How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
ABSTRACT
Since the end of World War II, the International Community has made an effort to fight hunger worldwide. After the 90’s, the outcome looked promising. However, food insecurity levels first became stagnant, and are now on the rise again. This article will argue how food aid cannot eradicate global food insecurity.
KEYWORDS *
Food security, food aid, hunger, agricultural policy, subsidies, import dependency, Global South, food poverty, lobbying, Farm to Fork, right to food, structural inequality
INTRODUCTION
With devastating famines and food shortages after World War II, the International Community made an increasing effort to fight global hunger (Shaw 2007). For the first time, the right to freedom from hunger was established as a human right (Rosenman 1950 cited after Shaw 2007). The FAO and other international organisations were founded to meet that daring challenge. In the 20th century, many milestones were reached: Global food production rose exponentially and could feed now the whole world population, making hunger a problem of distribution rather than production (Serageldin & Landell-Mills 1994). However, hunger stayed prominent, especially in the Global South. Even today, most people suffering from hunger and undernutrition live in Africa and South Asia (Swinnen & Kosec 2023). This is mirrored in my experiences growing up, seeing African children on massive billboards of non-profit organisations, asking for donations to support food aid. Hunger seemed and still seems to be a problem for poor countries, that rely on richer countries for their goodwill in food distribution. But food security is much more complicated than that.
MAIN CORPUS
The political economy of food security
Agricultural policy, which is closely intertwined with food policy and food security, underlies a specific problem other industries do not face: Agricultural production takes time. Because market reactions are only possible with a time lag due to the growth period of agricultural products, it is more difficult for the market to be regulated by supply and demand. This affects all countries, however, the situation becomes more complicated as the agricultural sector is now connected globally and has been for quite some time. In the 20th century, the U.S. and the EU were the most important international players in the agricultural sector and thus controlled grain prices (Schanbacher 2010). The EU agricultural policy was heavily criticised in the late 20th century because of the massive subsidies leading to overproduction and dumping of agricultural products on the global market (Bulmer et al. 2020). Due to the reorganization of the global agricultural market with the U.S. and the EU at the top, countries of the Global South found themselves highly dependent on the two leading actors because of food import dependency (Schanbacher 2010). Also, the industrialization of the agricultural sector in the Global North contributed to climate change (Mbow et al. 2019), which in turn leads to the responsibility of industrialized countries towards countries without an industrialized agricultural sector.
However, countries of the Global South are in a more difficult position due to other factors. First, due to their proximity to the Equator, countries of the Global South already suffer more from the effects of climate change. Natural catastrophes are prone to happen more regularly in these regions with unstable climates (Huq & Adow 2022). Second, in countries of the Global South, armed conflicts are more common (Uppsala Conflict Data Program & Natural Earth 2022). Thus, food policy and food security can easily be neglected by political decision-makers due to the government setting other priorities. People who hunger or starve are usually part of the poorer and more uneducated population. Thus, they do not have a strong lobby to stand up for themselves. Non-profit organisations can administer acute assistance with food aid. However, this dependency on the goodwill of others cannot be a long-term solution for ensuring food security.
Why food aid will not lead to food security
The general public’s contemporary perception of food security leads to several problems. First, as already mentioned in the introduction, food insecurity, and especially hunger, are considered to be a problem of the Global South. This becomes evident as special indices for measuring food insecurity do not even include North America and Europe in their statistics (GHI). But, contrary to this widespread conception, food insecurity is on the rise in North America and Europe. This does not only include the malnutrition of people due to high-calorie, nutrient-poor diets but hunger becomes more prevalent as well. The term “food poverty” (Rost & Lundälv 2021) refers especially in European research to people who are too poor to afford a balanced diet that meets their needs. Researchers argue that hunger is only not as prevalent in European countries due to welfare state systems and the efforts of local food banks (ibid.).
This situation points out the real problem of food insecurity: Structural food insecurity, meaning consistent food insecurity, not food insecurity and famines due to natural catastrophes or other extreme situations, affects poor people, no matter where they live (Gregório et al. 2014). Thus, food insecurity is not a geographical, but rather a global problem that must be tackled by governments in a national and international approach.
