Food security: different systems, different notions (original) (raw)
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L. Califano (ed.), Food Security, Right to Food, Ethics of Sustainability. Legal, Economic and Social Policies , 2023
Food security, understood in its broadest sense as the ‘right to food’, is a fundamental right preordained to respect for life itself. No human being can be guaranteed the right to life if, at the same time, the need for qualitatively and quantitatively sufficient food is not respected. This is a value of food which, in the integrated and interdisciplinary methodological perspective embraced in this book, combines the existential dimension of food with reasoning oriented towards elaborating political choices of intervention. This approach highlights the limits of a socio-economic model that continues to move within a paradigm far removed from the logic of sustainable consumption and respect for fundamental rights.
WTO and Food Security: Chapter 1 Introduction
Springer, 2016
This chapter provides a snapshot of implications for the food security policies in developing countries under the WTO regime. It critically examines the various provisions of the AoA which are creating problems for developing countries in implementing the food security policy without breaching their commitments under the WTO. This chapter discusses various proposals and modalities on food security during the Doha Development Round. The introduction also highlights the price support and food security policies in selected developing countries. Keywords: WTO. Food security. Doha development round. Agreement on Agriculture. Domestic support.
WTO and Food Security: Conclusion and Way Forward
Springer, 2016
This chapter summarises the main findings of this book and discusses the way forward to solve the problems faced by the developing countries on account of rules of the WTO. China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Zambia and Zimbabwe already face constraints in implementing food security policies due to the existing rules of AoA. There is a need to find a permanent solution to the problems faced by developing countries in implementing food security policy under the outdated provisions of AoA. This chapter discusses the various options to find a permanent solution to the issue of public stockholding for food security purposes and points out that common negotiating position of developing countries at the multilateral forum of the WTO will be useful to achieve a permanent solution to the issue of food security.
The WTO and Food Security : Implications for Developing Countries
Springer Singapore, 2016
This book examines the public stockholding policies of selected developing countries from the perspective of WTO rules and assesses whether the provisions of the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) could hamper these countries’ efforts to address the challenges of food security. Further, it highlights the need to amend the provisions of the AoA to make WTO rules just and fair for the millions of people suffering from hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. This book highlights that 12 countries namely China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Zambia and Zimbabwe are facing or will face problems in implementing the food security policies due to the provisions under AoA. These provisions need to be amended for permitting developing countries to address hunger and undernourishment. Progress in WTO negotiations on public stockholding for food security purposes are also discussed and analysed. The findings of this study greatly benefit trade negotiators, policymakers, civil society, farmers groups, researchers, students and academics interested in issues related to the WTO, agriculture and food security.
World's Agricultural Production and Trade: Food Security at Stake
International Journal of Biotechnology for Wellness Industries, 2013
The extraordinary events of the last couple of years, like the surge and the topsy-turvy movement in oil, raw material and food prices, or the development of a so far unprecedented global financial and economic crisis, have been heavily testing the endurance of those earning their living from agriculture and related activities. All these troubles have not been beneficial to the ongoing trade liberalization process within the framework of WTO. Answers to the challenges at national level and the continuing proliferation of inter-and intraregional free trade agreements make the early global liberalization even less probable. The situation is further complicated by those really divergent changes of agricultural policy that are about to develop on the opposite sides of the Atlantic. In this paper, we describe the recent development of world's agricultural production and trade; offer an insight into the evaluation problems of worldwide food insecurity; and briefly compare the upcoming agricultural policy reforms in Europe and the US.
Food security and international trade: Unpacking disputed narratives
Background Paper
Is trade a threat or an opportunity for food security? Longstanding debates over this question remain unresolved. This is understandable when one considers that the agricultural sector serves a range of vital functions in society. It provides food, which is essential for human survival, and it provides a livelihood for approximately 30 percent of the world’s active workforce. At the same time, agricultural exports are a significant source of revenue for some states, and imports are crucial for food security in other states. Agriculture also has deep ecological connections as well as important cultural dimensions. For these various reasons, there has long been concern about the ways in which international trade might improve or hinder society’s ability to balance different social and economic goals as they relate to agriculture and food security. This paper seeks to shed light on this debate by providing an overview of the main opposing narratives and the rationale behind them. It does not seek to advocate one viewpoint over the other. Instead, it seeks to examine the contours of the debate with a view to uncovering why it is so polarized, and how we might move beyond the current impasse in international policymaking. The first section of the paper briefly maps out the historical context of the different understandings of the links between food security and trade. It shows that norms and ideas around the concepts of both food security and trade in agriculture have shifted over time, both independently and in relation to each other. The second and third sections of the paper explain the conceptual basis of two distinct narratives: one that sees trade as an opportunity to enhance food security; and another that sees trade as a threat to food security. These sections examine the arguments put forward in support of these viewpoints and discuss some of the potential limitations and inconsistencies of each approach. Each of these narratives emerges from different scholarly traditions grounded in their own notions of science. The trade as opportunity narrative emerges largely from the discipline of neoclassical economics and relies on the ideas of gains from trade as predicted by trade theory, the practicality of trade in a diverse world, as well as the perceived costs of trade protection. The trade as threat narrative emerges from a range of social science disciplines as well as agroecological science and draws on ideas of the sovereignty of states and communities to determine their own food policy, the multifunctional nature of agriculture in society, and the perceived costs associated with trade liberalization. Each of these approaches raises valid arguments, but each also has weaknesses and inconsistencies. The final section of the paper considers some of the factors that help to explain why this debate has been so polarized in policy settings, and suggests some possible avenues for advancing the policy dialogue. These include asking more open-ended questions, the development of joint language and indicators, and strengthening areas of convergence in institutions of global governance through more collaborative processes. The paper concludes that an assessment of the interplay between food security and international trade benefits from evaluation that draws on multiple disciplinary and methodological perspectives, and it is through such an exercise that common ground in the debate is most likely to be found.
This chapter examines recent developments by WTO member states to expand policy space for food security to demonstrate the appearance of a new grey zone in global trade governance. The chapter is organized as follow. The first section reviews developments in the WTO agricultural negotiations with respect to food security after 2007. The year 2007 is a critical temporal point during which the full extent of the global food price crises became known and was followed by a renewed interest in domestic and international food security policy by governments and international organizations. It will be shown that the manner of the uptake of food security at the WTO agricultural negotiations post-2007 was unpredictable and that WTO members are reshaping international trade rules to expand policy space for food security. This would suggests that the multilateral trade system is capable of more systemic-level flexibility than might have been expected given past debates about trade and food security. This exhibition of systemic-level flexibility is distinct from debates over the efficacy of new WTO rules for food security, which is increasingly subject to debate but beyond the scope of this chapter. The second section examines an unexpected source of innovative ideas that have informed the WTO agricultural negotiations on food security that can be traced to the United Nations human rights system. The flow of ideas from the UN human rights system to the multilateral trade system suggests that under certain global political economy circumstances the transfer of knowledge, norms, and ideas may be more likely than otherwise might be assumed by the literature on the governance of trade. This suggests that in addition to material changes in the global political economy the transfer of ideas may be an important factor in the successful the emergence of grey zones in governance and trade.