Different sources of power

Stakeholders are people or organizations that influence an issue or are affected by it. Their power in food and health depends on funding and legal authority, as well as their expertise and ability to reach people.

Food insecurity means lacking reliable access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food. Producing more food is only part of the response. People also need income, transport and enough stability to obtain it.

Food insecurity and disease can reinforce each other. Poor nutrition weakens resistance to infection. Illness, in turn, makes it harder for people to work, grow food or earn money. Stakeholders therefore need to coordinate food assistance with healthcare, safe water and sanitation.

International organizations

Working across national borders, international organizations can coordinate action and collect comparable information. They can also mobilize resources beyond what a single government can provide. Each has a different main role:

• The World Food Programme (WFP) provides emergency food assistance, including cash or vouchers where suitable. It also supports school meals and measures such as the transport and distribution of humanitarian supplies.
• The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) supports agricultural knowledge and food-security monitoring, alongside improvements in farming and livelihoods. This work can reduce vulnerability before a crisis and help production recover afterwards.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) coordinates international health action. It supports disease surveillance and provides technical guidance, helping governments strengthen prevention, outbreak responses and health services rather than operating every local clinic itself.

These organizations draw influence from their expertise, their ability to coordinate action and their access to donor funding. Assistance may still fail to reach those most in need. Funding shortfalls and insecurity can block delivery, as can restrictions imposed by governments or armed groups.

Governments

Governments hold powers that other stakeholders generally lack. They can tax and spend, regulate markets and establish national policies. Social protection and agricultural support affect access to food, as do transport infrastructure and food-safety rules. Governments also influence disease through healthcare funding and vaccination programmes, investment in sanitation and disease monitoring.

Those choices determine who receives support and where services are located. A national programme may improve average conditions yet leave remote communities or marginalized groups underserved. Even when policies look effective on paper, limited budgets, corruption or conflict can weaken delivery.

Non-governmental organizations

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operate independently of government and often work directly with particular communities. Their work may include running clinics or delivering nutrition programmes. They may also improve water supplies, support farmers or campaign for policy changes.

Through local relationships, NGOs can identify needs that national statistics miss and adapt support to local languages and customs. Their coverage, though, is often geographically uneven. Short funding cycles can also make services difficult to maintain.

Cooperation and unequal influence

No stakeholder is automatically the most effective. Emergency assistance may prevent immediate deaths; reliable public services and stronger livelihoods reduce future vulnerability. Donors may control funding priorities, while governments may control access. Local organizations may best understand needs. These forms of power do not always point towards the same decisions.

Influence throughout the food chain

Transnational corporations (TNCs) are businesses that operate in more than one country. Agribusinesses are commercial enterprises involved in agricultural inputs, production, processing or distribution.

A shopper's choice is shaped long before they pick up a product. Decisions about crops and processing, as well as distribution and retailing, affect which foods reach the shops. They also affect prices and how convenient those foods are to buy and prepare.

By handling high volumes, large businesses can spread their costs. They can maintain extensive distribution networks and negotiate with suppliers, making certain foods widely available at relatively low prices. When just a few firms dominate a market, they can exert considerable influence over suppliers and decide much of the range on offer.

Price, availability and convenience

Compared with many fresh foods, processed foods with long shelf lives are easier to transport and keep in stock. Investment in packaging and refrigeration, along with retail networks, can therefore change diets. This is particularly the case in growing urban markets.

Households with little time to cook may find ready-to-eat products appealing. Promotions can encourage frequent purchases, as can portion sizes and where products are placed in shops. With repeated exposure, something bought occasionally can become part of the everyday diet.

Corporate distribution can make food supplies more reliable and varied. Yet consuming more products high in salt, free sugars or unhealthy fats can contribute to diet-related ill health. The effect depends on which products are promoted and how affordable they are, as well as the wider diet. It doesn't depend simply on whether a company operates internationally.

Media and the creation of demand

Food companies advertise through channels provided by media businesses. Through television and digital platforms, or through sponsorship and influencer marketing, they can link products with pleasure, status, convenience or belonging. Marketing aimed at children can influence what households buy too.

Heavily promoted brands gain an advantage over less visible foods through repeated advertising. Digital adverts can target particular audiences. In entertainment and sponsored content, commercial messages may be less obvious.

Media influence isn't exclusively harmful. Public-health campaigns and reporting can change consumption habits, as can the promotion of nutritious foods. What matters is who controls the message and whose interests it serves, as well as how widely it reaches people.

Why influence varies between places

Diets do not become identical everywhere TNCs operate. Companies adapt their products and advertising to local tastes and religious practices, taking purchasing power into account. Whether marketing leads to a purchase also depends on consumers' income and cultural preferences, along with their access to shops.

Governments can change corporate influence by restricting advertising, requiring food labelling and regulating products. The same business may therefore have different effects under different rules and market conditions. Corporate power is substantial, but consumer choices and cultural expectations still play a part, alongside government decisions.

