Food Security, Food Justice, or Food Sovereignty?

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from Food First:



Food Security, Food Justice, or Food Sovereignty?
Posted February 19th, 2011 by admin

by Eric Holt-Giménez


The New Year saw renewed food riots in India and Africa, and record levels of hunger here in the US. This year also saw transformation in the food movement, with new power and national recognition. The food movement has successfully shone the spotlight on hunger and food access in the US, created a drive for more local food, and gotten better policy from the federal to the local level. The question now is: how do we turn these initial reforms into lasting, food system transformation?
How do we know the food movement is a force for transformative change, rather than a passing fad, a collection of weak reforms, or isolated local efforts? To know this, we need a moment of reflection on how the food system is structured historically, politically and economically. We need to build alliances to take on the root of our failing food systems.

Corporate Food Regimes

One way to imagine the food system is as a “regime.” A food regime is a “rule-governed structure of production and consumption of food on a world scale.” The first global food regime spanned the late 1800s through the Great Depression and linked food imports from Southern and American colonies to European industrial expansion. The second food regime reversed the flow of food from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere to fuel Cold War industrialization in the Third World.
Today’s corporate food regime is characterized by the monopoly market power and mega-profits of agrifood corporations, globalized meat production, and growing links between food and fuel. Virtually all the world’s food systems are tied into today’s corporate food regime. This regime is controlled by a far-flung agrifood industrial complex, made up of huge monopolies like Monsanto, ADM, Cargill and Walmart. Together, these corporations are powerful enough to dominate the governments and the multilateral organizations that make and enforce the regime’s rules for trade, labor, property and technology. This political-economic partnership is supported by both public and private institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the World Food Program, USAID, the USDA and big philanthropy.

Liberalization and Reform

Like the larger economic system of which they are a part, global food regimes alternate between periods of liberalization characterized by unregulated markets, corporate privatization and massive concentrations of wealth, followed by devastating financial busts. When these busts provoke widespread social unrest—threatening profits and governability—governments usher in reformist periods in which markets, supply, and consumption are re-regulated to reign in the crisis and restore stability to the regime. Infinitely unregulated markets would eventually destroy both society and the natural resources that the regime depends on for profits. Therefore, while the ‘mission’ of reform is to mitigate the social and environmental externalities of the corporate food regime, its ‘job’ is identical to that of the liberal trend: the reproduction of the corporate food regime. Though liberalization and reform may appear politically distinct, they are actually two sides of the same system. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/3308

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