Food Security

Bryan L. McDonald

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745659299
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

Throughout history, human societies have struggled to ensure that all people have access to sufficient food to lead active and healthy lives. Despite great global effort, events of the early 21st century clearly demonstrate that food remains a pressing challenge which has significant implications for security. In this book, Bryan McDonald explores how processes of globalization and global change have reshaped food systems in ways that have significant impacts for the national security of states and the human of communities and individuals. Over the past few decades, local, regional, and national food systems have increasingly become intertwined in an emerging global food network. This complex web of relations includes the production, harvest, processing, transport, and consumption of food. While this global food network provides new opportunities for improving health and well-being, it also gives rise to new sources of security threats and vulnerabilities. This detailed and comprehensive introduction to the major issues impacting global food security will be essential reading for students and scholars in security studies, international politics, and environmental studies.

1 Food Security and the Global Food System

Ensuring that people have sufficient access to food has been, and remains, a core challenge to the security and stability of communities, states, and the international system. Recent events − including rising global food prices, natural disasters and severe weather events, international food safety episodes, and a global economic crisis − have focused attention on food as a subject of concern for security studies. The beginning of modern interest in food security is often located in World War II, which demonstrated that localized hunger and instability could escalate into problems of global significance. More recent experiences, including rioting and unrest in more than sixty countries over rising food prices, have reminded leaders and international organizations that even in an age of threats from global terrorist networks and asymmetrical warfare, there are few challenges that can cause the widespread and significant security impacts of a lack of basic necessities such as food. Global trends such as population growth, shifting consumption patterns, and climate change strongly suggest that the challenge of food security will remain a pressing concern for individuals, communities, states, and the international system in the future. At the same time that the global significance of ensuring food security has been reinforced by world events, understanding and addressing the challenge is also becoming more complex. Much of this emerging complexity with regards to food security is driven by larger changes in the global security landscape.

The concept of international security was developed during the Cold War as concerns about the shared threats and vulnerabilities of the international system encouraged a move beyond national security. National security is generally taken to refer to the protection of sovereign nation-states from internal and external threats to their vital interests (Robinson 2008). By the middle of the twentieth century, nation-states had developed from their origins in nineteenth-century Europe into the widespread form of political organization. “Commitment to the nation-state ideal shaped and legitimized the wave of decolonization that took place after World War II, and was a cornerstone of the philosophy of the United Nations” (Matthew 2002: 1). Theoretical and political understandings of international security arose during the Cold War period (1945–1991) based on recognitions that in the face of threats from sources like nuclear weapons the security of individual nation-states could only be ensured through international action and cooperation. Since the end of the Cold War, the landscape of national and international security threats has shifted (Matthew 2002; Dannreuther 2007).

Globalization – combined with the reduced capacity of governments to address pressing issues, and the increasing role of nonstate actors in national and international politics – has produced considerable turbulence in world affairs. James Rosenau describes the current global security landscape as one where, “the impact of modern technologies and the many other sources that are rendering the world ever more interdependent, the bifurcated structures and the more skillful citizens are conceived to have fostered such a profound transformation in world politics that the lessons of history may no longer be helpful” (Rosenau 1990: 5). Growing recognition of the changing global security landscape is reflected in a large body of literature that considers the ways this global turbulence, as well as globalization processes themselves, amplify traditional security challenges such as military-to-military conflict and the military use of nuclear weapons, while at the same time creating new threats and vulnerabilities that affect state and human security. Discussions of these changes have found receptive audiences in defense and security communities who are confronting the development and maintenance of traditional war fighting force structures and capabilities while also needing to prepare for an increasing variety of complex operations including: counterinsurgency and counterterrorism missions; aiding in stability, post-conflict and post-disaster situations; supporting civil authorities; and confronting challenges such as climate change and cybersecurity threats (Barnett 2004, 2009; Diehl 2008; NIC 2008; Smil 2008; Krepinevich 2009; United States Joint Forces Command 2010; Ministry of Defense 2010; United States Department of Defense 2010).