Roles, resources and decision-making

Gender roles are socially shaped expectations about the activities and responsibilities of different genders. They differ between societies and change over time. They should not be treated as universal or biologically fixed.

In many places, women contribute substantially to food production. They also prepare meals, collect water and care for household members. Men may have greater control over land, commercial crops or household income. The geographic issue goes beyond who does a task: who controls the resources involved, and who receives the benefits?

Food production and acquisition

Unequal access to land ownership, credit, training, equipment and agricultural advice can restrict production. Even someone responsible for growing food may be unable to borrow money or decide how the land is used. Heavy unpaid workloads can leave less time for farming or paid employment too.

People acquire food by buying or gathering it, or through household or community arrangements. Being responsible for acquiring food doesn't necessarily give someone control over income. A person may know what the household needs but lack the purchasing power to obtain it.

Long journeys to markets or water sources take up time and may expose people to safety risks. These burdens matter especially where transport is poor or services are distant.

Distribution within households

Having food in a household doesn't guarantee equal nutrition for every member. Customs about who eats first can affect access to nutritious food, as can differences in portion sizes and control over spending.

Pregnancy and breastfeeding increase nutritional requirements. If these needs are not met, poor nutrition can harm both maternal health and child development. Women are also often expected to care for sick relatives. This reduces their opportunities to earn income or attend to their own health.

Disparities in health

Health disparities are differences in health outcomes or access to healthcare between groups. Gender-related disparities arise from social expectations and economic opportunities, combined with exposure to risks and healthcare provision.

Cost or limited mobility may prevent women from accessing healthcare. Other barriers include needing permission or a shortage of appropriate reproductive services. Men may face greater exposure to hazardous work or behaviours encouraged by expectations of masculinity. They may also delay seeking care.

The patterns vary within countries. Income and age interact with gender, as do rural or urban location and social status. A national average can therefore conceal substantial inequalities.

How changing power can change outcomes

Better access to land, income, education and healthcare can increase people's ability to make decisions about food and health. Closer water supplies or better transport can reduce unpaid workloads, freeing time for paid work and healthcare.

An intervention is more effective when it considers both responsibility and control. For example, providing agricultural inputs to a household may offer limited benefits to the person producing food if someone else controls how the inputs and the resulting income are used.

Why a food crisis becomes a famine

Famine is an extreme food crisis involving widespread acute malnutrition and excess deaths. How severe it becomes depends on whether people can obtain food and assistance, not just on how much food is produced.

Drought or another disruption may reduce harvests and livestock production. Whether famine follows depends on household resources and food prices, as well as functioning markets, governance and how quickly assistance arrives. Disease can make the crisis worse: malnourished people are more vulnerable to infection.

Governance

Governance concerns how decisions are made and implemented, and how power is exercised. Effective governance can limit famine by providing early warning and timely assistance. Social protection helps too, as does protecting transport and market networks.

Poor decisions or weak institutions can make a crisis worse. Authorities may ignore warnings or discriminate against particular groups. They may also allow resources to be diverted. Conflict can destroy livelihoods and force people from their homes, while making markets unsafe. Governments and armed groups may obstruct relief or use access to food to control people.

Food may be available nationally, yet particular groups may still be unable to obtain it. People who have lost income or land, or who cannot move freely, are especially vulnerable.

The power of the media

Media reporting can make suffering visible and encourage donations. It can also put pressure on governments and international organizations to act. Independent reporting may expose failures or deliberate obstruction.

But attention is selective. Restricted access and censorship can hide a crisis, as can danger to journalists. Coverage may increase only when severe malnutrition and deaths are already evident, prompting a late response. Dramatic images may attract donations without explaining the political and economic causes that need longer-term action.

Which crises receive resources, and how quickly those resources arrive, therefore depends partly on media visibility. Need alone does not determine the response.

Access to international aid

Aid needs funding and authorization before it can be transported and delivered safely. Poor roads or damaged ports can interrupt this chain. So can insecurity, checkpoints and restrictions on relief agencies. Displacement may cut people off from established distribution networks.

The form of assistance matters too. Cash can help when food is available in functioning markets, but it can't solve a complete lack of supplies. Where markets have broken down, food deliveries can be essential. Unsuitable timing or distribution, though, may disrupt local trade. People also need nutrition treatment, safe water and healthcare alongside food, because disease causes famine deaths too.

A famine case study

The class chooses its own famine-stricken country or area. A developed case study should locate the crisis in place and time and explain why particular groups were vulnerable. It should connect governance, media influence and aid access to the severity of the impacts, while distinguishing the initial disruption from the factors that allowed suffering to escalate.

For example, famine was declared in parts of southern Somalia in 2011 after severe drought contributed to crop and livestock losses. Conflict and displacement weakened livelihoods and market access. Armed-group restrictions on humanitarian operations limited the response in affected areas, as did insecurity and constraints on aid funding.

Warnings came before the declaration, but international attention and assistance increased as the crisis became more visible. Rainfall failure alone therefore does not fully explain what happened: political barriers and delayed support helped turn livelihood losses into catastrophic food deprivation.