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5/21/2018 FoodSecurityissuesandtrendsinInternationalpolitics.pdf-slidepdf.com http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/food-security-issues-and-trends-in-international-politic 32 Food security: issues and trends in international politics
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  • 5/21/2018 Food Security issues and trends in International politics.pdf

    http:///reader/full/food-security-issues-and-trends-in-international-politic

    32Food security: issues and trends

    in international politics

  • 5/21/2018 Food Security issues and trends in International politics.pdf

    http:///reader/full/food-security-issues-and-trends-in-international-politic

    > Dr Carl Death

    Department of International Politics

    [email protected]

    A central role of political authorities whether tribes,

    chieaincies or states since the beginnings of seled

    agriculture has been the government of land and the

    redistribuon of surpluses derived from food producon.

    Land and territory are bound up with the nature of states,

    and how we understand the relaonship between polics

    and security. Whether it is the relaonship between rural

    and urban authories, the policing and securing of borders

    and boundaries, the organisaon of development iniaves

    at home and abroad, or more contemporary discourses

    of food security, land remains inescapably central to

    polics. Polical philosophers from Hobbes to Locke, and

    Nietzsche to Foucault (Kuehls, 1996) have reected upon the

    relaonship between mankind and the soil, and the ways

    in which sociees organise the circulaon of food supplies

    and agricultural labour can tell us a great deal about the

    nature of those sociees.

    Land is an especially sensive and important polical issue

    in many African sociees, where my research has mostly

    been focussed. The willing buyer, willing seller approach

    to land reform in post-apartheid South Africa has been a

    source of deep frustraon and resentment for many in acountry where rural poverty remains endemic. At the end

    of apartheid in 1994, almost 90% of the land was owned

    by whites, who constuted only 10% of the populaon.

    Less than 7% of the land has been redistributed so far,

    and the ANC government has pushed back their target of

    redistribung one third of the land from 2014 to 2025.1

    In Zimbabwe, by way of contrast, Robert Mugabes land

    seizures have widely been seen as a racially movated aack

    on white farmers, resulng in the collapse of Zimbabwean

    agriculture and widespread food insecurity. However, recent

    large-scale research led by Ian Scoones from the Instute

    of Development Studies at Sussex University has suggested

    that, whilst this land reform programme contained many

    obvious abuses and aws, it has not been the unmigated

    failure commonly reported in the press and some academic

    circles (Scooneset al., 2010). In parcular, this research

    claims that, in the area studied, no more than 5% of the

    land went to polical associates, while much went to small

    scale farmers and the rural poor who have oen been able

    to make a surplus and invest it back into the land. Whilst

    the producon of some crops has crashed, others like small

    grains and edible beans have increased, and widespread

    food insecurity is not directly or solely linked to the farminvasions. The rural economy in Zimbabwe, they argue, has

    not collapsed, but the worldwide media and polical furore

    that has accompanied the Zimbabwean story fuelled by

    the undeniable abuses perpetrated by the Mugabe regime

    demonstrates the connuing polical saliency of land in

    Africa (Winter, 2010).

    This polical saliency is also borne out by the recent aenon

    to large scale land grabs in Africa. Large tracts of land are

    being acquired for agricultural producon of food to be

    sent to the Gulf States, for biofuels for European and North

    American markets, for mineral exploraon and exploitaon,

    as well as for conservaon (Allen, 2010; Friends of the Earth

    Europe, 2010). The control and usage of land is inescapably

    political and always has been. Western perceptions of

    marginal land, degraded land, and unproducve land

    have been used to jusfy colonial expropriaon, capital

    accumulaon and foreign intervenon, both before and

    since John Locke declared, looking at the North American

    connent, that land that is le wholly to nature, that hath

    no improvement of pasturage, llage, or planng, is called,

    as indeed it is, waste (quoted by Kuehls, 1996: xii).

    Food Security: issues and trends ininternational politics

    1For more details on South African land reform, see the documentary

    Promised Land. Available at hp://www.pbs.org/pov/promisedland/

    land_reform.php (accessed 26 April 2011).

