Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Harriet Friedmann and Phillip McMihael (1989) identiied two suh instances
involving food where the system crumbled and then reorganized. They used the
concept of food regimes to refer to the reorganized food systems that emerged in
response to the collapse - a concept employed in several of the contributions to
the irst section of this topic. he shit from the irst to the second regime involved
the implosion of imperial governance structures following the First World War. The
second involved the geopolitical realignment following the Second World War. The
question on the table asks whether the food crisis of 2008 (and 2011) represents a
third major disruption?
While we will only be able to answer that question muh later, our contributors
all agree - food is different. It's not a car or a computer. As pointed out by Noah
Zerbe (2009, p172): 'Perhaps food is unique among commodities in that it is funda-
mentally necessary for human experience. In this respect, any solution to the cur-
rent crisis should begin with the premise that food should not be subject merely to
regulation of the market; that food security should be a central goal of state policy'
(p172). The adoption of this mindset - that sees food (and its provisioning) as a hu-
man right - engenders a host of different directions to reorient the global food sys-
tem.
he contributors to this topic join with a broad literature in arguing that - bey-
ond the escalating commodity prices - the food crisis was also symptomatic of the
social and environmental dimensions that have come to define the global food sys-
tem. In other words, despite the strong desire to perceive the problem of hunger as
solved, the existing means of producing food and distributing it to consumers in-
volves deep-set hallenges to social equity and environmental sustainability that are
exposed by circumstances suh as those playing out in the food crisis.
Mapping the context of the food crisis
In the irst section of the topic, the contributors examine the broader contours and
structures of the global food system. Eah hapter employs a unique point of focus
and draws on the approahes we have summarized above. Knited together, these
analyses establish features of the socio-ecological landscape whih facilitate food
provision in some places and among some people, while conspiring to constrain
availability of, and access to, food elsewhere. he common theme in these hapters
is the underlying failure of the current global food system and the need to pursue al-
ternative perspectives and objectives as the means of ahieving global food security.
