World Grain - May 2014 - 8

FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Pursuing food security,
not sovereignty

greeing on or at least understanding
the meaning of "food security" and
how it should be achieved is quite
suddenly front and center as an issue posing consequences for the grain as well as the
food industry around the world. It was not
long ago, at the time when the Former Soviet
Union approached collapse, that food security directly related to the ability of countries
as well as political blocs like Eastern Europe under Communism to grow and obtain
enough food to maintain an adequate diet for
all. Even after the Soviet disintegration in
the 1990s, food security issues applied to the
way developed nations were in part responsible for assuring Third World countries had
sufficient food. Food aid and then liberalized
trade were viewed as playing the essential
roles in assuring that food security was fostered in a world where suddenly at the opening of the new century production and price
volatility became overriding issues.
Treatment of food security as an international obligation was reflected in highlevel conferences convened by the United
Nations. Yet, this was swiftly transformed
into something quite different by recent
searing events as well as by a country like
the United States worrying more about its
own people's food security than what was
happening abroad. Millions of American
households were counted as food insecure
because they were unable to acquire adequate food supplies due to insufficient resources. The focus was on 7 million households deemed to have very low food security. Food insecurity rates for households
with children suddenly became especially
important as debating intensified about
governmental food assistance.
As American attention turned to domestic
hunger and less concern ruled about global
food security, attitudes also dramatically
shifted in nations that have suffered recurring national food shortages. In a transformation that can only be described as counterproductive, if not destructive, countries like
India and some of its neighbors in Asia have
taken up fighting for "food sovereignty" as a
replacement for "food security." Food sovereignty is best described by one of its advo8

cates in the following declaration: "Governments ought to imagine how they might take
back their food sovereignty from a multilateral system that increasingly denies it."
In this context, food sovereignty means
individual nations would no longer be
subject to limits in what they could do to
provide subsidies to their domestic food
producers. The goal would be to curtail or
eliminate restrictions that limit expansion of
food production to as near self-sufficiency
as possible. All the checks included in international treaties that have been placed on
governmental payments affecting farmers'
income and acreage would be ended or curtailed. Instead, these countries pursuing food
sovereignty, rather than relying on supplies
acquired through liberalized trade, would
seek to build domestic stockpiles as protection against international swings in production and prices. One version of food sovereignty includes the suggestion that all the
provisions regarding agriculture be totally
eliminated from the agenda and rules of the
World Trade Organization, the global body
devoted to liberalizing trade.
While food sovereignty has been described as poor countries seeking equity in
pursuit of the same programs developed nations have used for years and as a way for
developing countries to gain the autonomy
that has long been denied them, its implementation would be the road to global catastrophe. The huge progress made in recent
years in helping once poor nations achieve
domestic income gains and diets far superior
to the past is credited for the most part to the
advantages created by liberalized trade. It is
hardly necessary to cite the perfectly awful
situation ruling in North Korea, a country
that has practiced food sovereignty for years,
as an example of what the actual practice potentially threatens. Utter failure in boosting
domestic food production and a population
largely malnourished are the obvious result.
Hardly any argument more powerfully supports trade liberalization as the path to true
global food security..
Morton I. Sosland
Editor-in-chief

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