Food Security and International Relations

ibidem-Press, Stuttgart

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1—INTRODUCTION. Food, Human Security and International Relations: Relations of Humanity?

CHAPTER 2 Contours of Food Security Challenges in Neo-liberal India

CHAPTER 3 Legal Dimension of the Human Right to Adequate Food and Public Policies

CHAPTER 4 Brazil and the Diplomacy to Fight Against Hunger and Poverty

CHAPTER 5 Practicing the Principles of South-South Cooperation: The Methodology of the Centre of Excellence Against Hunger

CHAPTER 6 Maize and the World Market: a History of Racism, Commodification, and Resistance

CHAPTER 7 International Food Aid and Genetically Modified Organisms: the Case of the United States

CHAPTER 8 From Food Insecurity to Food Dependence: Pattern of Land Accumulation and Land Grabbing in Argentina

CHAPTER 9 China’s Food Security and Land Grabbing. The Case of Argentina.

CHAPTER 1—INTRODUCTION.
Food, Human Security and International Relations: Relations of Humanity?

Thiago Lima (UFPB); Agostina Costantino (IIESS, UNS-CONICET); Laís Forti Thomaz (UFG); Raquel Maria de Almeida Rocha (USP)

1 Introduction

The present Era on Earth has been named the Anthropocene. This era began in the late eighteenth century, when the industrial revolution, advances in agriculture and medicinal innovations allowed humanity to act and live on a scale that was entirely different from earlier eras. Producing and Reproducing1. The number of human beings has grown dramatically over the last two centuries; plotted on a Cartesian graph, it has been a veritable rocket launch. For this dizzying explosion of the species to occur, the amount of food produced also had to increase. We now know that there is an excess—rather than a lack—of food for humanity. The issue is how to distribute this food and which criteria should be used (ZIEGLER, 2013).

The Anthropocene means—nothing more, nothing less—that humanity is now able to affect the geophysical functioning of planet Earth. The magnitude of this is truly remarkable. Humanity’s activities became so powerful that they unwittingly changed the climate of the globe. For those of us alive now, we are in a somewhat different situation, as we understand what is happening. It is distressing to realize that we may be forced to live with the consequences of our ancestors’ decisions. It is reassuring, however, to think that something can be done to mitigate the consequences for the people still to come.

The concept of the Anthropocene did not arrive with a sense of celebration. It is not an award recognizing the progress of humanity. Rather, it is a warning that humanity may have produced and reproduced to such an extent that it unleashed factors capable of leading, if not to the end of the world, then at least to extremely serious ecological cataclysms that are likely to intensify conflicts around the world.

Conflict. A word that reminds us that the idea of “one Humanity” is—still?—illusory. Most of the social sciences were developed to address a fact inherent to the human being: people are divided into groups that conflict with one another. However, the groups themselves are a sign that conflict is not a solitary dynamic: it is possible to cooperate and to offer solidarity. But on what scale? Among nations? With our fellow citizens?

To think about the possibilities of cooperation and solidarity for the elimination of hunger, it is essential to refer to the report on “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World,” organized annually by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN). The FAO (2018) indicates that over the last three years, the absolute number of undernourished people has increased to 821 million, or approximately 11% of the world’s population. After several years of decline, the number is similar to that in 2010. However, if we go back to 2005, there were 945 million people facing chronic food shortages. The absolute number of undernourished people has thus been falling, but very slowly given the urgency of the problem, and unfortunately, this decline is not irreversible.

The global distribution of hunger is quite heterogeneous. The problem was virtually eliminated in North America and Europe, where it is reported that less than 2.5% of the population was experiencing hunger in 2017. In other regions, the scenario was as follows: Africa, 20.4%; Asia, 11.4%; Latin America and the Caribbean, 6.1%; and Oceania, 7%. Although the percentage of people in the world who are experiencing hunger has steadily declined in recent decades, we cannot overlook the fact that this rate has increased in recent years in all subregions of Africa, as well as parts of Asia, Oceania and South America. The intensification of social inequality in the United States may exacerbate the situation there. This reminds us once again that progress—which is being made extremely slowly—is not irreversible.

