University of Buenos Aires. Economic Sciences Career. Año 2010
Published in the Magazine "VOCES EN EL FENIX" ("VOICES IN THE PHOENIX")
University of Buenos Aires. Economic Sciences Career. Año 2010
Food security and sovereignty, a complex and multidimensional problem
by Roberto Cittadini[1]
This article aims at reflecting on the complex multidimensionality of the problem of food safety and sovereignty. The emerging characterization of the problem will be presented, together with the different positions regarding its key players and its evolution. We will attempt to reflect on the underlying causes, whose main focus is the social and environmental limitations of the type of predominant development. In the reflection on the solution proposal, we can highlight the role of family agriculture and the need to trigger the processes of socially comprehensive and environmentally sustainable territory development.
The global problem of food security and control
In the World Food Summit of 1996, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) set an objective to reduce to a half the amount of undernourished people in the world by 2015. Recently, it was admitted that this is an "impossible goal", acknowledging the existence of 1.020 million of undernourished people. The situation takes place in a context of strong increase in the world production of food. Between 1990 and 1997, the world production of food per person increased a 25%.
Why does this situation of worldwide food insecurity remain and get even worse? Which are the causes? What proposal can be put into practice? And under what terms has this issue been discussed?
The access to food has been a key concern of human societies throughout history. Since the Malthusian theory (1798), the problem of the access to food has been representing a problem focused on the production volume. With the Industrial Revolution, societies made their socioeconomic organization more complex, and this problem, initially part of the private sector of the domestic unity, was resolved in the public sector of the market. As the exchange became more natural in the market, food became a good.
This debate has come to light again regarding how to guarantee at a global level an adequate balance between the production capacities and the satisfaction of the worldwide population needs. This approach is inefficient to discuss the complex multidimensionality of the issue. History shows that, even when mankind has ensured a positive global balance, the problem remains.
This paradox is explained due to the growth of production generated in a context of strong unbalance in the distribution of wealth. The economic agents aim their production at satisfying the consumption of the sectors which concentrate the incomes. Even the underdeveloped countries aim their production towards the solvent demand of central countries, compromising the food supply of their population. The issue of food security is not caused by an insufficient supply of food, but by unequal conditions of access between people and countries. Since the beginning of the 80´, the Hindu economist Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize of Economy (1998) and one of the main referents of the theories of human development promotes this vision.
The concept of food security itself is being discussed and is under process of construction, which is mainly considered a political concept. The FAO begins to use it in 1974. In 1992, the International Conference on Nutrition defines food security as the "need for all people to have access to harmless and nutritious food at all times, which allows them to lead a healthy and active life". The World Food Summit (1996) identifies the concept of food security as "the right of every person to have access to healthy and nutritious food, in line with the right to have proper nutrition", considering also that "in order to improve the access to food, it is essential to eradicate poverty".
As opposed to the "official" positions, the social organizations from the Vía Campesina in 1996 came up with the concept of food sovereignty as "the right of the countries to define their own policies of production, distribution and consumption", including the "right of the countries to give priority to the domestic agricultural production in order to provide food for their countries, the right of the peasants to produce their own food, the right of the countries to protect themselves from low price agricultural and food imports (dumping) and the participation of the countries in the definition of their land policies".
In 2009, the new World Food Summit states that "the situation constitutes an unacceptable disgrace" and affects "the dignity of a sixth of the population". On this occasion, the Parallel Forum of social movements sets out the need to "transform the current food system to ensure that those whose produce food have equal access to and control over the land, the water, the seeds, the fish and the agricultural biodiversity".
In this way, food security and sovereignty constitute an open debate, which acknowledged as its main basis the question of the right and the problem of access to food, getting close to the essential political sense of the debate and to the need to analyze which orientation is guiding the actions and objectives of the policies.
In our country, at a national level, this situation of hunger with food surplus is being recreated. The amount of food that Argentina produces can be estimated to cover the food needs of 400 millions of people. However, there are several sectors of the population with problem of access to quantity and quality of healthy and nutritious food. The situation has worsen in moments of crisis, such as in 2001, where the unemployment dynamics, the underemployment and the precariousness led to an explosion of the polarization and social exclusion without precedent (42,9% of unemployment, 57,5% of people living under poverty conditions, and 27,5% of people living under absolute poverty).