    33Food security: issues and trends

    in international politics

  • 5/21/2018 Food Security issues and trends in International politics.pdf

    http:///reader/full/food-security-issues-and-trends-in-international-politic

    In contrast to this perpetual polical concern with the

    government of land, populaons and soils, more recent

    discourses of food security are oen dated from World War II

    and the post-war reconstrucon of Europe (McDonald, 2010:

    p.12). The food price spike of 2007-08 and the consequent

    erupon of protests in over sixty countries, together with

    increasing concerns over climate change, populaon growth

    and energy security, have reignited polical interest in food

    security (Dupont and Thirlwell, 2009; Food and Agriculture

    Organizaon, 2010).

    In January 2011, Sir John Beddington, Chief Scientific

    Advisor to the UK government, launched a new Foresight

    report on the Future of Food and Farming, and warned of

    a perfect storm of a growing populaon, climate change

    and diminishing resources for food producon (Ghosh,

    2011). This report concluded that the global food system

    between now and 2050 will face enormous challenges,

    as great as any that it has confronted in the past, driven

    by population increases, changes in consumption and

    demand, the shiing internaonal architecture of food

    governance, climate change, increased compeon for

    other key resources such as water, energy and land, and

    the changing values of consumers (Foresight, 2011: p.13-16).

    With nearly one billion people sll living in chronic hunger,

    and global agriculture contribung between 12-30% of global

    greenhouse gas emissions, it is clear that the global food

    system is not working (Foresight, 2011: p.9 and 28; Food

    and Agriculture Organizaon, 2010). These concerns reect

    the central issues addressed by recent research on food

    security in internaonal polics, which have been largely

    organised around the themes of hunger and malnutrion,

    global environmental changes, and food safety and diseases

    (McDonald, 2010).

    Hunger and malnutrion. In 2009, there were more than

    one billion chronically hungry people in the world, more

    than in any year since 1970 (McDonald, 2010: p.80). Yet this

    34Food security: issues and trends

    in international politics

  • 5/21/2018 Food Security issues and trends in International politics.pdf

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    was not solely, or even primarily, due to a lack of food. One

    of the most important insights of social science research

    has been to show how spikes in hunger and famine do not

    necessarily correspond to actual food shortages, but rather

    reect an inequitable distribuon of food outputs and a lack

    of polical, social and economic entlements (Keen, 2008:

    p.101). The rising numbers of overweight and obese people

    in the developing as well as the developed world, together

    with increasing numbers of dual burden households

    containing both overweight and underweight members,

    can also be regarded as another product of highly uneven

    food distribuon, both at global and local levels (Guthman,

    2011; McDonald, 2010: p.85).

    Global environmental changes.Agriculture is both a

    major driver of environmental changes in the climate,

    soil, water and air as well as being itself highly vulnerable

    to such changes. According to one forecast, Africa could

    lose 47% of its agricultural income by 2100 as a result of

    climate change (Toulmin, 2009: p.64). On the other hand,

    historians and social sciensts have been concerned with the

    socio-economic and polical causes of soil erosion and land

    degradaon, much pre-dang the current focus on climatechange. Countering neo-Malthusian assumpons about

    over-populaon, over-grazing and inappropriate tradional

    farming methods, revisionist research has emphasised how

    complex global and local polical ecologies have combined to

    alter farmland in what are frequently non-linear trajectories

    (Adams, 2009: p.204; Leach and Mearns, 1996), as well as

    how agriculturally-induced environmental changes in the

    developed world are bound up with the intensicaon and

    industrialisaon of farming.

    Food safety and disease. New technologies and farmingpracces have been accompanied by increased concerns

    over food safety and disease, as well as bringing actual and

    potenal benets. Modern, intensive global food producon

    and processing networks mean not only that far fewer

    people consume locally produced food than ever before

    in history, but also that the networks of food distribuon

    themselves can act as vectors for the spread of disease or

    even potenal terrorist aacks (McDonald, 2010: p.124).

    Whilst the aenon of the press, policymakers and security

    experts tends to be easily swayed by fears of anthrax aacks

    or new epidemic diseases, an equal if not more pressing

    concern should be the continued deaths of over two

    million children per year from diarrhoeal illness caused by

    contaminated food and water. These preventable deaths

    are rarely discussed in terms of food and water security,

    but perhaps they should be.