The leading causes of hunger today are adverse weather events, the prevalence of armed conflict and economic crises (FAO, 2018). Although there are some exceptions in the case of the first cause, the latter two are undoubtedly the result of human action. However, if we adopt the perspective of Amartya Sen (2008), even though not all hunger has human causes, it is possible to argue that since the mid-twentieth century, all hunger has been allowed by humans. In other words, if there is food and the technical means to deliver it to the hungry, there are only undernourished people because there is no policy for providing those people with food.

Politics and economics converge on this point: while economic growth is important, it does not guarantee any reduction in hunger, at least not on the possible scale. The intensifying concentration of wealth around the world, given the continued persistence of millions of hungry families, demonstrates that economic interests are not guided by humanity. In Brazil, 71 million people held 50% of the national income in 2015, while 1.4 million accounted for 28% of the country’s wealth. The government failed to regulate that distribution and protect the country from the threat of returning to the Hunger Map in 2018. The number of people in extreme poverty in Brazil jumped from approximately 5.1 million in 2014 to approximately 10 million in 2016, and there is no reason to expect any improvement (RBA, 2018; G1, 2018). For our neighbor, Argentina, undernourishment and food exports have grown alongside each other in recent years, as analyzed by Costantino in Chapter 6.

The problem of food and nourishment no longer refers only to the lack of food. Undernourishment has become an increasingly notable problem on an international level. Strongly present in a number of developed countries, particularly in the US, a diet that leads to people becoming obese is spreading around the globe. Josué de Castro noted halfway through the last century that a large percentage of the poor suffered from hidden hunger, i.e., they were able to fill their stomachs, but they still lacked nutrients. The problem is now taking on another dimension: stomachs are becoming too full, leading to obesity and a host of nutritional disorders. There are currently 38.3 million overweight children in the world: 46% of them are in Asia, and 25% are in Africa. While childhood obesity has remained stable since 2012, adult obesity has increased since 1975. Today, 672 million people worldwide are obese (FAO, 2018). What many people still overlook is that our diets are not simply related to flavor and tradition. They are also the result of international dynamics driven by geopolitical factors, the trajectory of capitalism or other forces.

In the field of international relations, the issue of hunger still lacks prominence. Fortunately, the human security approach has helped bring it to the forefront, reverberating into discussions about rights, public policy and economic arrangements. The human security approach helps make it possible to understand the concept of food security. We will now take a critical look at this topic and the need for a multidimensional analysis of agrifood, as presented in the chapters of this collection.

2 Human Security: people first

The human security approach has a controversial origin. The international relations literature generally locates it within the debate on the expansion of international security studies, with an emphasis on the post-Cold War scenario. It originates, however, in debates among developmental economists. They thought about the humanization of the economy through the concerns raised by new threats to individuals (ROCHA, 2017). Some authors claim that human security was almost exclusively a contribution of the UN, while others argue that the organization was the birthplace of only some of the key insights (OWEN, 2008; MACFARLANE, KHONG, 2006).

In any case, the topic of human security emerges as both an instrument for advocacy and an intellectual device calling for the unification of protection, welfare and rights concerns inherent to individuals. At its core is the guarantee of “social security” (TADJBAKHSH, 2005). There is an attempt to identify threats and ways to mitigate them, focusing on the protection of people and communities, rather than the security of states, thus emphasizing the importance of human rights (KALDOR, 2007). People should be protected regardless of whether threats come from anthropogenic activities or natural events, whether they are within or outside the state, or whether they are direct or structural (THAKUR, 2004). For Thakur (2004), although this approach results in the loss of a certain analytical rigor, it is more important to be inclusive when defining threats (THAKUR, 2004)2.

At the same time, poverty, natural disasters and epidemics are now being discussed as threats to international security itself, which ends up broadly influencing the debate on development and security, particularly as they are vocalized through the UN (ROCHA, 2017). In Brazil, for example, the threat of hunger is considered through the internalization of the human right to adequate food (HRAF) (LOPES, FEITOSA, Ch. 2).