Since 2003, a new model of national development started, which aims at the recovery of the role of the State in the functioning of the economy and the implementation of public policies. This situation is progressively resolved and Argentina registers more than 10 years of economic growth, which has allowed an important decrease in poverty and unemployment. In the sphere of social policies, the actions of the Ministry of Social Development, as well as the existing provisional policy and the recent Universal Allowance per Child (Asignación Universal por Hijo) represent important contributions to improve the possibilities of access to food in the socially vulnerable groups.
However, it is still impossible to solve the existence of a "zero core" of population experiencing poverty and structural unemployment, as well as other relatively new phenomena: employed people living in poverty with low quality employments (precarious, irregular and low incomes), and working many hours for low salaries. For a great sector of our population, there are still problems of access to food.
The transformations in the global agricultural system
In the scientific-technical area, the discussion on food security and sovereignty is expressed in terms of the evaluation of the process known as green revolution. There is a certain agreement from the international organizations regarding the permission to ensure a positive balance between offer and demand of food worldwide. Researchers of different disciplines analyze how this generated a set of transformations that, as opposed to what it was expected, contributed to worsen the problem.
Traditional agriculture used to be based in the combination and rotation of farming, its articulation with cattle raising, recycling of nutrients, etc., where the use of external consumables was very small. The process of modernization tended to replace it for a model of productive specialization for the market, centered on improved seeds and a technological package which included the strong incorporation of external consumables, mainly fertilizers and agricultural chemicals. This package has led to an increasing mechanization that reduced the need of workmanship. The model of productive specialization simplified the agricultural ecosystems and generated a growth in the exploitation scale, massively superseding the producers.
The transformation this modernization process triggered did not constitute (and does not constitute) the only possible path of action to increase productivity, as it is showed by multiple experiences, such as the Granja Ecológica Naturaleza Viva (Guadalupe Norte, Santa Fe), and different studies where the mixed and biodiversity production optimizes the energetic efficiency of the great conventional facilities, the small farms (less than 10 hectares) and farms of medium to big size (40 hectares). It is interesting to note that the monoculture plantations on a large soil usually has greater yield than the monoculture of small soils. However, the mixed cropping in small soils has greater productivity than the monoculture of large soils. This is mainly because the mixed cropping is a multifunctional system, where there are many types of crops and animal products. Apart from the fact that the productivity is greater due to the amount of productions of different varieties of crops and animals, the ecosystem is providing a large variety of ecological services, constituting a very efficient system in the use of the land.
With the green revolution, the model of industrial agriculture that dominates the different links from profitability criteria consolidates, where the increasing food products are not from local areas, but they have to travel longer and longer distances, which causes an energetic expenditure. Massive communication builds patterns of consumption where image is more important than quality. Commercialization is organized in large chains and does not respect the seasonal nature of products according to the region and, in many cases they do not ensure they are healthy for people. This model of consumption, production, commercialization and distribution leads to a high environmental impact, to a negative effect on health, a high energetic expenditure and a high final price.
The policies promoted by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the free trade agreements have jeopardized the national production of food, forcing the peasants to produce commercial crops and to buy their food from multinational companies. Thus, Egypt, the ancient granary of wheat of the Roman Empire, is now the leading importer; Indonesia, one of the cradles of rice, nowadays imports transgenic rice; Mexico, cradle of the corn culture, nowadays imports transgenic corn.
The return to the family and peasant agriculture increased the number of people with problems of access to food and their movement towards the enlargement of the marginal sectors in the urban peripheries, where their access is limited to the market of formal work. The return of the State in its role of guarantor of basic rights and lender of universal policies, together with the increasing economic concentration, worsened the life conditions of these social sectors.
In Argentina, this model of modernization gave way to a process of agricultural restructuring characterized by a massive process of agricultural speculation, greater land concentration, an increase in the surface per productive unity and the appearance of new players (big contractors and sowing pools). The main result is the massive exclusion of a vast quantity of traditional players: small producers, peasants, family producers, farmers, settlers, rural workers, communities and Indian reservations. During the period between 1988 and 2002, a strong decrease in the total amount of agricultural and livestock installations (more than 85.000 disappeared) and an increase in the average surface (from 424 to 524 hectares). This process led to an increasing rural depopulation, socioeconomic desertification and a rupture of the territory vertebra.
Another negative aspect is the undesirable environmental consequences, loss of biodiversity and climatic change. The INTA has provided an alert regarding the problem of environmental sustainability and has set out the need to integrate practices with smaller impact. However, there are almost no observations of those practices being implemented. The growing trend to monoculture generates negative external factors on the natural territory: exportation of nutrients, degradation of soil, loss of biodiversity, water-bearing contamination, etc. The risk of environmental deterioration is higher in marginal areas, which were livestock or mixed areas, due to the fragility of soils and the decrease of family and peasant agriculture.
