Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
This is both a pragmatic and a political claim. First, pragmatically, it appears that
we have reahed some kind of high water mark of the reah of a globally integ-
rated market for food. he recent rises in food prices (two now since this topic was
conceived) suggest an end to one of the neoliberal project's key tenets: that an in-
tegrated world food market would expand on the bak of ever-decreasing prices for
food commodities. The end of this long decreasing trend in food prices now presents
a profound hallenge to this fundamental tenet of market-based solutions to global
food security. The world food market will certainly not expand in an age of increas-
ingly expensive global food commodities. A second key trend is that we are also en-
tering the declining years of a global energy regime that provided heap oil-based
transportation to facilitate the operation of a world food market. he approahing
end of the age of oil will contribute to the upcoming contraction of the scale and
reah of the global market for food.
Even given just these two long-term trends, there are clear pragmatic reasons
why new space will open up at (or outside) the margins of the globally-integrated
market for food. Inside this space, McMihael (2010) has already identiied a range of
political projects and experiments that have the potential to transform food security
in multiple, specific contexts. Taking into account that these experiments are taking
place in specific ecological conditions, often at a small scale, and with the kind of dy-
namic economic experimentation that haracterizes muh business at the margins,
they hold considerable promise for maintaining and potentially improving food se-
curity in these contexts. History has witnessed one major flip in the orientation of
global food from colonial supply to domestic food security. Perhaps we already have
sufficient evidence to suggest that another flip is now required, from the existing
models in the Developed World to the enduring systems of the Developing World.
Notes
1
A historical dynamic that would interest historians from Thompson (1963) to Braudel (1973) and
Hobsbawm (1984).
2
As it stands, the EU has already commited to a timetable for tarif reduction under its GATT
Uruguay Round obligations.
References
Braudel, F. (1973)
Capitalism and Material Life: 1400-1800
, Harper & Row, New York
