Food Security and Migrant Populations: US and Brazil Policies

 

 FOOD SECURITY AS AN INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM AND PR OJECT

Government leaders, nongovernmental organizations, and academia agree that the recurring food crises of the past decade are expressions of a global problem that requires worldwide solutions. In a transnational food system marked by economic interdependence and shared vulnerability, states can no longer (or ever could) ensure their populations' access to food by domestic means alone.

Reports indicate that "international agricultural prices will remain significantly higher than pre-crisis levels for at least the next decade."7 The demand for food, particularly meat and dairy products, is expected to rise internationally as a result of population expansion and rising incomes, with the United Nations forecasting in 2011 that the global population will reach 7 to 10 billion by 2100. This rising need for food will have to be satisfied in the face of increased climate change-induced food production constraints, rising input prices such as fertilisers and gasoline, and competition for agricultural land from biofuel producers and urban expansion. Increasing water scarcity and soil loss are important contributions to the likelihood of food shortage. More than half of the world's population lives in nations where water levels are falling, and many irrigation methods have exhausted available aquifers and groundwater.8

Many economists believe that unpredictable food prices will remain a characteristic of the global food system for the foreseeable future, as the increased use of biofuels has connected grain prices to the volatile energy market.

Price volatility also attracts new investors and speculators to commodities markets, increasing rather than stabilizing price fluctuations.9 Faced with persistent changes in grain prices, the FAO forecasted in 2010 that commodities markets would remain volatile indefinitely, declaring that "the international community will need to develop appropriate ways" of dealing to a long-term situation of food insecurity.10 Some type of system for increasing international coordination, cooperation, or policy coherence has been deemed vital if the objective of ending world hunger is to be realized.

International organisations have undoubtedly held this position. Throughout the twentieth century, international institutions have worked to achieve food security, and it has been a transnational endeavor for much longer. The United Nations (UN) signalled the importance of agrarian reform by establishing the FAO in 1945, with the goals of improving nutrition, increasing agricultural productivity, improving the lives of rural populations, and contributing to global economic growth. The FAO's technical support, development aid, and humanitarian action programs have all focused on preventing and responding to food shortages and achieving "freedom from hunger."11 Alongside the

The FAO, together with the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Bank, was a driving factor behind the "Green Revolution," which sought to replace peasant agriculture with an input-intensive and industrialized style of agricultural production in order to increase plant yields and Third World food exports during the 1960s.12

Famine and hunger were first discussed in terms of food security in the late 1970s, and the term came to dominate worldwide debates in the mid-1980s, coinciding with the advent of neoliberalism.

The FAO issued The Struggle for Food Security in 1979, which portrayed food security as a global issue that demanded improved distribution of the world's food supply by strengthening national self-reliance and eliminating income and landholding disparities.14 In 1986, the World Bank produced a policy paper titled Poverty and Hunger: Issues and Options for Food Security in Developing Countries, which provided a very different perspective on food security.15 The Bank firmly opposed the concept of food sovereignty as the foundation of food security, instead declaring that food insecurity was caused by "a lack of purchasing power of individuals and nations."16 It followed that a country's food security would not necessarily be achieved through food self-sufficiency or increased food production,17 but could be better ensured by alleviating poverty, accelerating economic growth, structural adjustment, and developing the capacity to purchase food in a globalized market. Beginning in the 1980s, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank began to condition their funding on market-oriented agrarian reform. Many of the programs launched by UN agencies and Bretton Woods institutions have since aimed to promote chemical-intensive commercial agriculture, land consolidation, and the replacement of subsistence farming with export-oriented output. Since the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, states have faced increasing pressure to enable a free market in agricultural products, relinquish official assistance for agricultural producers, and eliminate regulations that hinder international food movement.

Nonetheless, the current scenario indicates a strengthening of worldwide ownership of food security as a global effort. "There is an increasing density of international entities working in food security.”