Food Security and Scarcity: Why Ending Hunger is So Hard

“Sustainability” is not just an environmental concept. It also applies to market outcomes. No society has figured out how to allocate scarce economic resources efficiently on behalf of society’s needs without using market processes. But markets sometimes fail in this process, especially when hunger, poverty, income inequality and political voice are at stake. Peter Timmer’s book Food Security and Scarcity: Why Ending Hunger is So Hard, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in conjunction with the Center for Global Development, provides clear guidelines on how to analyze government policies and market structures in order to reduce hunger in a sustainable fashion.