Food security

Introduction

Food is an essential necessity for human life. Lack of food results in human communities suffering from hunger and malnutrition. In communities and regions of the world when there is no or little access to food supplies, the harshest result can be famine with many people dying of starvation. A recent example of mass severe hunger is in the Democratic Republic of Congo, affecting 26 million people (1/3^rd of the population) in 2022 (CPA, 2022), due to internal conflicts in the east, volcanic eruptions and other natural disasters, diseases (particularly COVID-19), and economic decline. This surpasses the hunger crisis in Yemen due to the conflict with neighbouring Saudi Arabia (WFP, 2022).

Due to multiple factors, including the recent COVID-19 pandemic, hot and dry weather limiting grain production in European Union countries, Ukraine, and United States (World Bank, 2022a), and war in Ukraine affecting shipment of grain from one of the world’s largest producers, the outlook (World Bank, 2022b) is for rising food insecurity in low- and middle- income countries, but also affecting high-income countries. In short, each of the dimensions of food security (FAO, 2008): availability, accessibility, utilization, and stability of the other three dimensions regarding food, are being critically impacted. Furthermore, as food is widely traded and inputs for producing food are also widely traded, trade restrictions and sanctions can make achieving food security around the world a pressing global challenge (Orford, 2015). This is exacerbated in a time of food crisis, when international impacts are felt rapidly. This includes cross border conflicts and large-scale migration (WFP, 2017). Government instability, downgrading of a state’s investment profile, and other negative effects also arise for a state faced with food insecurity (Abdullah, et.al., 2020, p. 937).

Traditional approaches

Consequently, food security is commonly considered a fundamental national security issue (Walton, n.d., p. 1), as evidenced by protectionist agricultural policies adopted in many countries, which reflects a sense of national vulnerability (Smith & Thompson, 2022) around food production and distribution. Food security is undoubtedly important to the strength and economic power of a state, which always needs a healthy population for productivity within the state. Gao (2010, p. 42) asserts that food security is the “basic guarantee for national security”.

One would then expect realists to argue that a state should pursue an aggressive approach to its food security interests (Walton, n.d.). This is on the basis that a state cannot trust another state in an anarchistic international system (Walton, n.d., p. 3). A state itself does not have to directly take that aggressive approach as the regime it sets up for agricultural production and producers, and the export and import of agricultural products, can be a sufficient indicator of aggressive policies.

In this regard, the high priority a state gives to exports of agricultural products and the low priority it gives to national self-reliance in food, on the basis that it can cheaply import food on the global market (this also being a high priority policy), can be considered an aggressive approach. That is, a state aggressively asserts to the world its ability to export as well as its power to import food. Furthermore, a regime of disengagement by a state from agriculture (Walton, n.d., p. 7), produces a bias in favour of exporting cash crops and non-intervention in food prices. However, in times of food crisis, such as in 2007-08 (Walton, n.d., p. 11), a state can also exert power by aggressively restricting food exports, even if this effects food supplies potentially destined to other states. It does so on the basis of sovereign control of its agricultural affairs. This then makes local farmers the main supplier to local markets (FarmingUK Team, 2018).

In any case, a state cannot disregard the possibility of its people facing starvation, so needs to incorporate some humanistic safeguards into its food policy regime. Doing so ensures human security within a state, albeit in a weak form. Nevertheless, it may be enough so that general agricultural policies do not become destabilizing or self-defeating for a state, and so that well-functioning communities can continue within a state (Lebow, 2021, p. 34), in which people can pursue their individual interests, as per classical realism.

However, it remains problematic that the capitalist form of production dictates that it is in the interests of plantation owners and ‘big agriculture’ to raise outputs for export purposes, intensify farming practices through monoculture, and adopt chemical solutions (Mann, 2017) to achieve crop increases. The counter-argument is that this is the best form of agriculture (Nordhause & Blaustein-Rejto, 2021), which should be supported by the state. Even so, while states will support international free markets when food is readily available, a state is likely to defect from this kind of international arrangement, and from cooperation with other states, in a time of food crisis (Walton, n.d., p. 16).

