Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
In the initial hapter of the irst section, Agriculture and food systems: our cur-
rent challenge , Jules Prety draws on his extensive knowledge of food production
systems, and experience with food governances to propose necessary solutions to the
current failures of the global food system. The underlying premise for his recom-
mendations is that the food system is highly complex, a factor further complicated
by the socio-ecological nature of that system. Thus, progress to more appropriate
means of producing the food to feed the global population must account for local
contingencies as these relate to its environmental and social impacts. In other words,
any solution to the current hallenge of feeding the growing global population will
involve more than a narrow focus on tehnologies for increasing the productive out-
put of existing farming systems.
In the third hapter entitled Let us eat cake? Hugh Campbell employs the insights
of food regime theory to examine the pernicious nature of food aid policies, whih
are ostensively oriented toward ahieving global food security. He argues that the
imperative of increasing the supply of food (that is, agricultural production) has been
used to justify the subsidization of farmers in the developed world. While, in itself,
promoting the economic viability of farming is not necessarily a problem, the implic-
ations of placing greater emphasis on domestic politics than global ethical responsib-
ility are less sanguine. Campbell further demonstrates how this relationship to food
aid enabled the justification of food as a geopolitical weapon, especially during the
Cold War era.
While maintaining the food regimes approah, in contrast to the broad historical
brush of Campbell's hapter, the contributions from Bill Prithard and Philip McMi-
hael focus on more specific moments of global food policy. In hapter 4 T Trading
into hunger? Trading out of hunger? International food trade and the debate on food
security , Prithard examines the contradictions between the pathways to ahieving
social good promoted in global trade, as compared to global food policy, respectively.
His underlying argument is that the rules considered necessary to implement glob-
al free trade create legal and perceptual barriers to policies whih might encourage
food sovereignty, especially in the developing world. Chapter 5 by Philip McMihael
Biofuels and the financialization of the global food system examines the issue of bio-
fuels as the latest manifestation of the emphasis on commodities as the objective of
agricultural production. He further examines the process of financialization of agri-
cultural products, whih he equates to a further abstraction of food from commodity
to futures contract. he consequence of this hange for global food security lies in
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