Food Security among Rural Communities: Insights from Iran

“Zero Hunger”, the second Sustainable Development Goal, is one of humanity’s most critical challenges and is deeply interlinked with food security. Food security encompasses multiple levels, from food availability to access to food stability. However, for most residents in rural areas of developing and underdeveloped countries, food security primarily means physical, economic, and sustained access to food. Thus, evaluations of food security in rural areas should differ from those in urban areas. This original study introduces a novel approach and an integrated index to assess and present access to food (AFI) using fuzzy and weighted mean techniques. It analyzed 300 rural households in southern Iran. The findings revealed that the AFI of the studied community was 0.551, indicating a moderate level of food security. Most households had intermediate physical, economic, and sustainable access to food, which means that they did not face any critical situations regarding food security. This study suggests that achieving food security requires a hierarchical approach. Realizing the goal of zero hunger in rural areas of less developed countries necessitates a distinct strategy compared to urban areas for policymakers to focus more on food availability and access as the initial levels of the food security pyramid.