Agriculture Reference
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for instance, famously argues that conventionally-produced food is not really 'food'
at all.
Alas, space is limited. A topic hapter only allows for so muh conceptual un-
paking. Eventually, categories have to be erected for the sake of an analysis of how
these utopic visions differ. We would like to begin this discussion by offering the fol-
lowing premise: based upon our extensive shared experiences conversing with indi-
viduals about food and food security, it seems that the aforementioned competing
utopian visions about food production (and, by extension, society) can generally be
placed within one of the following two categories. Among proponents of conven-
tional agriculture, food security is frequently reduced to maters of
quantity
, whih
is another way of saying it is about maximizing the production of calories, protein,
vitamins, and the like. Critics of conventional agriculture, conversely, seem to be
working from a more
qualitatively
oriented deinition, whih gives more room for
questions about
how
food is raised, processed, and prepared (for instance, the cultur-
al and social signiicance of food is lost when 'food' becomes an overarhing term
for a carrier of calories, carbohydrates, and protein).
Take the famous 2002 incident when the US sent significant quantities of food
aid, in the form of whole kernel corn, to southern Africa. Soon thereafter it became
known that the aid contained genetically modified organisms (GMOs), though the
recipients had not been notified before the shipments were sent (see, for example,
Clapp, 2004). Many in the developed North were outraged that any country would
refuse food when its people were starving; in their minds whether the aid shipment
contained GMOs or not was immaterial. Yet this misses the competing utopic visions
about what food security
is.
If the debate were
only
about calories than perhaps suh
outrage would be justified. But that's not what the debate was about for everyone
involved. Writing on the politics of famine, Jacques Ellul (1990, p53) explains:
We must not think that people who are the victims of famine will eat anything.
Western people might, since they no longer have any beliefs or traditions or
sense of the sacred. But not others. We have thus to destroy the whole social
structure, for food is one of the structures of society.
he purpose of this hapter is not to resolve the debate about what global food
security 'ought' to mean. Our goal is more modest. We hope to highlight that con-
ventional agriculture proponents and critics are both equally utopian in their visions
about food security. Once we recognize this fundamental fact, we can begin to dis-
