THE POLITICS OF FOOD SECURITY

By Matthew Eloyi

It may seem as though the world’s population is higher than its available resources hence it is estimated that between 720 and 811 million people in the world faced hunger in 2020, and around 660 million people may still face hunger in 2030. But in reality, the world produces twice as much food as is needed to feed its population. Global food production has expanded at a higher rate than global population growth for the past two decades. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that the globe produces more than 1 1/2 times enough food to feed everyone on the earth. That’s already enough to feed the world’s anticipated population peak of 10 billion people in 2050. Despite this abundance, hunger persists. How is this possible? The world’s inability to feed the entirety of its population is mostly due to food insecurity.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recognizes availability, access, utilization, and stability as the four pillars of food security. It defines food security as when “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” In other words, food security refers to the availability of food and people’s ability to access it, while food insecurity is the inability to access a sufficient quantity of affordable, healthy meals on a consistent basis.

Food as a global resource has never really been scarce. Human politics, distribution system, capitalism, speculation/hoarding, power, war, and poor policy, are the factors of food insecurity in the world. The Bengal famine of 1943 is a perfect example of how war and distribution error contribute to food insecurity in the world. According to a study that provides empirical credence for assertions that Winston Churchill-era British policies were a crucial factor leading to the catastrophe, the Bengal famine of 1943 was the first one in modern Indian history that did not develop as a result of severe drought. In the words of the lead researcher, Vimal Mishra, “This was a unique famine, caused by policy failure instead of any monsoon failure.” Even though natural disasters, crop epidemics, and the fall of Burma – now Myanmar, which was a key source of rice imports, all curtailed food supplies to Bengal in the years leading up to 1943, Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen argued in 1981 that there should have been enough supplies to feed the region, and that the mass deaths were caused by a combination of wartime inflation, speculative buying, and panic hoarding, all of which combined to push the price of food out of reach of poor Bengalis.

According to recent research, especially one by a renowned Indian-American journalist and writer, Madhushree Mukerjee, Winston Churchill’s wartime cabinet in London aggravated the famine. According to Mukerjee, Churchill was frequently warned that using all of India’s resources for the war effort could lead to starvation, but he ignored the warnings and chose to continue shipping rice from India to other parts of the empire. In 1942-43, rice stocks continued to depart India despite London’s denial of India’s viceroy’s urgent plea for more than 1 million tonnes of emergency wheat supplies. Churchill is said to have blamed the famine on the fact that Indians were “breeding like rabbits” and questioned how Mahatma Gandhi was still alive despite the starvation. Mukerjee and others also point to Britain’s “denial policy” in the region, in which large quantities of rice and hundreds of boats were confiscated from Bengal’s coastal areas in order to deny the Japanese army resources in the event of an invasion.

The proliferation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which led to the disappearance of native cultivars in most parts of the world, is also a major source of food insecurity. Foods that have been genetically modified have had additional genes added to them from other organisms. They’ve been around since 1994, and they’re made in a similar method as genetic engineering. The technique employed in this sort of crop management was developed to help farmers and merchants increase crop or food quality in a more effective manner. Some argue that this technology will aid individuals in the agricultural industry in reducing the quantity of crops and foods that are wasted. While there are numerous advantages to eating genetically modified foods, there are also potential drawbacks, which limit our choice of food.

According to research, people with allergies may be at danger from genetically modified foods. There are also claims that genetic modification frequently introduces or combines proteins not seen in the original animal or plant, potentially causing novel allergic reactions in our bodies. In other words, proteins from organisms to which you are allergic may be introduced to species to which you were not previously allergic. As a result, your choice of food will be limited. Also, GMOs are not 100% environmentally friendly. Despite the fact that many experts argue that genetically modified foods are safe for the environment, they nevertheless contain a number of ingredients that have yet to be demonstrated to be so. What’s more, what’s the worst part? These compounds are kept hidden from the general populace. Another significant possible disadvantage of this technology is that it may affect some ecological creatures, resulting in a reduction in biodiversity. When we eradicate a pest that is detrimental to crops, we may be eliminating a food supply for a species. Furthermore, genetically engineered crops may be hazardous to other creatures, resulting in a reduction in their numbers or perhaps extinction.

Some genetically engineered foods, according to Iowa State University, have antibiotic characteristics integrated into them, making them resistant or immune to viruses, diseases, or infections. These antibiotic indicators will remain in our bodies after we ingest them, making antibiotic treatments less effective. The institution also advises that eating certain foods and being exposed to antibiotics on a frequent basis may cause antibiotics to lose their potency, as seen in hospitals around the world. When compared to ordinary foods on the market, genetically modified foods are also said to have an unnatural flavour. This could be due to the substances that were added to their formula. Genetically modified foods contain compounds that have been shown in scientific studies to cause sickness and even death in a variety of species, including humans. Mice and butterflies, for example, cannot subsist on these diets.

Economically, bringing a genetically modified crop to market can be a pricey and time-consuming procedure, and agricultural biotechnology companies, understandably, want to maximize their profits. Many novel plant genetic engineering technologies and products have been patented as a result, and patent infringement is a major worry in the agricultural industry. Furthermore, consumer advocates are concerned that this will drive up seed prices to the point that third-world countries and small farmers will be unable to purchase them, expanding the divide between the rich and the poor.

In Africa and rest of the third world, food insecurity results from poor policy and lack of continuity. The prospect of small farmers, who grow much of the world’s food, being hungry, is unsettling. Let’s take the Green Revolution policy as an example. Africa has experienced a boom in financing to help local food producers grow more of the region’s food since the 2007-8 food crises, when price hikes for global commodity crops increased the possibility of food shortages. African governments increased agricultural development spending, aided by international donors who recognized, for the first time in decades, that developing countries needed to grow more of their own food and that small-scale farmers could be a critical part of that effort rather than a hindrance to growth. High international crop prices lured private investment into agriculture for several years. The charge was driven by global philanthropies, which had recently been endowed with billions of dollars in technological earnings.

In 2006, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation collaborated with the Rockefeller Foundation to start the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a well-funded international development organization. By 2020, AGRA aimed to double crop yield and incomes for 30 million small-scale farming households while also decreasing food insecurity in 20 African countries but it seemed to have failed. According to research, crop yield has slowed, poverty remains high, and the number of hungry people in Africa has increased. Only a few numbers of small-scale farmers have profited from the Green Revolution. Some people have become indebted as a result of the high costs of commercial seeds and synthetic fertilizer sold by Green Revolution proponents. Despite $1 billion in funding for AGRA and $1 billion in annual subsidies from African governments to persuade farmers to purchase these high-priced inputs, AGRA has a poor track record.

According to current projections, the world will not achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2, Zero Hunger by 2030, and most indicators, despite modest progress, will fail to fulfil global nutrition targets. According to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021 assessment, the health and socioeconomic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic are anticipated to worsen the food security and nutritional status of the world’s most vulnerable population groups. To avert this, governments are urged to include nutrition in their agricultural strategies; work to reduce cost-escalating factors in food production, storage, transportation, distribution, and marketing – including inefficiencies, food loss, and waste; support local small-scale producers to grow and sell more nutritious foods, and ensure their access to markets; prioritize children’s nutrition as the category most in need; and foster behaviour change through education.