Food Balance Sheets and Food Security Quiz

Study Notes

Food Balance Sheets

Food balance sheets indicate a country's sufficiency or deficiency of food or particular nutrients.
When prepared over successive years, they show trends in food availability, helping countries to:
- Institute policy to safeguard national food security
- Channel agricultural production
- Devise crop diversification policy to improve agricultural income and production of nutritionally desirable foods
The tables also show how much a country depends on its own food production relative to food importation, contributing to the design of national food importation policy.

Limitations of Food Balance Sheets

The accuracy of data used in food balance sheets varies widely depending on the availability of good-quality data and the level of development of agrostatistics services.
Data are generally more accurate in developed than in developing countries.
Accurate census data on population are not available in many developing countries.

Importance of Cereal Grains

Cereal grains were among the first crops to be planted and harvested.
Ancient civilizations flourished partly because of their ability to produce, store, and distribute these grains.
Cereal grains form an important part of the diet of many people, including maize, sorghum, millets, wheat, rice, barley, oats, teff, and quinoa.

Carbohydrate Content

Foods with a predominantly carbohydrate content are important as they form the basis of most diets, especially for poorer people in developing countries.
In developing countries, these foods usually provide 70% or more of the energy intake of the population.
In contrast, in the United States and Europe, often less than 40% of energy comes from carbohydrates.

Types of Cereals

Cereals are plants from the family of grasses cultivated for their edible seeds.
A new cereal of considerable interest is triticale, a cross between wheat and rye.

Description

Test your knowledge on food balance sheets and how they are used to assess food sufficiency, deficiency, trends in food availability, and policy-making for national food security and agricultural production.