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This article outlines a food security synthesis: that food insecurity traces to poverty, that poverty must be addressed by economic development, and that economic development flows from application of the standard model which is now mainstream economics. Food insecure countries do not follow the standard model; their policies for agriculture and other sectors deter development. Why don't they follow a policy that could feed their people? Reasons lie in institutions such as government. Attitudes including culture in turn underlie many institutional failures to provide food security. Resource endowments and economic circumstances help to create institutions and culture, hence, causality in the food security synthesis is by no means strictly unidirectional. The Setting The World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the U.S. Agency for International Development define food security as access by all people at all times to sufficient food to meet dietary needs for a productive and healthy life (USAID 1992, p. 1). Progress is apparent in reducing global food insecurity or chronic undernourishment, but major challenges remain. Numbers of undernourished people in developing countries fell from 917 million in 1969-71 to 839 million in 1990-92 and are projected to fall to 680 million in 2010 according to FAO estimates (Table 1). The spectacular 207 million reduction in East and Southeast Asia more than offsets the 112 million addition to the number of undernourished people in Sub-Saharan Africa between 1969-71 and 1990-92. Per capita dietary energy supply (DES) increased 0.52 percent per year for the world and by even more (0.78 percent per year) in developing countries between 1969-71 and 1990-92 (Table 2). Progress is expected to slow-FAO predicts DES will increase only 0.33 percent annually from 1990-92 to year 2010. One region of the world, Sub-Saharan Africa, seems to be losing the capacity to feed itself. The International Food Policy Research Institute (Rosegrant, et al. 1995, p. 15) projects that the region's imports of all cereals will grow from 9.4 million metric tons (mmt) in 1990 to 26.1 mmt by 2020. Paying for such imports will be a major challenge. The subsequent paper by Robert Paarlberg details the special problems encountered in the search for food security in Africa.

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Domestic and international linkages in speculative stockholdings and trade of wheat are analyzed using a dynamic rational expectations model of the world wheat market dominated by the U.S. and the EU. The results demonstrate the importance of endogenizing both storage and trade in studying commodity markets and suggest that past government stockholdings have not followed efficient market outcomes. Results indicate that elimination of the Export Enhancement Program by the U.S. and of export restitution payments by the EU are unlikely to have a major impact on wheat exports from the two regions but will save millions of tax dollars in both regions. Copyright 1996, Oxford University Press.