these factors must be considered in making plans to feed the ever-increasing 7.7 billion people on the earth. Therefore, agriculture must be promoted as a sustainable practice to address ‘Global Food Security’ and provide nutritious food, especially in the developing world. Precision Agricultural Technology (PAT), which optimizes input resources to increase crop productivity, should be implemented by local farmers, adapting it to local situations. PAT will not only aid to increase food production but also have a great impact on the environment, as it will reduce the use of fertilizers and chemicals without a negative impact on crop yield. It is also paramount to decrease post-harvest losses as well as food waste to maintain a food reserve.

This Special Issue is looking forward to publishing scholastic manuscripts, review papers, and technical notes in the field, regarding, but not limited to, technology, policy, science, social factors of global food security, and reduction of environmental degradation.

Assoc. Prof. Ganesh C. Bora
Guest Editor

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Keywords

Food availability and nutrition
Digital agriculture for food production
Value-added food processing and utilization
Post-harvest loss
Precision agriculture and mechanization
Capacity building for food system stability
Sustainable food supply chain
Water management and food availability
Public health
Quality of life
Environmental impact

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 6502 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Reclamation of Cultivated Land Reserves in Northeast China: Indigenous Ecological Insecurity Underlying National Food Security

by Wenbo Li, Dongyan Wang, Shuhan Liu, Yuanli Zhu and Zhuoran Yan

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17(4), 1211; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17041211 - 13 Feb 2020

Cited by 21 | Viewed by 4137

Abstract

The competition for land resources created by the need for food security and ecological security is intensifying globally. To resolve the issue of land scarcity in agriculture following rapid urbanization, China implemented its requisition–compensation balance policy of cultivated lands in 1997, the introduction of which consumed numerous areas of land, such as river shoal and bare land, through reclamation. Moreover, these reclaimed and newly cultivated lands were mainly distributed in the northern part of China. Most previous studies of this subject have only examined the overall balance of cultivated lands in well-developed regions, and there is a lack of knowledge about the indigenous gains and losses before and after reclamation in important areas such as northeast China. Therefore, this study selected two representative county-level units in northeast China as the study area to analyze the conversion of cultivated land reserves during 1996–2015, evaluate the performance of reclaimed cultivated lands in terms of quality and productivity and calculate reclamation-induced changes in ecosystem service value. The results indicated that by 2015 only 16.02% of the original cultivated land reserves remained unconverted; nearly 60% were reclaimed as cultivated lands and over 20% were converted to other land resources. River shoal and ruderal land were the primary resources for cultivated lands compensation, and marsh, bare land and saline-alkaline land were found to be converted the most thoroughly. The gain of 23018.55 ha reclaimed cultivated lands were of relatively inferior quality and lower productivity, contributing approximately 4.32% of total grain output. However, this modest gain was at the expense of a 768.03 million yuan ecosystem services loss, with regulating services and supporting services being undermined the most. We argue that even if northeast China continues to shoulder the responsibility of compensating for a majority of cultivated land losses, it still needs to carefully process reclamation and introduce practical measures to protect indigenous ecosystems, in order to better serve the local residents and ensure prolonged food security with sustainability. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Food Security)

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16 pages, 1198 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Factors Associated with Seasonal Food Insecurity among Small-Scale Subsistence Farming Households in Rural Honduras

by Warren Dodd, Marvin Gómez Cerna, Paola Orellena, Sally Humphries, Margaux L. Sadoine, David Zombré, Kate Zinszer, Amy Kipp and Donald C. Cole

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17(3), 706; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17030706 - 22 Jan 2020

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 5152

Abstract

In the context of climate change, a nutritional transition, and increased pressures to migrate internally and internationally, this study examined the relationship between seasonal food insecurity and demographic, socioeconomic, and agricultural production factors among small-scale subsistence farmers in rural northern Honduras. Anchored by a partnership with the Fundación para la Investigación Participativa con Agricultores de Honduras (FIPAH) and the Yorito Municipal Health Centre, a cross-sectional household survey was administered in Yorito, Honduras, in July 2014. The study population included 1263 individuals from 248 households across 22 rural communities. A multivariate mixed effects negative binomial regression model was built to investigate the relationship between the self-reported number of months without food availability and access from subsistence agriculture in the previous year (August 2013–July 2014) and demographic, socioeconomic, and agricultural production variables. This study found a lengthier ‘lean season’ among surveyed household than previously documented in Honduras. Overall, 62.2% (95% confidence interval (CI): [59.52, 64.87]) of individuals experienced at least four months of insufficient food in the previous year. Individuals from poorer and larger households were more likely to experience insufficient food compared to individuals from wealthier and smaller households. Additionally, individuals from households that produced both maize and beans were less likely to have insufficient food compared to individuals from households that did not grow these staple crops (prevalence ratio (PR) = 0.83; 95% CI: [0.69, 0.99]). Receiving remittances from a migrant family member did not significantly reduce the prevalence of having insufficient food. As unpredictable crop yields linked to climate change and extreme weather events are projected to negatively influence the food security and nutrition outcomes of rural populations, it is important to understand how demographic, socioeconomic, and agricultural production factors may modify the ability of individuals and households engaged in small-scale subsistence agriculture to respond to adverse shocks. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Food Security)

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19 pages, 1673 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Exploring a Moderate Fallow Scale of Cultivated Land in China from the Perspective of Food Security

by Dan Lu, Yahui Wang, Qingyuan Yang, Huiyan He and Kangchuan Su

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16(22), 4329; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16224329 - 6 Nov 2019

