The Over-determination of Food Insecurity: A New Perspective

Written by Siyaduma Biniza *

The problem of food insecurity is one that has persisted throughout the history of civilisations. However, more recently, the severe and rapid increases in the challenge of climate change has made the problem of food insecurity far more pressing. In addition to this, the rising global population further exacerbates the challenges of maintaining sustainable food yields which are affected by climate change. However, contrary to the orthodox view, the problem of food insecurity should not be reduced to specific elements or primary challenges. The problem of food insecurity should be understood as complex combination of natural, political, cultural and economic causes which are all causally related to the problem in an over-deterministic way. Therefore, this paper argues that a change in mind-set and the approach to dealing with the problem of food insecurity would have immense contributions to solving this multi-faceted problem. Food security is often defined as being able to afford, or have access to, a nutritional diet that can support a healthy and active life (FAO and WFP, 2010). Therefore, apart from yield challenges and the rising populations, soaring food prices are an important factor which causes food insecurity. In addition, the connectedness of markets causes global consequences for any shocks in production or demand (Halweil & Brown, 1998). This is why some people speculate that the next World War will not be over land or natural resources such as oil and gold; but rather over food and water resources (Solomon, 2011; Flintan & Tamrat, 2002). Thus the challenges of feeding a hungry planet have political, economic, cultural and natural causes which need to be resolved.

The political causes relate to the control of individual and group behaviour in society through farm subsidies, export taxes and other interventions that regulate the production of food. This is often done as an attempt to ensure domestic food security, or maintenance of structural inequality in the global food production, amongst other things. Economic causes relate to interventions that seek to control the production and distribution of goods and services in global food markets through mechanisms such as tariffs and non-tariff barriers. Cultural causes relate to factors such as reproductive and consumption behaviour or farming techniques which affect food security. Natural causes relate to the transformation of physical properties of matter in nature which affects the yield of agricultural production; such as climate change and the biology of farming methods. These are all aspects that relate to the challenges of feeding a hungry planet and they should not be considered in isolation or causal in the ordinary sense. The causes described above do not affect food security in isolation; but rather as a complex and sometimes contradictory combination of causes. For example high birthrates and increasing demand for meat in the context of severe climate changes may result in food insecurity through a combined complex process of these four categories. So cultural reproductive practices might result in high birth-rates and rising food demand, while rising income levels might mean that more people can afford meat which adds pressure to crop production, and climate changes might bring rains that are favourable to agricultural yield. But depending on the severity and magnitude of each influence; the result could be more food insecurity. This means that interventions that try to deal with just one aspect (say political or cultural causes) cannot be expected to result in major improvements due to the complexity of the ways in which these causes affect food security.

Moreover though, these causes do not affect food security in the conventionally form of causality. Conventionally, because the aspects described above are causes of food insecurity, they may result in food insecurity but are themselves not affected by food security. However, contrary to conventional causality, the relationship between these causes is over-deterministic. This means that they all affect food security in a complex combination of ways, some contradicting each other, and that the resulting food insecurity also has an impact on each causal aspect. For instance rising populations might cause higher food demand resulting in food insecurity which may in turn affect the rising populations through higher infant mortality due to the nutritional challenges related to food insecurity. However, most interventions in food insecurity have not been entirely cognisant of these last two points; and have thus only been marginally successful in many cases. So it is no surprise that the most prominent writings cite climate change as the biggest challenge to global food security. Indeed, climate change is a significant challenge as a natural cause of food insecurity but this is just one aspect (Interdepartmental Working Group on Climate Change, 2008; Godfray, et al., 2010; FAO and WFP, 2010; Schmidhuber & Tubiello, 2007). Climate change has affected global yield and production, which affects both prices and the provision of food for us all. But the challenge posed by climate change is far too complex and irreversible as many people believe. Nevertheless there are many attempts to deal with climate change through genetic engineering of seeds and plant-life, to ensure that plants can survive in the harshest conditions, so that agricultural yields are not affected (Ehrlich et al., 1993). However this process has not resulted in sufficient increases in the yields or sustainable production of food because of political and cultural reasons; such as the prevention of

developing country farmers from reusing seed and rising global population (Sahai, 2003; McAfee, 2004; Brom , 2004). The political reasons are sometimes justified as a means of ensuring adequate remuneration private firms holding the intellectual rights to seeds to incentivise research and development in new innovation (Ravishankar & Archak, 2000; Sahai, 2003). However, the political interventions have a negative effect on many smaller farmers which often affects their yield (Brom, 2004). As a result some governments therefore subsidise their farmers to produce strategic agricultural goods whilst charging export taxes (ICTSD, 2001). This is done to dis-incentivise high exports in attempt to ensure food security because of precarious foreign production and fluctuating global food prices (Beghin, et al., 2003). Moreover, some governments have been successful at establishing state trading enterprises (STEs) which purchase large volumes of strategic crops from farmers domestically and abroad. However, STEs have the strength to dictate domestic market prices and are sometimes used to control demand (Mitra & Josling, 2009). Therefore STEs have distortionary influence on global food prices, especially the price of grains which are staple foods globally, posing a significant challenge to food security. Thus many developing countries, which are mostly net food importers, have sought to fight against the global influence of dominant countries STEs on food prices. So at the World Trade Organisation, where agricultural reforms in the global economy have been a highly contentious issue, some countries have sought to create economic policies that do not allow STEs to have distortionary influence in the global food markets (ICTSD, 2001). Therefore there is a plethora of interventions that seek to control the production and distribution of goods and services in the global food markets through mechanisms such as tariffs and non-tariff barriers. Some policies have

