Availability

Food availability is derived from domestic agricultural output and net food imports at the national level. Various factors can inhabit food availability such as production failures related to climatic conditions or labor constraints; low soil fertility resulting in lower yields and the gradual loss of productive assets needed to sustain household food production. On a macro-economic level, constraints to food availability include inappropriate economic policies, (including pricing marketing, tax and tariff policies), population growth rates that offset increased production or imports, marketing and transportation systems which inhibit the cost-effective movement of food from source to need; and the inability to predict, assess and cope with emergency situations which interrupt food supplies.

In Cambodia the major threats to food availability has been decreasing agricultural productivity, lack of access to land and natural disasters (such as repeated flooding).

An increase in food availability will see a shift from subsistence agriculture, creation of more formal food markets and a decrease in food prices as the gap between demand and supply is narrowed.