Second, there is a structural problem with the global food markets. Food insecure people are often in a situation where they cannot change their situation and are dependent on food aid or food relief programs for several reasons. One of them is the lobbyism of the food industry. Food industries are global players with immense annual revenues. This economic asset can be used, and is used, to influence political decision-makers at national and international level (Lee 2023). One prominent example is the protest against the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy, which aims for more sustainable food production in the EU and a healthier diet for EU citizens (EU Commission 2020). Other examples include lobbying for domestic initiatives such as import taxes or bio-fuel initiatives which drive up global food prices, in turn weakening food security in food-importing countries (Gillson & Fouad 2015). Thus, citizens are dependent either on the goodwill of governments to pursue a food policy which makes healthy and nutritious food affordable or on the goodwill of international organizations involved in food aid. This food relief, however, is nothing more than symptom management. Governments have a responsibility to ensure human rights for their citizens. Rather than listening to lobbyists, governments must stick to their commitment to achieving and realizing human rights globally. We need a change in global food systems to establish global food markets offering affordable prices for everyone.
SUMMARY *
The article’s argument rests on a single reframing. If enough food is produced to feed everyone, then hunger is not a shortfall to be made up but an outcome of how food is distributed and priced, and aid that supplies the shortfall leaves the mechanism producing it untouched. From this the author draws two consequences that cut against the conventional framing. Structural food insecurity is a condition of poverty rather than of geography, which is why it is now measurable in wealthy countries whose absence from the standard indices conceals it. And the policies that shape access, subsidies, tariffs, biofuel mandates and the trade rules that follow from them, are set through political processes in which those most affected have no representation and the food industry has a great deal.
CONCLUSION
The International Community has been trying for about a century now to end hunger globally and has always failed. Global food insecurity persists and is even on the rise, driven by different factors like climate change and economic instability in the global market. Especially countries in the Global South are affected by this dynamic, which exacerbates the north-south divide.
Therefore, crucial change is needed. Food security is a human right and important for everyone to live self-determined. Thus, policymakers must prioritize the well-being of their citizens over the interests of powerful food industries, promoting sustainable and equitable food systems. It has been possible for several decades to feed the entire world population with agricultural production. It is a moral disgrace that this is still not put into practice today because of economic interests.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The article’s central claim is well established and its most important qualification is worth stating, because it determines what any remedy must address. Sen’s finding that famines occur amid adequate food supply, and that what fails is people’s entitlement to obtain it, is the theoretical foundation for exactly the argument made here. It also carries a consequence the article does not draw out: if the binding constraint is purchasing power rather than availability, then income support, employment and social protection are food policy, and in many settings they work faster and more cheaply than anything done to agricultural markets.
That points toward the most significant development in this field over the past two decades, which the article does not mention and which supports its case directly. Cash and voucher assistance has largely replaced in kind food aid in humanitarian response, because it delivers more value per unit of donor money, supports local markets rather than displacing them, and allows recipients to buy what they actually need. The traditional model the article criticises, in which surplus grain from donor countries is shipped to recipients, was for decades sustained by domestic agricultural and shipping interests in the donor states, and reforming it required overcoming precisely the lobbying the article describes. The reform is incomplete but it demonstrates that such interests can be defeated.
Two structural remedies deserve naming. The Agreement on Agriculture and the subsidy regimes it permits remain the largest single distortion in world food markets, and the negotiations to address them have been deadlocked since 2008, which is a mediation failure as much as a trade one: what blocks agreement is that reform imposes concentrated costs on organised producers and delivers diffuse benefits to unorganised consumers. And the right to food, which the article invokes, is a justiciable right in a growing number of jurisdictions, with courts in India and South Africa having ordered concrete measures on its basis. Framing food insecurity as a rights violation with an available remedy is more actionable than framing it as a moral failure.