also been created to ensure the liberalisation of trade in agricultural products whilst others classify specific certain state subsidies according to their level of distortion in food markets. In addition to this, there have been attempts to curb the contentious and inadequately defined problem of dumping of agricultural goods. This occurs when foreign agricultural goods are sold below the competitive market price which has adverse effects on the domestic production. Therefore dumping contributes to challenges related to the development of agriculture in some countries, since the dumped goods undercut the domestic goods, exacerbating food insecurity. This is especially the case in underdeveloped countries which are also faced with the challenge of rapidly rising populations. Therefore, there are also cultural causes of food insecurity and the most discussed topic that falls under this dimension of food security is the rising global population (Ehrlich et al., 1993). This creates what is referred to as a Malthusian gap where the populations rise well above the productive capacity in agriculture leading to food insecurity. However technological improvements have led to productivity increases that nullify the arguments surrounding the Malthusian gap. So there have been developments in seed engineering to not only ensure plant survival but also higher yields. But the evergrowing populations continually exert pressure on the food supply because of everincreasing demand. Despite ineffectiveness, there have been attempts to teach cultures about the importance of birth-control and reverse the cultural perceptions of larger families. However this is just one aspect of the challenges of feeding a hungry planet. Nevertheless, as this paper shall argue, the greatest successes and progress in dealing with the problem of food insecurity can be achieved by dealing with the cultural causes as an entry-point to the problem.

A more recent discourse is developing around gender inequality and its effect on agricultural production and food security. The research suggests that the inclusion of females in agricultural production will have a great contribution to dealing with the challenges to food security (Mwaniki, 2006; Buckingham, 2005). Gender inequality has been found to have a tremendously high social cost because the exclusion of females in production and ownership of agricultural inputs reduces productivity in this sector globally. This is also emphasised by the fact that most women are more productive in agriculture than men (Mwaniki, 2006) which calls for a shift in mind-set. Furthermore, globally, women play a greater role to food security than men and use a higher portion of their incomes towards food security. Thus, gender equality, which could lead to higher incomes for women and more access to capital, would have a great contribution toward food security (Mwaniki, 2006). Nevertheless, a solution to the problem of food insecurity cannot just take one aspect into consideration. As previously mentioned each dimension of the problem is interrelated so the problem can only be solved collectively. Therefore, when trying to deal with the challenges of feeding a hungry planet we cannot take an implicitly deterministic view that tries to seek out the root cause. However we need an entry point instead of dealing with problem in its entirety. This makes dealing with the cultural causes as an entry-point of the solution the most effective solution, because it is less impractical and there are less conflicting interests and ideals, in comparison to political, economic and natural causes. Moreover, because food security primarily and directly affects individuals, we need to concentrate on the way in which individuals make sense of life in order to inform them of the daunting problem of food insecurity. But this is no walk in the park. Thus initiatives that seek to educate women, and their partners, about the benefits of birth control are an

important starting point. In addition, this feeds into the kind of renewed mind-set that is needed, which enables women to decide for themselves about having more children, by empowering women and encouraging gender equality. However, this cannot be the task of non-governmental development agencies and civil society exclusively. For instance, in the political dimension, governments are needed to develop legislature that affords more access to private and public capital to women so that they can establish their own agricultural initiative and improve the female share of agricultural inputs. And the economic discourse can also contribute by developing literature that educates about the advantages of including women in large-scale agricultural production as both workers and owners of firms in the sector. This requires a co-operative effort and a change in mind-set about how we view the problem of food insecurity. Food security cannot be ensured by looking for root causes of food insecurity and dealing with these in insolation. The challenges of feeding a hungry planet form a complex and contradictory network. This requires a change in the mindset used to analyse the problem to understand what kind of solutions are necessary. Lastly, this change in mind-set is very important to understand the natural dimension. Once we understand the causes as complex contradictory network we can then begin to realise effective solutions to problems faced. Nature itself offers clear evidence that everything is inter-related. But in dealing with natural causes to the problem of food insecurity we have taken a deterministic view which reduces the problem to yield. However, nature is a self-balancing, interdependent and evolutionary ecological system. Therefore, when we are dealing with the problem of food insecurity, we cannot solely focus on increasing yield or ensuring that plants survive harsh climatic changes. We need to look at the problem, including our solutions, ecologically.

This means that we need to look at ways of ensuring that agricultural yield can be obtain in harmony with the environment and the rest of nature. There is a unique farming method I am working on establishing as an agricultural co-operative that emphasises importance of ecological balance which consequently results in high yield. Therefore, this unique method uses an optimal environment where all the elements can survive in harmony which ensures high yield. The system has been developed to farm poultry, crops and fish in a controlled and self-sustaining environment with optimal yield. Thus, it is systems like these that need to be developed so that we can evolve and live harmoniously with nature as opposed to surviving natural change without personally changing; which requires a drastic change of mind-set. In conclusion, the challenges of feeding a hungry planet form a complex network that is inter-related in an over-deterministic way. This requires us to understand how the different causal elements relate to one another how they sometimes contradict each other before we can find a solution to the problem of food insecurity. However, this does not require us to deal with the problem in its entirety. Rather, we should deal with the cultural causes as an entry point whilst developing co-operative strategies. Thus, we need a change of mind-set to view the problem, and proposed solutions, as a consequence of inter-related and over-determined cultural, economic, natural and political processes.

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* Siyaduma Biniza is currently a B.Com. (Hon) in Development Theory and Policy student at the University of the Witwatersrand, holding a B.Soc.Sci in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Cape Town.