Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Conclusion
his hapter has focused on the disputed terrain of how trade and food security re-
late to one another. Its opening observation was that this is a fractured field, within
whih trade can be portrayed either as the answer or the obstacle to improved food
security. Essentialist renderings of this relationship, however, do litle to advance
consideration of this issue. Clearly, the trade of agricultural and food products across
international borders can play a crucial role in advancing global food security. In
dispute is the issue of when and how this occurs. At the international level, however,
institutional arrangements do not encourage the incorporation of suh detail within
the spaces of negotiation. Instead, the WTO's approah to the issue is coloured by
a set of overarhing ideological preferences, whih have the efect of instinctively
generating scepticism of debate on food security as 'bak door protectionism'. As a
result, entitlements-based and rights-based approahes to the issue receive minimal
atention within the organization.
Perhaps it is timely to invoke a paradigm shift in the ways that trade and food
security are linked at the international level. With the ongoing lak of traction in
the Doha Round speaking to a foundering of the WTO system, 'a new world may
be possible'. Recently, sholars in international law have given heightened atention
to the concept of 'regime interaction' - the question of how to generate coherence
between international systems with different origins and foci (Young, 2009; Underdal
and Young, 2004). To date, muh of this sholarship has concerned the interactivity
between the WTO, international environmental institutions (suh as the Convention
on Biological Diversity) and putative agendas to crat international climate hange
agreements. It is not implausible, however, to imagine a scenario where food secur-
ity concerns - based around entitlements-based and rights-based approahes - are
mainstreamed into a future system of international trade law. Suh incorporation
would provide a new arena for members to legitimately temper liberalization based
on the food security implications of market opening (something like a 'food security
box', to use WTO-speak). his approah does not reject the overall potential for trade
to improve food security, but contextualizes policy hange in terms of its grounded
implications for vulnerable populations.
In brief, the millions of currently food-insecure people on the planet deserve a
better deal from the world community. It is not appropriate to operate the rules of
global agricultural and food trade in suh a way as to treat food security as a resid-
ual outcome deriving from assumed market processes. A new system of trade rules