Scholars and policymakers are also increasingly aware that some contemporary security challenges operate differently than traditional challenges. In addition to affecting militaries and other aspects of a state’s national security, Richard Matthew and George Shambaugh write:

Many contemporary threats resulting from factors such as infectious diseases like AIDS, drug-trafficking, and terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction are transnational: they cross state borders, but generally cannot be linked to foreign policies or behavior of other states. Rather than being created and controlled by national governments, these threats are situated in a complex, dynamic, and global web created by modern communication, transportation, and information technologies (Matthew and Shambaugh 1998: 163).

In response to these new modes of security threat, scholars, journalists and policymakers have broadened conceptualizations of security to include health, urbanization, information technology, nuclear proliferation, advanced biological technology development, and environmental degradation. This broadened notion of security calls for a concurrent expansion of security studies in order to understand the changing threats and vulnerabilities facing nations and people. To that end, this chapter places food security in the context of the new international security concerns outlined above. Beginning first with a review of the origins and definition of the concept of food security, the chapter will then consider the relationship of food security to environmental degradation before moving to a broader discussion of how the notion of human security can act as a conceptual framework to enhance understandings of this new generation of security challenges. The chapter’s final section reviews the rise of a networked society and considers the implications of global change for the world’s food system.

Food security: Sufficient, safe and nutritious food for all

Many definitions of food security exist, but at the most general level food security refers to the availability of food and people’s ability to access it. As the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) reports, food security can be a confusing concept, especially in developing countries, because it is a complex, multifaceted problem involving different yet interlinked aspects (DEFRA 2006). Between 1974 and 2001, organizations issued a succession of official definitions of food security, reflecting the articulation of a gradually more inclusive conceptualization of food security. The 1974 World Food Summit definition focused largely on food supply, defining food security as the “availability at all times of adequate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices” (UN 1975: 6). In the early 1980s, the definition of food security used by FAO (1983) was expanded to include both the physical and economic access as vital components of food security, a concern incorporated into later definitions as well, such as the 1996 Rome Declaration on World Food Security (Rome Declaration 1996). In 2001, FAO further refined this idea, adding “social access” into food security, establishing the definition used today: “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO 2009: 8). This emphasis on social access has been adopted at national levels as well. For instance, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) finds that food security includes the “assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (that is, without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies)” (USDA 2007a). Common themes among definitions are not only the availability of food supplies but also the ability of all people to gain access to sufficient amounts of nutritious food for an active and healthy life (Sen 1982; Clay 2002; FAO 2003b; Runge et al. 2003; Barrett and Maxwell 2005; Shaw 2007; Barrett 2010).

Ensuring food security has been a central feature of global governance efforts to promote peace, prosperity, and stability. Efforts to address global challenges of hunger and malnutrition by improving food production, supply, and trade, and disseminating the findings of early scientific work in nutrition began in the early twentieth century under the auspices of the International Institute for Agriculture and the League of Nations and received a considerable boost during World War II. In May 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt convened the United Nations Conference on Food and Agriculture. The roots of the conference can be traced to Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address where he described his vision of a world founded upon four freedoms, including what he called the third freedom, “freedom from want – which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world” (Roosevelt 1941). The 1943 conference was organized with the specific aim “to consider the goal of freedom from want in relation to food and agriculture” (Shaw 2007: 3). The conference recognized that “freedom from want means a secure, an adequate, and a suitable supply of food” (ibid.) and began discussions of an organization that could address persistent challenges of hunger, resulting in the formal creation of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on October 16, 1945 (UNDP 1994; Runge et al. 2003; Barrett and Maxwell 2005; Shaw 2007).

With the creation of the FAO, the world community set a goal of ensuring that all people had the food they needed to live a healthy life. Scotsman Sir John Boyd Orr was selected as the FAO’s first Director-General and identified the goal and purpose of the organization in an address that recognized that “each nation has accepted the responsibility … to provide, as far as possible, food and a health standard for all peoples … But something new has arisen. All the governments have agreed to cooperate in a great world food scheme, which will bring freedom from want to all men, irrespective of race and color” (quoted in Shaw 2007: 5). The problem facing the new organization was understood as having two dimensions: first, it required protecting both consumers and producers from severe fluctuations of agricultural prices and production; and second, it involved using agricultural surpluses to assist nations with food production deficits in ways that did not disrupt trade or create disincentives for domestic production improvements. The experiences of the world wars had clearly demonstrated that problems of instability, want, and lack of basic necessities such as food in one nation could become a problem for all nations (Runge et al. 2003; Barrett and Maxwell 2005; Shaw 2007).

