Assessing food security: economic issues in Southern Mediterranean Countries

Food security is a subject of high relevance worldwide and particularly in Southern Mediterranean Countries (SMCs), where agricultural production variability and structural dependency from imports are major issues that led to dramatic consequences for a large part of the population in occasion of the recent upsurge in international food prices. The present paper intends to highlight the main economic issues affecting food security in a selection of Southern Mediterranean Countries (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia), in order to improve policy guidance. Based on an extensive literature review conducted, a reduced set of core indicators was selected and calculated, so as to provide empirical evidence of their food security and vulnerability structural conditions, as well as of their development over a twenty-year time span.