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The History of Food Security: Approaches and Policies

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Book cover Understanding Food Insecurity

Abstract

This chapter reviews the evolution of food security approaches and policies by decade, starting in the 1940s, emphasising the role of stakeholders. A specific attention is dedicated to food insecurity in the new millennium with the description of the food crisis and their institutional and policy consequences. In this context, the new architecture of the food security intervention sets by the international community is presented This chapter concludes examining the future challenges related to the need for political will, sound governance and participation.

At the end of this chapter, the reader will be able to understand the institutional and policy lessons in the field of food insecurity to be used to integrate information from quantitative investigations for the design of appropriate interventions aimed at fighting hunger and malnutrition.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Malthusian theory suggests that there is a natural tendency for population growth to surpass that of all possible means of production, mainly in land and, in turn, in food output (Malthus 1966). In fact, while the former grows geometrically, the latter increases arithmetically. Progress can play a role in increasing land productivity, but Malthus emphasises that its rate “is slow and hesitant”. As a result, a growing share of the population would be subject to miserable hunger. In this context, death is regarded as the only factor capable of rebuilding the equilibrium between the population and resources.

  2. 2.

    The publication followed the 1953 FAO conference, which led to the establishment of the Committee on Commodity Problems at the FAO. This committee was appointed to provide a regular forum for intergovernmental consultations on surplus disposal issues.

  3. 3.

    The neoclassical resurgence in development economics is connected to the empirical evidence showing that free markets, more trade liberalisation and a growing agricultural sector are key factors for development and that exports respond to incentives; thus, export pessimism is unfounded (Little 1982).

  4. 4.

    Johnston and Mellor (1961) underlined five ways in which agriculture could contribute to economic growth:

    “(a) Economic development is characterized by a substantial increase in demand for agricultural products, and failure to expand food supplies, in pace with the growth of demand can seriously impede economic growth;

    (b) Expansion of exports of agricultural products may be one of the most promising means of increasing income and foreign exchange earnings, particularly in the early stages of development;

    (c) The labour force for manufacturing and other expanding sectors of the economy must be drowning mainly from agriculture.

    (d) Agriculture, as the dominant sector of an underdeveloped economy, can and should make a net contribution to the capital required for overhead investment and expansion of secondary industry.

    (e) Rising net cash incomes of the farm population may be important as a stimulus to industrial expansion”.

  5. 5.

    As farmers were considered profit maximisers, the policy target was to enhance the opportunities for their rational behaviour to manifest itself and lead to increased production and improved productivity (Schultz 1965).

  6. 6.

    This position was opposed by structuralists, who supported import-substitution industrialisation policies.

  7. 7.

    The phrase “Washington Consensus” was identified by John Williamson in 1990 “to refer to the lowest common denominator of policy advice being address by the Washington-based institutions to Latin America countries of 1989” (http://scienzepolitiche.unipg.it/tutor/uploads/williamson_on_washington_consensus_002.pdf). It can be summarised in ten propositions:

    • Fiscal discipline;

    • Redirection of public expenditure policies toward more efficient sectors in terms of economic return and improvement in income distribution;

    • Tax reform;

    • Interest rate liberalisation;

    • Competitive exchange rate;

    • Trade liberalisation;

    • Liberalisation of inflows of direct investment;

    • Privatisation;

    • Deregulation;

    • Secure property rights.

    Since then, the term has been used to signify market fundamentalist policies, an ideology of reliance upon market forces and the reduction of state interventions and expenditures to a minimum level (Williamson 2000).

  8. 8.

    After 7 years of negotiations, the Final Act of the Uruguay Round was signed, establishing the creation of the World Trade Organization to replace the GATT. For the first time since the end of the Second World War, agriculture and textile were included concretely in the negotiations, leading to a substantial reduction in agricultural tariff barriers on an international level. Moreover, the differential treatment of developed and developing countries gave the latter a longer period of transition to reduce trade barriers and certain preferences with regard to import duties.

    The results of the Uruguay Round have been strongly criticized when analysed from the perspective of developing countries; according to many, developed countries have been the major winners in these agreements, and the relatively smaller gains of developing countries have been unequally distributed, negatively affecting the poor countries exporting mainly tropical products, and countries previously benefiting from preferential treatment (such as the poorest countries in Africa under the Lomé Convention with the European Union), which lost their preferential margin (FAO 2003).

