the food security meme

8/8/2019 The Food Security Meme

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The FoodSecurityMeme

Jon ClokeLoughborough

University


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WHAT DOES FOOD SECURITY MEAN?

When all people, at all times, havephysical, social and economic access tosufficient, safe and nutritious food whichmeets their dietary needs and foodpreferences for an active and healthy life.(World Food Summit, 1996)

W hy is it a meme? A cultural unit conveying a belief?

Because it is not an objective, neutral analytical concept, itderives from the identity politics of moral capitalism.


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Food Security Includes (WFS):

F ood Availability: ava ilab ility of sufficient qu a ntities of food of appropriate quality from domestic production or inputs.

F ood Access: A ccess to adequate resource entitlements toa cquire a ppropri a te foods for a nutritious diet.

F ood Stability: To b e food secure, a popul a tion, household or indi v idu a l must h av e access to adequate food at all times .

F ood Utilization: used through a dequ a te diet, cle a n w a ter, s a nita tiona nd he a lth c a re to re a ch a state of nutritional well-being .

F ood security constructed as disembodied,non-located, absent political economy andsocio-cultural context like famine


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Causes of Food Insecurity Food insecurity is determined by the immediatecauses of Hunger (Food Security in Developing Countries, UKGovernment Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology Postnote,December 2006 Number 274):

Low rates of agricultural production; low access to food; infrastructure andlocal markets; HIV and AIDS; investment power and finance gap; health, waterand sanitation; environmental sustainability; climate change and naturaldisasters; conflict and persecution

Global food production system gets a peripheral mention from aneoliberal viewpoint:

T rade and international markets: Subsidies, tariffs and trade barriers distort patterns of international trade and depress world market prices.


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Cures for Food InsecurityIncreasing social protection;Increasing agricultural production;Science and technology for food security;Improved plant varieties;Research and development in agriculture

F ood insecurity constructed as embodied, located,due to specific political economy and socio-cultural

context at the local/national scale


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G loba l Food ProductionG loba l Food Production

RE AL ITY OF FOODRE AL ITY OF FOODSECURITY VERSUSSECURITY VERSUS

DISCOURSEDISCOURSE


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CONTEXT: GLOBAL FOOD PRODUCTION

Green Revolution - more than doubled cereal production in Asia.Enough production capacity TO DAY to feed the planet - enough to feeda planet with double CURR ENT population.

(Seedling, O ctober 2009) more than one billion people will go hungry,while another half a billion people will suffer from obesity. Three-quarters of those without enough to eat will be farmers andfarm workers (those who produce food).

UK : 7m tonnes of food (20bn a year) thrown away amount of food waste in the UK rising by 15% per decade.

2009 - 200 million adults could be fed every year with the food that theUS throws away.


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CONTEXT: MARKET DOMINATIONIn 1998 ten corporations dominated the seed market; by 2000seven and in 2001 six.

2003 - biggest ten corporations controlled 82 percent of globalpesticides business; Four out of ten biggest companies inpesticides among the top ten leaders of the seed market.

Agrochemicals (preservatives, flavouring, fortifications,colorants, emulsifiers, texturizers etc.) in most three or four

firms control more than 80% of global supply and block entry tomarkets.

Four agribusinesses (Syngenta, Du Pont, Monsanto and Bayer)control almost 100% of the transgenic (GM) seed market (corporatewatch.org)


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CONTEXT: COMMODITY

SPECULATION

Financial speculation the major factor behind the sharp price rise of many primary commodities items over the past year (IA TP 2008,

2009;R

obles et al. 2009;U

NCT

AD 2009; Wahl 2009) (Ghosh, 2010:74).

Food crisis more intense in many D Cs since 2008 - December 2008FAO estimated 33 countries experiencing severe/moderate foodcrises; conditions in at least 17 countries worse compared to O ctober2008 (FA O 2008).

Food crisis in D Cs has been created and worsened by deregulatedinternational finance; D Cs caught in a pincer movement: betweenvolatile global prices on the one hand, and reduced fiscal space anddepreciating currencies on the other hand.


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Problems with food security -

discursive- Definition and discussion of food security increasingly forms a

meta-narrative excluding criticism of an economistic set of

neo-liberal/classical beliefs, precepts and processes.

- Produces a particular underlying implicit geography of foodsecurity, locating it in particular kinds of places and assigningresponsibility to particular categories of actors (who are alwayslocated at a relational distance from the narrative position of thetext).

- T his results in a textually-managed form of geographicalsorting generating a gap between a national/local geographyand an international/non - located geography in whichdisinterested actors can engage in analysis and intervention.


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Problems with food security -

spatialT here is a textual separation of the international (the domainof those surveying and dismayed by food security) from thesphere of national (the domain of food insecurity).

Little/no place in official texts for multinational corporations andbusiness operations or for food security/insecurityoccurring at the intersection of scales.

IFIs take the position of unlocated observer or regulator written out as part of or involved in located food insecurity(through e.g. structural adjustment programmes).


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Textu a l interrog a tions a s if foodsecurity re a lly m a ttered

Ca n FOOD SECURITY/INSECURITY e v er b e

loc a ted or does it a lwa ys in v olv e multi-sc a la r flows a nd processes a nd the juxt a position of different networks or sp a ces?Wh a t kind of a ctors/ a ct a nts a re in v olv ed in it?Wh a t kind of a ctors a re concerned ab out it or pa ying a ttention to it?In wh a t sp a ces a nd a t wh a t sc a les?


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A CRITICAL TAKE ON SECURITY

A NESTED SET OF DISCURSIVE PR A CTICES A ND PROCESSES (MEMES) G ENER A TING

INSECURITY THROU G HFIN A NCI AL /COMMERCI AL CONTRO L A ND

MIL IT A RY FORCE.

OF WH ICH F OOD SECURITY IS A SUBSET!

the food security meme

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