Futures Studies Economics Ecology

Reclaiming Food Security

by Michael Carolan Review by David Lorimer, August 2013

Publisher: Earthscan Ltd 2013 196 pp. £19.99 p/b.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 196
ISBN: 9781135067663

Publisher’s description

In this challenging work, the author argues that the goal of any food system should not simply be to provide the cheapest calories possible. A secure food system is one that affords people and nations – in both the present and future – the capabilities to prosper and lead long, happy, and healthy lives. For a variety of reasons, food security has come to be synonymous with cheap calorie security. On this measure, the last fifty years have been a remarkable success. But the author shows that these cheap calories have also come at great cost, to the environment, individual and societal well-being, human health, and the food sovereignty of nations. The book begins by reviewing the concept of food security, particularly as it has been enacted within agrifood and international policy over the last century. After proposing a coherent definition the author then assesses empirically whether these policies have actually made us and the environment any better off. One of the many ways the author accomplishes this task is by introducing the Food and Human Security Index (FHSI) in an original attempt to better measure and quantify the affording qualities of food systems. A FHSI score is calculated for 126 countries based on indicators of objective and subjective well-being, nutrition, ecological sustainability, food dependency, and food system market concentration. The final FHSI ranking produces many counter-intuitive results. Why, for example, does Costa Rica top the ranking, while the United States comes in at number fifty-five? The author concludes by arguing for the need to reclaim food security by returning the concept to something akin to its original spirit, identified earlier in the book. While starting at the level of the farm the concluding chapter focuses most of its attention beyond the farm gate, recognizing that food security is more than just about issues surrounding production. For example, space is made in this chapter to address the important question of, "What can we eat if not GDP?" We need, the author contends, a thoroughly sociological rendering of food security: a position that views food security not as a thing – or an end in itself – but as a process that ought to make people and the Planet better off.

Food security has been much in the news recently, which makes this radical reassessment of the concept all the more timely. Carolan questions current assumptions, especially the agro-industrial and food systems based on providing the cheapest calories possible, with devastating effects on the environment, small holders and health. He argues that a secure food system enables people both present and future to prosper and lead long, happy and healthy lives. In discussing the history of food security, he identifies the most important factors as what he calls the calorie-isation, neo-liberalisation and empty calorie-isation of the concept. The US, where much of this thinking originated, can hardly be held up as an exemplar in terms of obesity, food waste and subjective well-being.

In the second part, the author identifies the missing pieces as well being and nutrition, sustainability, and food sovereignty, safety and access. Just at the time of the green revolution between 1950 and 1970, it is interesting to learn that low income nations went from being entirely food self-sufficient to accounting for almost half of the world's grain imports. In the light of neoliberal trade policy based on comparative advantage, this is thought to be a good thing, but it creates dependency on a massive scale as well as depopulating the countryside with all its attendant social implications. Carolan's analysis makes clear how unsustainable agro-industrial models are in the longer term, but all governments seem to support this kind of future and the science that drives it, powered by immensely influential lobbies. It is these developments that have produced unprecedented concentration in the food industry, resulting not only in monopoly power but also what the author calls monopsony, the corresponding power of large buyers. He creates his own Food and Human Security Index (FHSI) with five indicators: individual and societal well-being, ecological sustainability, potential for food independence, nutritional well-being, and freedom in agri-food chain. He calculates the score for 126 countries, with Costa Rica at the top and the US at 55. It is an eye-opening chart and recontextualises the debate away from the quantitative towards the qualitative. The reader is left realising that food sovereignty is perhaps just as important as food security.

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