Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
market logics nor fall into the category of radical or inflammatory if it is to inform
more appropriate policy and governance interventions.
Understanding the failure of 'business-as-usual' in the world
food system
Through the process of identifying pernicious (and persistent) elements of global
food relations, the authors in the irst section of this collection draw our atention
to underlying paterns that prevent us from feeding the world. In a review of the
relations of production (both social and environmental) in the global food system,
Jules Prety emphasizes the complexity of factors contributing to the current situ-
ation of global food insecurity. He further atributes the limited eicacy of our col-
lective response to a failure to aknowledge and respect the socio-ecological inter-
actions underlying food production. Hugh Campbell, on the other hand, notes the
particularly counterproductive subjugation of food policy to the concerns of domest-
ic and international political aspirations. In the domestic context, agriculture policy
has been about securing incomes for domestic farm sectors. Abroad, under the guise
of 'aid', food is first treated as a quantity - the surplus production of an overheated
farm sector - and then as a weapon - cajoling cooperation from friendly govern-
ments, punishing the enemy by withholding it. Bill Prithard details a similar issue
in relation to the unwavering bias to neoliberal strictures on the governance of in-
ternational trade. In these situations food becomes a mere commodity, a thing to be
bought and sold with no recognition of its essential contribution to the survival and
health of humanity. According to Philip McMihael, the implications of suh a treat-
ment of food are apparent in the impact of biofuel development in the 2008 crisis -
as just a commodity. The value of maize was determined, not by its role as a staple
and nutrient-rih food, but by our thirst for fuel to drive vehicles. As if this eviscer-
ation of food were not suiciently abhorrent, McMihael demonstrates the further
obscuring of its essential dietary nature through the trading of food commodity fu-
tures, valued solely as capital investments to be bought and sold for profit.
he remaining contributions to the irst section of the topic demonstrate how this
shift in the nature of food has had significant impacts on global engagement with
human rights, health and aspirations for a beter society. For example, Claire Mahon
documents that, despite international commitments to human rights, including the
right to food, too many of the world's population remain hungry. Colin Butler and
Jane Dixon examine the parallel emergence of a reductionist approah to nutrition
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