Cited by 20 | Viewed by 2663

Abstract

Food security remains a primary concern because of the large population and scarce land resources in China, and it is a core task to determine the appropriate proportion and scale of fallowing for fallow systems. The aim of this study was to systematically estimate the grain production potential (GPP) of existing and unexcavated cultivated land due to land use change from 1990 to 2017 and calculate the theoretical fallowing scale by using a population carrying capacity model. The reserved GPP from cultivated land to be excavated was 7470 × 10⁴ t in China, and the GPP stored by the change in grain yield per unit, multiple crop index (MCI) decline, and agricultural structure adjustment were 921 × 10⁴ t, 4321 × 10⁴ t, and 7760 × 10⁴ t, respectively, and the lost GPP caused by construction land expansion was 5287 × 10⁴ t. The population carrying capacity of cultivated land in China was estimated to be 1.469 to 1.515 billion in 2017 on the basis of the national average living standard. The proportion of the population that could be fed more was between 6.28% and 9.54% depending on the number of people included, which provided an opportunity to implement the fallowing system in China. Meanwhile the proportions of the theoretical fallow scale were 6.28% and 9.54%, and the fallow scale ranged from 850 × 10⁴ hm² to 1296 × 10⁴ hm² under the premise of fully tapping the potential of cultivated land. In addition, taking the decline in MCI as an example, the grain yield reduction was equivalent to the grain yield of 829 × 10⁴ hm² of newly reclaimed cultivated land over the past 30 years, which saved 621.48 billion yuan. The costs and benefits when formulating relevant policies of land utilization should be considered, and exploiting the productive capacity of cultivated land that exists is better than reclaiming new cultivated land. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Food Security)

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19 pages, 811 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Association of Internet Use with Attitudes Toward Food Safety in China: A Cross-Sectional Study

by Jiaping Zhang, Zhiyong Cai, Mingwang Cheng, Huirong Zhang, Heng Zhang and Zhongkun Zhu

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16(21), 4162; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16214162 - 28 Oct 2019

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3622

Abstract

A growing body of research has shown that people’s attitudes toward food safety is affected by their availability and accessibility to food risk information. In the digital era, the Internet has become the most important channel for information acquisition. However, empirical evidence related to the impact of Internet use on people’s attitudes towards food safety is inadequate. In this study, by employing the Chinese Social Survey for 2013 and 2015, we have investigated the current situation of food safety perceptions and evaluations among Chinese residents and the association between Internet use and individuals’ food safety evaluations. Empirical results indicate that there is a significant negative correlation between Internet use and people’s food safety evaluation in China. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis shows that Internet use has a stronger negative correlation with food safety evaluation for those lacking rational judgment regarding Internet information. Specifically, the negative correlation between Internet use and food safety evaluations is more obvious among rural residents, young people, and less educated residents. Finally, propensity score matching (PSM) is applied to conduct a robustness check. This paper provides new evidence for studies on the relationship between Internet use and an individuals’ food safety cognition, as well as additional policy enlightenment for food safety risk management in the digital age. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Food Security)

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21 pages, 1012 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Linguistic Hierarchy Model with Self-Confidence Preference Relations and Its Application in Co-Regulation of Food Safety in China

by Sha Fan, Hengjie Zhang and Huali Tang

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16(16), 2918; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16162918 - 14 Aug 2019

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2333

Abstract

Linguistic preference relations are widely used by decision makers to elicit their preferences over alternatives in the Group Decision Making (GDM) process. Recent studies have shown that self-confidence, as an important human psychological behavior, has an important influence on decision-making results. However, multiple self-confidence levels of decision makers are seldom considered in the linguistic preference relation. Meanwhile many real-word decision-making problems are analyzed in a hierarchical structure, in which a complicated problem can be divided into several easier comprehended sub-problems. Hence, this paper aims at designing a linguistic hierarchy model with self-confidence preference relation (LHM-SCPR) to discuss complex GDM problems in a hierarchical structure. In the SC-LPR, each element contains two components, the first one is the preference value between pairs of alternatives, and the second one that is defined on a linguistic term set represents decision maker’s self-confidence level associated to the first component. Meanwhile, a nonlinear programming model is proposed to derive individual preference vector from SC-LPR. Then, we apply LHM-SCPR in co-regulation of food safety to present the validity of this method, and find that improving the participation skills regarding co-regulation of food safety is the most pressing task. Finally, detailed comparative analysis and discussion are presented to verify the validity of the proposal. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Food Security)

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15 pages, 556 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Does Food Safety Risk Perception Affect the Public’s Trust in Their Government? An Empirical Study on a National Survey in China

by Guanghua Han and Simin Yan

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16(11), 1874; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16111874 - 28 May 2019

Cited by 37 | Viewed by 3818

Abstract

This paper studies the impacts of food safety risk perception on the different dimensions of governmental trust. A logistic regression model was constructed based on the multidimensional analysis of government trust (i.e., competence, benevolence and honesty) with food safety risk perception, economic growth, combating corruption, social trust, political participation and demographic characteristics as explanatory variables. The main findings are that respondents with low levels of food risk perception, high political participation and a positive evaluation of economic growth and anti-corruption performance show high levels of trust in government competence, benevolence and honesty. Social trust has a spillover effect, which has a significant impact on government competence and benevolence but has no significant impact on the honesty of the government, which reflects the distinction between different dimensions of the public’s trust in their government. Highly educated people have low levels of trust in government competence, high levels of trust in government benevolence, and no significant impact on the judgment of government honesty. In general, the public speak lowly of the status of food safety and have limited interest in political participation. The government is better to strengthen food safety supervision and develop social capital to further enhance the public’s governmental trust. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Food Security)

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