Even when the INTA and the scientific-technological system may generate technical proposals according to the truly sustainable agriculture, it must be known that the control of this process has been (and still is) conducted by individual and short-term profit criteria, which do not include the resulting external social and environmental factors, and not even the deterioration of the soil resources. In order to direct the actions of the economic agents towards more virtuous models, it is necessary to have more active policies.
The construction of new development paradigms: the Territory Development
The notion of development has become more complex since the confirmation that in the last 60 years, the economic growth did not necessarily lead to a better quality of life in the population; on the contrary, in many regions of the world, there is evidence of the increase of poverty, population exodus and increasing environmental deterioration.
The successive socioeconomic crisis that took place in our country has unveiled a deep social issue, demanding a redefinition of public policies. This reality faces the public system of science and technology with demands which apparently are contradictory: on the one hand, the development of "high-end technologies" in accordance with the industrial agricultural model and its insertion within the international trade of agricultural and livestock commodities, and on the other, the promotion of a balanced development in terms of territory which is socially integrating as well.
Throughout history, the INTA has established strong relationships with the different players of the field, and in this context, it is consulted regarding the search of new exegetical paradigms in the matter of development. By virtue of this, in its Institutional Strategic Plan 2005-2015, the INTA has identified the need to direct its actions towards a territory approach of development, in order to fulfill the institutional mission.
In order to do this, it is necessary to have new conceptual frameworks and action capabilities in accordance with the complexity of a scenario with new players and new social dynamics. Developing knowledge and capabilities that cover the reality of the "living" territories, considering the territory as a "frame of life": its players, histories, cultures, institutions, social relationships, economic flows, mechanisms of value generation and appropriation, needs, the natural environment and its goods, the innovation and generation processes of knowledge, the socio-environmental-territorial conflicts and its means of control (the different ways of interaction and coordination among players of the spheres of private, public and collective action).
However, the territory is not only a space of synergic relationship, but also a space of conflicts between the players and development visions, where the State can be the guide of the development. Such agents must be capable of understanding the socio-economic-political-cultural complexity present in a territory, its synergies and its conflicts.
Assuming the approach of the territory development poses a challenge to create and recreate capabilities in order to sort out contradictory demands from the basis of acknowledging and discussing the multiplicity of visions close to the developments and to incorporate into the institutional practices clear diagnosis methodologies of the social dynamics, which are useful to direct the action programs based on progressive alliances among the players.
Family agriculture has a strategic role. The concept makes reference to a diverse group of players and identities (small producer, smallholding producers, peasants, farmers, settlers, sharecropper, family producer, rural workers without land, Indian reservations, urban farmer, etc.), and its agricultural, livestock, fishing, forest, agricultural and industrial production, handcraft and recollection activities. Some definitions emphasize the economic-productive features of the sector while others focus on the commitment with the territories where they work and live, as a "form of life" and a "cultural matter".
The progressive awareness about the consequences of the ways of the agricultural modernization described above is leading the national states of the region to implement different active policies of promotion of the family agriculture. Brazil, for example, with the creation of the Ministry of Agricultural Development, the National Program of Strengthening of the Family Agriculture, the government acquisition of food and family agriculture to supply the Zero Hunger Program, and the approach of the agricultural ecology, that is to say, the combination of indigenous knowledge and selected modern technologies of low consumables to diversify the production.
In Argentina, family agriculture represents 13,5% of the production surface and generates 19,2% of the national agricultural production. The institutionalization of the promotion of the family production has many precedents (Agricultural Social Program, Smallholding, Rural Change, Pro Huerta) which facilitated the organizational processes and has rich experiences that set the food security and sovereignty in the public agenda. In particular, the Pro Huerta Program, collaboration initiative of the INTA and the Ministry of Social Development, is oriented specifically towards the contribution to food security. During 20 years, it has shown an effective insertion in the vulnerable rural and urban sectors, creating the innovative category of urban agriculture.
It must be also emphasized the creation of the National Program of Research and Technological Development for the Small Family Agriculture, the creation of the Undersecretariat of Rural Development and Family Agriculture, and recently the creation of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fishing of the Nation. From the Ministry of Social Development some related initiatives have been put into practice (collective mark, national commission of microcredit, social simplified tax regime for small contributors, etc.).
Strategies towards potential and desirable scenarios