Introduction to the handbook of food security and society

When we started writing the outline for this book in 2018/19, the world was a different place; while the indicators for food security were not all positive, there remained a level of optimism in terms of addressing global food insecurity insofar as it was thought that things were changing with the establishment of systems of delivery and mechanisms to monitor progress (OECD, 2022). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and concerns with climate change (in a series of global climate summits known by the abbreviation COP, which stands for Conference of the Parties) and its impact on food security were offering mechanisms to address food insecurity. Up to 2015, there had been progress in addressing food insecurity, but thereafter reductions in addressing targets and key hot spots for food shortages and famine began to emerge, all of which have been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, a series of global financial crises and climate emergencies (Oxfam, 2022; High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition, 2021).

This chapter offers an overview of many of the issues that are taken up in detail in the individual chapters in this Handbook. We have provided a pedagogical guide to chapters in the Preface, which helps sets out instructions as to how chapters might be used alone or in combi-nation for learning or teaching purposes. We, as editors, see the purpose of this introduction as providing an overview of the intellectual terrain the Handbook covers, many of the issues of which are picked up in detail in individual chapters. We recommend that the introduction and the preface be read in conjunction with one another.