Traditionally, there is also a human rights element that cannot be disregard, given that 171 states are parties and another 4 are signatories (OHCHR, 2022) to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), which under Article 11 obliges states to recognize the right of everyone to adequate food and to be free from hunger, and for realization of these rights through agricultural measures and international cooperation. These humanistic and cooperative elements though are aspects of liberalism (Russett, 2021, p. 68), not of realism. Interestingly, the Covenant enshrines the cooperative liberal element through its provision that states should be “taking into account the problems of both food-importing and food-exporting countries, to ensure an equitable distribution of world food supplies in relation to need” (Article 11.2(b)). Arguably, this provision is designed to address over-expansion (Legro & Moravcsik, 1999, p. 23), being a situation in which a state’s exports and/or imports of food go beyond a point where they trigger overwhelming counter-responses, either internationally such as trade disputes or domestically such as concerns that ‘big agriculture’ as a rent-seeking group (Snyder, 1991) is profiteering at the expense of national food security and sustainability.

Non-traditional approaches

Critical analysis must then come into play, as food security is also about ‘emancipatory security’ (Booth, 1991) in that individuals need to be free from hunger. In this context, people are the referent object of security (Mutimer, 2012, p. 49), and they have a human right to adequate food. Ensuring that right can entail removing constraints, such as market practices, that may stifle the right and the food security of each individual. This can also involve reforming the state’s policy regime regarding food production and the export and import of foods.

De Schutter (2010, p. 4; 2014a), looking at food security from the perspective of socio-economic development, in effect, adopts such an emancipatory approach. Consistent with pragmatic critical theorists, food security can be seen in terms of universal morality and political economy (Roach, 2021, p. 152). De Schutter (2014a) suggests for low-income countries to achieve food security there needs to be: (i) investment in smallholder agriculture in those countries, so as to move away from use of farmworkers as cheap labour on large plantations which then export raw food commodities, while the country becomes dependent on food imports; (ii) reforms in mid- and high- income countries to avoid overproduction of food that is merely incentivized by agricultural subsidies, to then export that food to low-income countries hampering their rebuilding of local food systems; and (iii) support for local food systems in all countries so that more food commodities are sold in local markets.

From a critical theory perspective, pressing issues internal to a country regarding food security are solved by its people having an active role (Ferreira, 2017, p. 55) in national and local affairs. De Schutter’s points (2014a) are designed to support this approach. Again, this makes the people as the referent object for food security purposes. Consequently, achieving food security requires some changes to social, economic and political structures, which are relative constructs not absolute (Snyder, 2012, pp. 4-5), and the relations supporting them or that give rise to them.

This approach is rather different to the realist assumption of international relations (including those pertaining to production and trade in food) being isolated from other social forces (Ferreira, 2017, p. 50). Indeed, De Schutter is pointing out that food insecurity arises from a complex interplay of state and inter-state forces in the economic sphere. While empirical challenges exist in changing these forces and their relations (which are collective constructions), and requires the logic of communication (Roach, 2021, p. 154) to open up space for greater reflexivity (Fierke, 2021, p. 179) on different politico-economic possibilities, this is necessary to instigate transformative processes (De Schutter, 2014b) to achieve real state and global food security. The benefit of critical theory is its willingness to examine the structures, relations and rules that go with the economics of food production, and with food trade, that generate constraints (McCullum, et al., 2004), limitations and vulnerabilities, so giving rise to food insecurity.

Conclusion

Being prone to food insecurity can never be in a state’s national interests. Traditional and non-traditional approaches regarding food security certainly have this in common. A realist state would likely trade food to its advantage, but would remain sceptical of the intention of other states, and pull back from trade in times of food crisis in order to ensure stability within the state.

However, such fear is not the same as addressing moral, relational and structural issues regarding food production and trade that critical theorists, and even constructivists, attend to. They lean towards emancipatory measures, such as a state being self-sufficient in food, because the state need not then divert its resources, workforce and foreign policies in making sure that its population is not faced with starvation (Baldwin, 1993, p. 17) or food insecurity generally, especially in war. Liberalists similarly support this approach as it is consistent with the right to food for every individual. These approaches, however, do not deny that international cooperation is required to achieve food security for all.

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