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ABSTRACT
Food security, a long-established item on the international agenda, raises many issues including production, consumption, poverty, inequalities, healthcare and conflicts. However, in 2007/2008 the global food security debate was relaunched with a single dominant focus which continues to the present day: increasing agricultural production. This paper explains this productionist bias – which may translate into inadequate policies – by combining insights from institutionalist and cognitive analyses. We show that, despite recent reforms, the global food security field remains dominated by macro- and micro-institutions that put food availability and agricultural production at the heart of the problem and solutions. The political and discursive strategies developed by transnational corporations and private foundations to promote their productivist interests are also key, along with the demands of dominant farmers’ unions in exporting countries. Although advocating opposite development patterns, civil society actors implicitly reinforce the productionist perspective through their focus on family agriculture.
Acknowledgements
We thank colleagues and actors in the global food security field who have commented on earlier versions of this paper, as well as the three anonymous reviewers and the guest editors for their constructive comments
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Eve Fouilleux is a political scientist. Her research focuses on global policy-making and policy changes in the agri-food and sustainability fields. She has been working on the EU common agricultural policy, food security policies in Africa, organic markets, and voluntary standards as global regulation tools.
Nicolas Bricas works as a socio-economist on changes in food consumption and foodways in the context of rapid urbanization and industrialization in Africa and Asia.
Arlène Alpha has been working for 12 years with various NGOs as an expert on agricultural trade policies and food security. Her research focuses on food and nutrition policies in West Africa.
Notes
1. The WHO requires 2,500 Kcal per day for a working adult to be in good health. Theoretically, the volumes of food produced on a global scale have met this target for the world population as a whole since 1981. Food production has been ever increasing since then, reaching 2,870 Kcal/capita/day in 2011 (authors' calculation based on FAOSTAT database: http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data).
2. In addition, only a few countries (e.g., Brazil, India) explicitly promote social policies as a key means for achieving their own food security.
4. Of 359 articles published in the journal Food Security between February 2009 and February 2015, 191 refer to ‘agricultural production’ or ‘food availability’ in their titles.
5. We encompass the literature on both institutional and organizational fields.
6. ‘Problematization’ is the way in which problems are conceived and enounced (Callon Citation1984), from which the solutions proposed directly derive.
7. ‘Ideational power’ is the capacity of actors to influence actors’ normative and cognitive beliefs through the use of ideational elements (Carstensen and Schmidt Citation2016: 320).
8. Interview, former WB staff member, June 2015.
9. See the Comprehensive Framework for Action (HLTF 2008)
10. Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Spain, USA, United Kingdom.
11. http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/foodsecurity/overview (accessed November 2016).
12. FAO, IFAD, WFP (Citation2011: 51).
13. Authors’ calculations based on lists of participants at CFS plenaries.
14. CFS Secretariat’s preparatory notes.
15. Dupont’s Global Food Security Index, Maplecroft Food Security Index and Gallup World Poll.
19. In 2006–2009, the foundation invested US$1.4billion, 40 per cent more than the FAO budget for 2010–2011 (US$1billion) (McKeon Citation2014).
21. See http://agra-alliance.org/
22. The participation of the private sector in the CFS has increased significantly in recent years.
23. Among others, see Hunger: just another business. How the G8’s new alliance is threatening food security in Africa. Paris: Oxfam-France, ACF, CCFD-Terres-Solidaires. Available at http://www.actioncontrelafaim.org/fr/espace-jeunes-enseignants/content/hunger-just-another-business.
24. See European Parliament resolution of 7 June 2016 on the NAFSN (2015/2277(INI)).
25. F. Hollande, speech at a national agriculture fair, 11 September 2012. Quote afterwards used as a slogan at the French pavilion of the Milan Universal Expo.
26. These discourses also meant to dissimulate specific conflicts of interests tightly related to globalization, as illustrated by the case of Xavier Beulin, both the FNSEA president and the CEO of Avril, a global agribusiness player.
27. Pope Francis, address to the FAO Director General, October 2016, available at http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2016/10/14/0735/01640.html#eng
