"Ending world hunger" has been a headline for decades. This normally comes with images of high-tech farming solutions that have been built to maximize yields, grain silos, or grocery vouchers. This is a hard topic to argue with, as we should be getting food to the hungry people. But having enough to eat is not actually enough.
The term "food security" has been a gold standard around the globe. This is the idea that everyone can have economic and physical access to nutritious and safe food. However, this idea is focused primarily on distributive justice, which treats people as though they are buckets that simply need to be filled. It does not take into account where it came from, if the food is culturally appropriate, or if the people eating it have any say in how it is made. In most cases, getting food for a community entails flooding the area with imported surplus that ends up putting local farmers out of business. This ends up leaving the community even more dependent on those global corporations.
Food sovereignty, on the other hand, is the right for people to define their own food and agriculture system. This looks more at who controls the seeds, who owns the land, and if the meal respects the culture. This idea and the idea of food security are at odds. By focusing on local control and more traditional methods, it would almost be impossible to feed 8 billion people around the world.
Instead, this problem should be looked at as one cannot exist without the other. Food sovereignty is what keeps you healthy and out of the emergency room while food security is the emergency room. You do not want to live in the emergency room, but it can be a necessary thing to get you back on your feet. It is the same for the food justice system. Groups of people do not want to be reliant on the global organizations for all of their food.
Justice is not just making sure that there is a fair distribution of "stuff" across the world but is instead a recognition of both the producer and the autonomy of a culture. Instead of asking if there is enough food to go around, we should be asking whose system are we getting out food from and what is the cost of that (both economically and at the expense of our health/culture).
1 comment:
It's interesting to look at how the term food security came into play and what are the implications of using the word. One of the most accepted definitions, according to a paper published by SupAgro in Montpellier, France and the University of Roma Tre documents that “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, [social] and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”. (FAO, 1996) The publishers actually recognize that this definition from the Food and Agriculture Organization is failing to be addressed in the four pillars of food security. The four pillars are; availability, access, utilization and stability. It does not, however cover the aspect of "food preferences for an active and healthy lifestyle." One could easily interpret this to say that food security actually embodies the word food sovereignty. All of that being said, I do agree that we need to have a balance of accessible food that also does not undermine the cultural and spiritual values of our neighbors.
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