During the latter half of the twentieth century, the right to food and an obligation to help all states provide and secure that right was affirmed in many of the foundational agreements of global governance. For instance, in 1948 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which included in Article 25 the statement that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food” (UN 1948). The 1966 Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights declared “the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger” and outlined “the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food” (UN 1966). The importance of finding ways to meet the needs of growing human populations in a way that contributes to environmental sustainability and rural development was highlighted in chapter 14 of Agenda 21 which was adopted by more than 175 Governments at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UN 1992). The 1996 Rome Declaration on World Food Security confirmed “the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger” (Rome Declaration 1996). These many examples highlight the transformation of food security from a discrete issue of international concern to one fully integrated into the core global governance agenda.

Based on recognitions of the importance of food security to international peace and human security, addressing hunger and malnutrition have been central goals of global efforts to improve health and well-being. In the early 1970s, the world confronted a food crisis driven in the short term by the 1972 decline in world food production (the first drop in two decades), but also by longer-term drivers such as population growth, instability in the volume of world food aid supplies, and rising consumption demands of changing diets in developed and developing countries. In response to the world food crisis, world leaders gathered in 1974 at a World Food Conference and issued a declaration that “every man, woman and child has the inalienable right to be free from hunger and malnutrition in order to develop fully and maintain their physical and mental faculties” (UN 1975: 2). While the 1974 conference represented an important milestone in global recognition of food insecurity as a subject for first order political concern, it did not succeed in laying out an agreed upon global path addressing food security and developing targets and goals. However, the 1974 conference was a catalyzing moment in global concern about food problems, and ushered in the succeeding decades’ attention to reducing food insecurity. For instance, the 1996 World Food Summit “established the target of halving the number of undernourished people by no later than 2015” (FAO 2006). In addition to this target, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were articulated in September 2000 when 189 countries agreed to adopt “the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to stronger global efforts to reduce poverty, improve health and promote peace, human rights and environmental sustainability” (UNDP 2003: 15). The first MDG aimed to “eradicate extreme poverty and hunger” by 2015 and includes target 1c which aims to “reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.” This target is further refined as the two indicators for monitoring progress of halving: (1) the prevalence of underweight children under five years of age; and (2) the proportion of population below minimum level of dietary energy consumption (UN 2008a). The evolving definitions of food security stress the fact that it is not a target to be met (such as ensuring that all people receive 2,000 calories of food per day), but that it is a progressive goal of ensuring access to food that is adequate, safe, and nutritious. Furthermore, refinement in conceptualizations of food security also demonstrate growing recognition that the aim of food security is not just to ensure that people are well fed, but that they have all the necessary requirements to fully flourish as individuals, communities, and societies (Drèze and Sen 1989; Sen 1999; Commission on Human Security 2003; Shaw 2007).

As Dalby (2009) recognizes, concerns over the impacts of population and scarcity of key resources such as food are not new. Previous discussions of food problems have tended to be from either a neo-Malthusian or cornucopian perspective, and it is useful to briefly review each. Neo-Malthusian, or catastrophist (Smil 2000) perspectives can be traced to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century work of Thomas Malthus. Malthus foresaw inevitable social problems emerging from the inherent tension he believed existed between differing rates of increase in human population and food supply. In An Essay on the Principle of Population, published in six editions between 1798 and 1826, Malthus argued that while “population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio … the means of subsistence … could not possibly be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio” (Malthus 1826). Malthus’s notion that human populations could, under certain conditions, increase at a geometric rate, while food supplies, under optimal conditions, could only increase at an arithmetic rate, has led to considerable discussion and, in recent years, increasing critique and rejection. As Smil (2000) remarks, Malthus himself was guardedly optimistic that human societies could find ways to increase food supplies, commenting in the final chapter of his essay: “On the whole, therefore, though our future prospects … may not be so bright as we could wish, yet they are far from being entirely disheartening” (Malthus 1826). Since the publication of his essay, a considerable body of scholarship has developed to refine and extend Malthus’s ideas about how finite stocks of natural resources place limits on the growth of human societies and the amount of resources they can consume without triggering effects such as poverty, famine, and conflict (Malthus 1826; Ehrlich 1968; Meadows et al. 1972; Brown 1970, 1977, 2004; Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1990; Brown 2009).