Two qualifications strengthen the analysis. Conflict is now the principal driver of acute food crises, ahead of climate and economic factors combined, and the article treats it as one factor among several; the practical implication for this journal’s readers is direct, since access negotiations, ceasefires around harvests and arrangements such as the Black Sea grain corridor are food security instruments operated by mediators. And the position of the Global South is more differentiated than the framing allows: several formerly food importing states have become exporters, and the countries in the most difficult position are typically those combining conflict, currency weakness and import dependence rather than those defined by latitude.
Finally, the article’s observation that hungry people lack a lobby is the most important sentence in it, and it identifies where the work lies. Every remedy discussed here depends on political decisions taken by people who answer to organised constituencies. Producer organisations, consumer bodies, urban food councils and the participatory mechanisms established under national right to food frameworks are how an unorganised interest acquires a voice, and building them is slower and less visible than delivering food. It is also the only thing that changes the outcome the article describes.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
Bulmer, S., Parker, O., Bache, I., George, S. and Burns, C. (2020) Politics in the European Union. Fifth Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
European Commission (2020) Farm to Fork Strategy: For a Fair, Healthy and Environmentally Friendly Food System. Brussels.
Gillson, I. and Fouad, A. (2015) Trade Policy and Food Security: Improving Access to Food in Developing Countries in the Wake of High World Prices. World Bank, Washington, D.C.
Global Hunger Index (GHI) The Power of Youth in Shaping Food Systems, https://www.globalhungerindex.org/
Gregório, M. J., Grace, P. and Costa, A. (2014) Time and Regional Perspectives of Food Insecurity during the Economic Crisis in Portugal, 2011 to 2013. Saúde e Sociedade 23(4): 1127 to 1141.
Huq, S. and Adow, M. (2022) Climate Change Is Devastating the Global South, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/5/11/climate-change-is-devastating-the-global-south
Lee, C. (2023) How Does Lobbying Impact our Food and Agricultural Policies? https://www.foodunfolded.com/article/how-does-lobbying-impact-our-food-and-agricultural-policies
Mbow, C., Rosenzweig, C., Barioni, L. G., Benton, T. G., Herrero, M., Krishnapillai, M., Liwenga, E., Pradhan, P., Rivera-Ferre, M. G., Sapkota, T., Tubiello, F. N. and Xu, Y. (2019) Food Security. In: Shukla, P. R., Skea, J., Calvo Buendia, E., Masson-Delmotte, V., Pörtner, H. O. and Roberts, D. (eds.) Climate Change and Land: An IPCC Special Report. Cambridge University Press, 437 to 550.
Rost, S. and Lundälv, J. (2021) A Systematic Review of Literature Regarding Food Insecurity in Sweden. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy 21: 1020 to 1032.
Schanbacher, W. D. (2010) The Politics of Food. Santa Barbara: Praeger Security International.
Serageldin, I. and Landell-Mills, P. (1994) Overcoming Global Hunger. World Bank, Washington, D.C.
Shaw, J. D. (2007) World Food Security: A History since 1945. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Swinnen, J. and Kosec, K. (2023) The Road to Resilience: Rethinking Responses to Food Crises. In: International Food Policy Research Institute (ed.) Global Food Policy Report 2023, Washington, D.C., 6 to 19.
Uppsala Conflict Data Program and Natural Earth (2022) Deaths in Armed Conflicts Based on Where They Occurred, https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace
Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966, Article 11, and General Comment No. 12 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the right to adequate food.
Food and Agriculture Organization, Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food, Rome, 2004.
Sen, A. (1981). Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, annual editions, Rome.
Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, Global Report on Food Crises, annual editions.
World Trade Organization, Agreement on Agriculture, 1994, and the Nairobi Ministerial Decision on Export Competition, 2015.
Barrett, C. B., & Maxwell, D. (2005). Food Aid After Fifty Years: Recasting Its Role. Routledge, London.
Devereux, S. (2016). Social Protection for Enhanced Food Security in Sub Saharan Africa. Food Policy, 60, 52 to 62.
