A comparative look at the FAO's view of Food Security
versus a Southeast Asian NGO view
 
 

At a superficial level, both the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and regional Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) appear to agree on the general causes of food insecurity - specifically a poor policy environment, lack of access to resources, a neglect of indigenous food sources and often a poor social environment in which only some members of a household or a community have access to adequate food.  It is for this reason that documents presented by the FAO in preparation for the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS) in Rome seem to embrace the ideologies of Southeast Asian NGOs concerned with food security.

A quick look at FAO documents advanced at the WFS, however, reveals that they are very focussed on trade and enhanced private investment in agriculture as the way to correct the above noted obstacles.  NGO positions hold the view that the development model embraced by the FAO is too heavily focussed on trade and not enough on people.  SE Asian NGOs hold the view that this model needs fundamental changes - or more correctly needs replacing by a new model, one not based on trade and consumerism and having efficiency indexed on dollar profits, but rather one based on enhanced participation of people in the determination of development alternatives and indexed on quality of life.  In other words, these regional NGOs are focussing on strengthened democracy instead of the reduced democracy they feel is attached to trade liberalization efforts.

Regional NGOs are generally of the opinion that trade limits people's options in pursuing small scale agriculture and furthermore hold that trade encourages the intensification of agriculture, threatening the sustainability of small-holder farms and threatening the resources necessary for agriculture.  Increased trade and private investment in agriculture speeds up the commoditization of agricultural resources (making resources such as land, water, seeds and labour a valuable asset that can be readily traded to improve positions of profit) , thereby forcing out those many small scale farmers who simply do not have the money to compete in this 'enhanced efficiency' agriculture.

In the FAO Policy Statement on Universal Food Security, there is included 7 commitments that signatory states agree to uphold.  In these commitments are found phrases like "...ensure the political, social and economic environment...endeavour to meet transitory and emergency food requirements... food and agricultural trade policies...promote appropriate investments in sustainable agricultural, forestry and fisheries production..." all talking establishing an atmosphere "...conducive to food for all...improved food security...".  This sounds promising but regional NGOs are concerned that "...conducive to food security..." is taking on the meaning '...conducive to increasing bilateral and multilateral trade and investment liberalization in food and food technologies...' - - an atmosphere supporting the present development model, the very model NGOs across the globe are continuously proving to be wrong.

Many regional NGOs see that the FAO is falling out of touch with the reality of the South.  The vast majority of the population of the South are smallholder farmers.  It is this vast majority that produces the region's food.  It is within this reality that regional NGOs state that an environment supporting food security means an environment where all people are able to have an equal voice in decisions that affect the way they choose to live so that their life is not indirectly dictated through the elimination of options by other, more powerful bodies.

Various documents presented by the FAO at their WFS did not try to hide a focus on improved trade as  a means to poverty reduction and to food security - in other words they see that ultimately the solution lies in economics alone and uses many broad economic indicators in the series of publications presented at the WFS.  Many groups in association with the FAO feel the only path to food security is through the establishment of policies that make technological research and development attractive (profitable); boosting food output within the framework of a country's 'comparative advantage'*;  fully expose agricultural production to market forces as 'it can only be financial incentives' that force efficient use of resources, including such things as tradable water rights; continuing with structural adjustment goals of reduced 'inefficient' government support; rely more heavily on cheaper imports than on domestic production to feed the people while using high value crop production to service national debt/earn foreign exchange and improve the nation's terms of trade.  Another large argument in these conservative circles concerns the growth of urban populations and the demand this will put on consumption - that it will be income through employment that will allow these people to feed themselves.  By taking such a position, they are denying the fact that it is precisely 'economic development' and its inherent impacts on the rural situation that is forcing the urban overpopulation and therefore poverty problems in the first place!

The excuse presented by the FAO to explain inadequacies in their economic approach to a solution is that "...political will to commit resources for policies and programmes to alleviate chronic hunger is still relatively weak, partly due to ambiguity about the very nature of the problem itself and the nature of society's ethical obligations in regard to it, and partly due to competing demands for scarce public resources."

The philosophy of regional NGO, PO and Civil Society groups working to propose alternative solutions to food insecurity is that economic growth alone is 'too weak a basket in which to put all your eggs'.  Very pro-business people in mainstream economic society recognize that economic growth is poorly predictable; in fact, a popular conservative business and economics author and Director and Chief Economist of the Hong Kong office of a very large American banking firm himself wrote that  "Economic growth is about as little understood as the human mind...".  Even some of the FAO papers presented at the WFS make stark admissions to the instability of trade agreements and economic growth in predicting future success; effects of changes in trade agreements are termed "immeasurable" and the "...effect of trade liberalization on the stability of world food prices is uncertain." yet no-one seems to be listening - not even to themselves.

On the same page as occurs those stark admissions to the lack of reliability in economic arguments, the authors of these FAO presentations go on, inexplicably, to predict wonderful benefits; "...the overall impact of the Uruguay Round should be to provide the wherewithal to improve income levels and hence food security." ; the "...positive effect of tarrification..." (an element of the Uruguay Round) and  finally "...the positive impact of the greater share of stocks in private hands...". If the effects of change are "immeasurable" and "uncertain" how can the above predictions be taken seriously??  It is ludicrous. How can the FAO and its supporters argue that trade liberalization and increased dependence on food imports is the rock upon which food security is to be achieved?  The rock itself is not even secure.

'How can these predictions ever be taken seriously?' is the question the regional NGOs are asking.  They see dominant international trade policies, growth of trans-national corporations, the commodification of food production resources, global food stock management and promotion of new technologies - indeed all that the FAO embraces - as constraints to food security.  While they do not feel trade has no place in development, they maintain that agricultural trade should only be a supplement to food security and not the principle means to food security.

So while the FAO approach sounds much like the NGO approach, the two are fundamentally different, based on two separate development paradigms and based on two completely different observed root causes.  The trend developing from the FAO papers is that poverty is the root of food insecurity and their proposals aim to increase wealth.  The trend evident from NGO reports is that poverty is not a cause of food insecurity but rather a symptom of a greater more fundamental problem of weak popular representation in issues related to agriculture, including representation on trade discussion stages.

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*comparative advantage is the idea that if a country can produce a product cheaper than another country then this second country should buy it from the first instead of producing that product on its own - it is an idea that is arguably sensible but the production and trade process must be very very transparent first of all and the term 'cheaper' should be defined to include the effect on the population that would result if a country were to cease production of that product, especially when the product is food
 

J.D. Comtois
September, 1998