The food import dependency is the percentage of available calories that are imported for human consumption. Dependency on food imports leads to numerous difficulties: increased debt and compounding of balance of payment problems; fluctuating external market prices for developing countries, which face a sharp reduction of their import capacity; and increased energy consumption in food transportation. The problems of dependency on food import and aid include political conditionality, vulnerability to a failure of delivery mechanisms, disincentive to local producers due to decreased food prices, competition with local traditional foods and changed consumption patterns.