Human security as a policy approach is defined for the first time in the 1994 Human Development Report (HDR) by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) (UNDP, 1994). The term, however, had previously been used in the 1992 report, An Agenda for Peace, as well as being cited five times in the 1993 HDR, emphasizing the need for a “people-centered development” (UNDP, 1993)3. However, the 1994 HDR was responsible for making the idea more widespread. It sought to influence the debate, as well as international cooperation, on development and security actions among member states and other UN institutions. The report states that:

Human security can be said to have two main aspects. It means, first, safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression. And second, it means protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life—whether in homes, in jobs or in communities. Such threats can exist at all levels of national income and development. (UNDP, 1994, p. 23)

The Report also states that there should be two components for understanding human security: (i) freedom from fear—freedom from threats that impede access to people’s rights, security and guarantees to life; it is thus essential to be free from the fear of physical violence and fear more broadly; and (ii) freedom from want—individuals free from poverty, for example, through stable access to healthcare and the economy.

All the reports since 1990 have been based on the premise that a nation’s wealth is its people and that it is necessary to broaden the possibilities for their personal fulfillment, rather than solely in terms of the nation’s productivity. This premise is influenced by the conception of broadening the substantive freedoms of individuals (Sen, 2008). In other words, while an increase in income or GDP enables people to expand their freedoms as citizens, having access to healthcare, education or civil and political rights and freedom of expression, for example, are other determinants of freedoms that are equally important to human development. This means that human security can be underpinned by human development.

The HDR also establishes seven pillars for human security: (i) economic security: sufficient remuneration from labor activity or social welfare to guarantee the survival of the individual and their family; (ii) food security: guarantee of both economic and physical access to a basic diet that supplies the minimum daily intake of nutrients required by the individual; (iii) health security: guarantee to an environment free of chronic diseases and the availability of medical care; (iv) environmental security: absence of threats of environmental origin, as well as guarantees to drinking water, clean air and clean rivers, among others; (v) personal security: absence of bodily threats from physical violence, which may be political, ethnic, street, domestic, gender, child abuse, suicide or war, among others; (vi) community security: security guaranteed to people who are part of an ethnic group, for example; and (vii) political security: guarantee to fundamental human rights, such as freedom of political expression (UNDP, 1994). The Report demonstrates that human security should be a universal concern. Its components are interdependent, and the easiest way to guarantee it is through prevention.

The 1995 World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, however, did not adopt human security. States were skeptical, believing that the idea would lead to violations of state sovereignty. The most concrete step towards human security only occurs in 1997, with the signing of the Ottawa Convention, followed by the Rome Statute in 19984. The Convention prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel landmines and requires their destruction (ACA, 2018), while the Statute creates the International Criminal Court (ICC), the first international court that judges individuals rather than states, i.e., the international community’s first attempt to construct a punishment mechanism for individuals who commit crimes against humanity, in cases where the national court system is reluctant or unable to prosecute (ROCHA, 2011).

In 2000, at the initiative of Japan, the United Nations Human Security Fund (UNHSF) was created, which

(..) [finances] projects related to peacebuilding, post-conflict restoration, and approaches to chronic poverty, disaster risk reduction, human trafficking and food security, seeking to translate them into operational activities that offer sustainable benefits to people and communities whose survival, dignity and livelihood are threatened as well as empower individuals to increase their resilience (ROCHA, 2017, p. 108).

Empowerment was included in the HDR as early as 1993, in the discussion on human development. This demonstrates that individual autonomy is essential to the state and the markets, not only for accessing civil and social rights but also because development is intended to help and support people, enabling them to have control over their own lives, whether it is within the context of physical or food security, for example.

The UNHSF became operational with the approval of Resolution 66/290 by the UN General Assembly, which recognizes that human security has three pillars: development, human rights and peace and security. This is the most emblematic resolution in terms of human security. In addition to asking member states to use the approach, it defines human security in practical terms, to be applied across the UN system. It also alters the functioning of the UN system, as it was very difficult for the agencies to find ways to understand how human security should be incorporated into everyday life.

3 Food: threat, right and food sovereignty

As we have seen, food security is part of the human security approach. However, the FAO, which discusses the evolution of food security as an operational concept in public policy, indicates that over two hundred definitions have emerged since the 1970s. Since 2001, the official definition has been:

Food security [is] a situation that 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, 2003).

