بررسي نقش توليد و تجارت برنج در امنيت غذايي خانوارهاي ايراني در سالهاي 1375 و 1378

The Role of Production and Trade of Rice in Food Security and the Estimation of Its Illicit Import During the Period 1375 -1378

In the past the issue of food security was dealt only at national and international level and in this respect the supply of food items was the main focus. In 1986, however, during the course of international conference on nutrition, the World Bank provided a new definition for food security. This definition provides that food security is based on three main and basic elements or components. These elements are: (1) stability in the supply of (2) Access to (3) availably of food items. The first component relates to the stable food supply .The second component denotes to the existence of physical and economical resources for securing the food items and the third component relates to sufficient supply of good quality items (domestic products + net import + change in inventory). In this paper by drawing on above mentioned concepts, attempts have been made to analyse the role of production and legal and illegal import of rice in the food security of Iranian households. For this purpose, first the production and trade of rice in the country is reviewed. Then attempts would be made to clarify the availability of the sufficient supply of rice and also access to good quality rice for households. Finally the volume of illicit import of rice would also be estimated. The main findings of the paper show that while population is increasing, nevertheless the production trend of rice is stable and unchanged .The trend in legal imported rice is also stable while, the illicit or smuggled import of rice shows increasing trend (from 420000 tons in 1375 to 582000 tons in 1378). As far as access to food items is concerned the results are indicative that during the period 1375-1378 the role of domestically produced rice in securing the food security requirements of the country has been diminished and on the contrary the role of imported rice has shown increasing trend. Another result of the paper is to the effect that 50 percent of urban population and 70 percent of rural inhabitants are consuming less than what has been recommended.