This article focuses on the idea of “food security” not being the stand alone ideology for alleviating world hunger. In a way they want to move away from global market scales as the main way to address hunger. I think this shift, like any other major change, would be difficult and met with a lot of resistance. We know people in power don’t like to give up their power, so in terms of global markets it won’t be easy to separate the two. While saying things like “even those that make use of market mechanisms” may help prevent pushback, it won't be a simple task to move away from big corporations and market based mechanisms.
Getting into what being a food secure nation really means according to the FAO seems questionable. A nation is food secure when “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”. This seems not just conflicting but seems rare around the world if you think about it. I am almost sure there are people everywhere in the world who don’t meet these standards for a plethora of reasons. I’m not arguing with the definition, I just feel that it’s such a difficult standard for a country to meet. When looking at the WHO and UNICEF, they use “pillars” including economic access, food availability, stability of supply, and food utilization.
When talking about food sovereignty they say this is the right of people and countries to determine their agricultural policy without the negative effects caused by government “takeover”. Losing the small scale farms and moving towards larger scale companies led to the diminishing of our food system as we produced “records” amounts of food. The ideas for this are all there but we see little change, we don’t see a lot of the autonomy spoken of when dealing with food sovereignty. The Detroit Black Community Food Security Network is a good start for this, and it shows that these groups can help everyone in the area, not just one group. In my opinion I like the idea of food sovereignty more than food justice. Food justice does a good idea at highlighting the issues of the past, and the root causes. I see food sovereignty as us getting closer to a “solution”. The idea of autonomy could be very effective and helpful in building up what we used to know as the people's food system.
2 comments:
Yeah, producing "records" amounts of food sounds good out of context, but looking at what had to be sacrificed for a big number to exist makes it less appealing. Scaling things up increases efficiency, so to make these records the agricultural industry has been conglomerated and consolidated. I think that this is one of the main things pushing people into looking towards decentralization and higher autonomy for small farms. It's a noble goal on paper, but it turns out to be a perverted ideal that goes too far.
The powerful may never really give up their power. However, with enough push, many in power can be driven to bend to public opinion. This can be even more relevant today with the influence and access of the media.
Any collective struggle will help mobilize the masses. When it comes down to it, when the disparity is too hard to escape, there will be a turning point where the pressure on legislators and corporations will be too much for them to sustain their market.
Ultimately, I think starting with ideas is the best way to get us closer to any type of solution and food sovereignty seems to be our best path forward.
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