Burke and Lobell (2010, p.14) highlight the three components of the concept, in a conventional view: (1) food availability; (2) food accessibility; and (3) food utilization. Availability refers to the physical presence of food; accessibility refers to having the means to acquire food through production or purchase; and utilization refers to the food having an adequate nutritional content and to the body’s ability to use it effectively.

However, other interpretations are more comprehensive. Treating food security as a right, Leão and Maluf (2012, p.7) characterize the right to food as a form of regular and permanent access to adequate food for all people, giving attention to the conditions under which it is produced and marketed. The authors explain that this right must be achieved without compromising other rights, such as housing, healthcare, education, income, environment, work, transportation, employment, leisure, freedom and land access and possession.

The divergence noted here is not trivial. It signals a clash of ideas that ultimately reverberates into domestic and international public policies. For example, in the streamlined view of Burke and Lobel (2010), there is no emphasis on the local specificities of food production and trade, which is present in Leão and Maluf (2012). We will not include a conceptual discussion in this introduction, as it can be found in the chapters. For example, in the chapter by Costantino, it is clear that the former view can coexist with increased undernourishment in Argentina, which would be unthinkable for the latter.

From the perspective of human security, food security is a foundation for peace, political stability and sustainability, as structural peace can only be achieved if there is food security. Food insecurity is thus a threat to people and the international system. It is even possible to state that we are not secure if we do not have guarantees to buy food nor the freedom to grow and store it.

It is also essential to understand that conflict damages crop cultivation, animal husbandry and harvesting. It also damages rural resources and disrupts food transportation and distribution systems. The impact that conflicts have on food security can last for long periods of time after the violence has ended; although destruction happens quickly, reconstruction requires time, effort and material, and human and financial resources.

McMichael (2004, p. 4) offers a distinction between the concepts of food security and food sovereignty. He argues that the concept of food security is better associated with the relationship between the nation-state and the international system. In turn, the concept of food sovereignty involves nonstate actors, which would be more closely tied to the political and economic rights of agricultural producers as a precondition for achieving food security. In a way, what McMichael (2004) argues is that each of these concepts represents a type of agricultural production, i.e., food security depends on the agribusiness model, and food sovereignty is based on agroecological relations.

For McMichael (2004), food sovereignty thus emerges as an alternative principle to productivist and quantitative measures of food security, which would be identified with monetary transactions in the capitalist system. Food sovereignty would be premised on an agriculture oriented towards the farmer, small producer and family farm, which for the author would be key to the relationships between environmental and social security and food security. It is important to understand the argument that food sovereignty should be a premise of food security, rather than its antithesis, as McMichael (2004) emphasizes.

To guarantee the food independence and sovereignty of all people, according to La Via Campesina (2001), food must be produced through diversified systems. The organization argues that people have the right to define their own agricultural and food policies, as well as protect and regulate agricultural production and domestic trade in order to achieve sustainability goals, and determine the extent to which they want to be self-sufficient and restrict product dumping on their markets. This requires trade policies and practices that serve people’s rights to safe, healthy and ecologically sustainable production. The protectionist policies adopted primarily by developed countries make it difficult to act on a level playing field in commodities markets. However, there may be a need for protection precisely from the destructive potential of the international commodities market. The idea of food sovereignty therefore implies that communities have the autonomy to decide how to distribute and sell their food.

High commodities prices in 2007/2008 were emblematic of food insecurity caused by jolts in the international market. Ziegler (apud CHADE, 2009, p. 11), a former UN rapporteur on the right to food, emphasized that “in 2008, hunger killed more people than all the wars combined that year.” Chade (2009) argues that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the UN itself stopped giving aid to small farmers in poor countries for approximately twenty years, which exacerbated problems when commodities prices increased. In truth, rather than abandonment, it may be possible to talk about a project making food sovereignty more vulnerable.

The idea of food sovereignty advocates for people’s right to healthy and culturally appropriate food, produced ecologically and sustainably, while valuing the role of women. It implies that a community is able to define its own nutrition and agrifood systems, i.e., the effective right to choose what we should eat, where the food comes from and how it should be grown. However, it is important to avoid adopting a romantic approach to food sovereignty, which could hinder an open and creative reflection on the systemic challenges of eliminating hunger worldwide.