    Within these sub-elds of food security, most social science

    research aims to idenfy problems and promote soluons,

    whether in relation to the international institutional

    architecture for food aid (Clapp, 2005), or regarding the

    migaon of and adaptaon to climate change for farmers

    in East Africa (Toulmin, 2009). Other crical approaches,

    however, seek to ask more fundamental quesons about

    the ways in which hunger and famine are perpetuated by

    a global economy which produces enough food to feed

    everyone, both now and into the foreseeable future (Keen,

    2008: p.109; McDonald, 2010: p.88-9). Some crical voices

    contrast discourses of food security with discourses of

    agricultural development and empowerment (Adams,

    2009), or even suggest that more locally rooted asserons

    35Food security: issues and trends

    in international politics

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    of food sovereignty or food democracy can act as forms

    of micro-resistance to neo-liberal globalisaon (Ayres and

    Bosia, 2011).

    These debates might seem esoteric and even rather

    academic to those struggling with the day-to-day challenges

    of providing sucient safe food and water for their families,

    children and communies - or even naonal populaons.

    However, short-term piecemeal soluons will do nothing to

    ameliorate the fundamental drivers of food insecurity, and

    may even be causing further damage (Dupont and Thirlwell,

    2009: p.93). More research is needed on how the global

    governance of food and land is structured and shaped, and

    on the polical economies of food producon, processing

    and distribuon that are driving the current dysfunconal

    system. These global structures provide a necessary context

    for understanding highly specic cases like land reform in

    South Africa and Zimbabwe. In addion to problem-solving

    approaches, we need big-picture, interconnected, crical

    research that tackles the broader quesons of security,

    jusce, power, development and democracy upon which

    the food we all consume depends. Whilst it may be true

    that we are what we eat, as Bryan McDonald points out,

    our world is also shaped by the choices we make related

    to food and food systems (McDonald, 2010: p.160).

    36Food security: issues and trends

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    References

    Adams, W. M. (2009). Green Development: Environment and

    sustainability in a developing world. Abingdon, UK, Routledge.

    Allen, K. (2010). World Bank says foreign investors are crowding out

    African producers. The Guardian,28 July.

    Ayres, J. and Bosia, M. J. (2011). Beyond global summitry: food

    sovereignty as localized resistance to globalizaon. Globalizaons 8,

    47-63.

    Clapp, J. (2005). The polical economy of food aid in an era of

    agricultural biotechnology. Global Governance 11, 467-485.

    Dupont, A. and Thirlwell, M. (2009). A new era of food insecurity?Survival51, 71-98.

    Food and Agriculture Organizaon (2010). The State of Food Insecurity in

    the World: Addressing Food Insecurity in Protracted Crises. Rome, Italy,

    Food and Agriculture Organizaon.

    Foresight (2011). The Future of Food and Farming: Challenges and

    Choices for Global Sustainability, Final Project Report. London, UK,

    The Government Oce for Science. hp://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/

    bispartners/foresight/docs/food-and-farming/11-546-future-of-food-

    and-farming-report.pdf

    Friends of the Earth Europe (2010).Africa: up for grabs the scale and

    impact of land grapping for agrofuels. Brussels, Friends of the Earth

    Europe.

    Ghosh, P. (2011). Report: Urgent acon needed to avert globalhunger. BBC News, 24 January. hp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-

    environment-12249909

    Guthman, J. (2011). Excess consumpon or over-producon? US farm

    policy, global warming and the bizarre aribuon of obesity. In: Peet, R.,

    Robbins, P. and Was, M. J. (Eds). Global polical ecology. Abingdon,

    UK, Routledge, pp. 51-66.

    Keen, K. (2008). Complex emergencies. Cambridge, UK, Polity Press.

    Kuehls, T. (1996). Beyond sovereign territory: the space of ecopolics.

    Minneapolis, USA, University of Minnesota Press.

    Leach, M. and Mearns, R. (Eds) (1996). The lie of the land: challenging

    received wisdom on the African environment. Oxford, UK, James Currey.

    McDonald, B. L. (2010) Food Security. Cambridge, UK, Polity Press.

    Scoones, I, Marongwe, N., Mavedzenge, B., Murimbarimba, F.,

    Mahenehene, J. and Sukume, C. (2010).Zimbabwes land reform: myths

    and realies. London, UK, James Currey.

    Toulmin, C. (2009). Climate Change in Africa. London, UK, Zed Books.

    Winter, J. (2010). Zimbabwe land reform not a failure. BBC News, 18

    November.hp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11764004

    37Food security: issues and trends

    in international politics


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