Revisiting food security in 2021: an overview of the past year

Articles published in Food Security in 2021 are reviewed, showing a wide range of topics covered. Many articles are directly linked with food and associated terms such as nutritive, nutrition, dietary, and health. Another important group is linked with (food) production and a range of connected terms including: irrigation, cultivated, organic, varieties, crop, vegetable, and land. A third group of terms refers to the scales at which food security is considered: household, farmer, farm, smallholder, community, nation and region. A few themes of Food Security are considered: (1) food supply and demand, food prices, and global trade; (2) food security in households; (3) food production; (4) value chains and food systems; (5) the evolution of the concept of food security; and (6) global nutrition. In a last section, perspectives for Food Security are discussed along four lines of thoughts: the level of inter-disciplinary research published in Food Security; the importance of the Social Sciences for food security as a collective good underpinned by other collective goods within food systems; the balance between the Global South and the Global North in Food Security; and a warning that urgent global challenges that vitally interact with food security may be left unattended as a result of the current public health emergency.

Automated summary

The review of articles published in Food Security in 2021 reveals a diverse range of topics related to food, nutrition, production, and scales of food security. The themes covered include food supply and demand, food security in households, food production, value chains and food systems, the evolution of the concept of food security, and global nutrition. The article also discusses the importance of interdisciplinary research, the role of social sciences in ensuring food security as a collective good, the balance between the Global South and the Global North in addressing food security, and the potential neglect of urgent global challenges due to the current public health emergency.