  9. 9.

    In his 1981 essay, Amartya Sen writes that “Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat. While the latter can be cause of the former, it is but one of many possible causes. Whether and how starvation relates to food supply is a matter for factual investigation” (Sen 1981).

    He continues by underlining that “there has been a good deal of discussion recently about the prospect of food supply falling behind the world population. There is, however, little empirical support for such a diagnosis of recent trends. Indeed, for most areas in the world—with the exceptions of parts of Africa—the increase in food supply has been comparable to, or faster than, the expansion of population: But this does not indicate that starvation is being systematically eliminated, since starvation is a function of entitlements and not of food availability as such. Indeed, some of the worst famines have taken place with no significant decline in food availability per head” (Sen 1981).

  10. 10.

    Sen (1981), analysing Ethiopia and Sahel’s famine in the 1970s, demonstrated that diminishing access to food was the major cause of food insecurity in both cases. Access to food depends on individual’s access to resources, technology, markets, social networks and food transfer programmes; Sen referred to the opportunities to produce or obtain food by any of these means as entitlements.

  11. 11.

    Several African countries improved their economic performance; however, Africa has been through a long-term recession period that has brought many countries in the region to extreme social and economic difficulties. In the 1990s, the country witnessed a dramatic increase in the number and length of civil wars and ethnic conflicts, a boom in the incidence of AIDS, especially in southern Africa, and a notable decline in the level of capital inflows, both in terms of official development assistance and FDI. All these factors have seriously undermined the little economic progress experienced in the 1990s.

    In 1997, Asia suffered the consequences of a terrible financial crisis, which spread from Thailand to all East Asia, affecting Latin America as well. However, by the end of the 1990s, Asian countries have regained their positive economic performance. The same cannot be said about Latin America, which also experienced an earlier crisis in Mexico (1994); the neo-liberal policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were often pointed to as the main cause of the difficult economic and social situation still present in some Latin America countries, particularly Argentina.

  12. 12.

    According to Stiglitz, “Trying to get government better focused on the fundamentals—economic, policies, basic education, health, roads, low and order, environmental protection—is a vital step. Nevertheless, focusing on the fundamentals is not a recipe for a minimalist government. The state has an important role to play in appropriate regulation, industrial policy, social protection and welfare. However, the choice is not whether the state should be involved. Instead, it is often a matter of how it gets involved. More importantly, we should not see the state and markets as substitutes … the government should see itself as a complement to markets undertaking those actions that make markets fulfil their function better” (Stiglitz 1998).

  13. 13.

    For example, the FAO and the World Bank were cautiously optimistic about the future of food security, underlined the key role of knowledge and, more precisely, technology in providing food demand. The IFPRI presented a mixed future characterised by significant advances in some countries, such China, but no improvement in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, which were particularly plagued by child malnutrition. The most pessimistic forecasts were from the Worldwatch Institute and were connected to land degradation and population-related pressures on the agricultural system. On the topic, see, for example, Alexandratos (1995), Brown (1995, 1996), Carnell (1997), Dyson (1999, 1994), FAO (1995), Klaus (1996), and Rosergrant et al. (1997).

  14. 14.

    Globalization is a non-continuous process of rapid global economic integration boosted by technological progress, particularly in transport and communications; thus, it is facilitated by lower transaction costs and lower barriers to movements in capital and goods (Bruinsma 2003; Kohler 2003; World Bank 2002).

  15. 15.

    The commitment to the Millennium Declaration has been reaffirmed in Mach 2002 at the International Conference on Financing for Development held in Monterrey, Mexico, and in September 2002 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa (www.un.org/esa/ffd).

  16. 16.

    The eight Millennium Development Goals are to eradicate extreme poverty (Goal 1), to achieve universal primary education (Goal 2), to promote gender equality and empower women (Goal 3), to reduce child mortality (Goal 4), to improve maternal health (Goal 5), to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases (Goal 6), to ensure environmental sustainability (Goal 7), and to develop a global partnership for development (Goal 8).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Management, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

    Maria Sassi

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  1. Maria Sassi
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Correspondence to Maria Sassi .

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Sassi, M. (2018). The History of Food Security: Approaches and Policies. In: Understanding Food Insecurity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70362-6_5

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