In contrast to these ideas, cornucopians, a term which originates from the Greek myth of a horn of plenty that supplied its owners with endless food and drink, contend that limitless stocks of human ingenuity mean there are few, if any, limits on population growth and resource consumption (Simon 1981; Simon and Kahn 1984; Lomborg 2001). Cornucopians, also referred to as economic optimists, argue that properly functioning markets provide incentives that encourage conservation and substitution of resources and the development of new types of resources and technologies. Julian Simon was a key proponent of the cornucopian perspective. In The Ultimate Resource (1981), Simon argued that population increases generally had positive, rather than negative, impacts as they improved the supply of ingenuity available to solve problems and staved off the sorts of collapses predicted by Malthus and his supporters. Over the past few decades, proponents of both the neo-Malthusian and cornucopian perspective have engaged in lively discussions. For example, in 1980 Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich wagered on a demonstration of the implications of resource scarcity; Ehrlich bet that five metals would increase in price by 1990 as they would become more scarce while Simon bet (correctly) that the prices would go down as innovation and improvements in technology effectively increased the supply of the resources (Regis 1997).

Central to both perspectives of food problems is a sense of crisis. While they differ in their proposed strategies for coping and adaptation, there is general agreement among neo-Malthusian and cornucopian perspectives that human populations face considerable food security challenges. In recent decades, and most noticeably during the food crises of the 1970s and late 2000s, concern about world food problems received a significant amount of attention (Godfray et al. 2010). Observers, such as Lester Brown, point to this confluence of global trends, arguing that the result is that the world is “entering into a new food era. Early signs of this are the record-high grain prices of the last few years, the restriction on grain exports by exporting countries, and the acquisition of vast tracts of land abroad by grain-importing countries” (Brown 2009: 216). A central challenge of this new era will be not just increasing food production to meet human needs – a major scientific goal and achievement during the twentieth century – but also ensuring efficient distribution of existing food supplies as, despite those increasing food supplies in the last century, food did not always reach those who needed it most. For example, Vaclav Smil identifies the underlying challenge of food security as “how can we best feed some ten billion people who will likely inhabit the earth by the middle of the twenty-first century” (emphasis added; Smil 2000: ix). The introduction of a special issue of the journal Science devoted to food security reinforces this focus: “feeding the 9 billion people expected to inhabit our planet by 2050 will be an unprecedented challenge” (Ash, Jasny, Malakoff and Sugen 2010: 797). These observations, however, are merely projections of problems that already exist worldwide. As Sir John Beddington (2009) comments, according to many current projections, global population growth, food demand, and water scarcity could begin to converge to have significant impacts as soon as 2030. As Beddington’s observation implies, environmental issues are increasingly at the forefront of investigations of food security, a focus likely to grow as the effects of environmental change become more apparent in the coming years (IPCC 2007; Smil 2008; United States Joint Forces Command 2010).

Navigating a changing security landscape: Environmental and human security

Scholars increasingly recognize that environmental degradation has massive implications for security concerns of all kinds. While integrating new literatures on international and human security, these discussions are grounded in academic consideration of human actions on the global environment that have existed since the mid-twentieth century. Beginning in the 1960s, the environmental movement expanded beyond its roots in the late nineteenth century conservation and wilderness preservation movements to a growing concern for human impacts on nature (Nash 1982). Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, which raised questions about the safety of DichloroDiphenylTrichloroethane (DDT) for humans and animals, is often cited as an important origin for this shift. However, Carson’s publication coincided with several other important events and trends, all of which shaped the modern environmental movement, including: major environmental disasters such as the 1969 Santa Barbara, California oil spill and the 1969 eruption into flames of the highly polluted Cuyahoga River near Cleveland, Ohio; recognitions of new kinds of global environmental problems that extended beyo...