The Impact of Foreign Exchange and Trade Policies on Food Security

Given the rapid population growth of the present century, the issue of food has become one of the essential challenges. Based on this, the concept of food security in the world was introduced. The importance of this issue prompts all governments to adopt specific strategies and policies to meet this critical need and ensure food security and, ultimately, the national security of their country. In this regard, in the present study, the impact of economic and social factors of households and foreign exchange and trade policies on food security in Iran for 1396-1396, using the cost-income information of households from the Central Bank. To do this, first, the food security index (energy) for urban and rural households, then the free market foreign exchange rate gap index, and the trade liberalization index have been calculated. Then, the binary logit model will analyze the data to evaluate the influence of foreign exchange rate and trade policies on food security in the country. The results indicated that 71.4%, 67.9% have food security in urban and rural households, and 28.6%, 32.1% have food insecurity. The results also showed that foreign exchange policy has an adverse effect, and trade policy positively affects the food security of urban and rural households. Given the strong impact of foreign exchange rates and trade policies on the food security of urban and rural households, it seems necessary for the government to pay more attention to these policies to achieve food securities.