Food Crisis - Notes Food Crises
Food Crises: the Big Picture (SDC-51806)
Wageningen University & Research
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Food crises
Food security: all people always have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food. Dimensions: food availability, economic and physical access to food, food utilization and stability over time Food insecurity: people lack secure access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritionist food. Causes: unavailability of food, insufficient purchasing power, inappropriate distribution, inadequate use of food May be chronic, seasonal or transitory Undernourishment: at least one year without the possibility of acquiring enough food (based on dietary energy requirements) Drivers of food insecurity: conflict (siege), weather extremes, economic shocks, pests, natural disasters, poverty, pandemics, climate change, urbanisation Kwashiorkor: insufficient protein intake with sufficient energy Marasmus: insufficient energy Wasting: weight is too low for height Stunting: length is too short for age Starvation Famine Different definitions Sen: starvation causing widespread death Mayer: a severe shortage of food accompanied by an increase in the death rate de Waal: destitution (loss of an acceptable livelihood), and social disruption (including migration, family dispersal and abandoning homes), as well as hunger and death. A social experience. Walker: a socio-economic process causing the destitution of the most vulnerable groups of a community, to the point that they can no longer as a group maintain a sustainable livelihood. Malthus Malthusian crisis: population growth will inevitably end in a gigantic famine, as food production only increases linearly, and a population exponentially. Malthuses zombie: we cannot get rid of the idea that hunger is caused by population growth. Even though it has been disproven by scholars, its an argument that keeps returning, even by other scholars and politicians etc. Crises
● are man made ● results of politics Hunger Stunting is a type of adaptation If people are hungry enough, their morals will eventually cease to exist Delirio de fome ● madness of hunger ● woman killed her children so they would stop crying about hunger Preventive mechanisms ● postponing marriage, celibacy ● slavery (selling of children) ● prostitution ● child abandonment (selective neglect) ● infanticide, saving the elder members of the family ● cannibalism Space between hunger and crisis ● chronic malnutrition ● hunger is often institutionalized and therefore normal in a culture ● cultural practices ● poverty will eventually become a part of a culture ● where is the tipping point, when to intervene Famine foods ● used in emergency ● can also be normal coping during stress Stages in response to hunger Exploration (hyper-activity) Economic ● intensification ● adaptation (selling stuff, pawning) Social ● increased sharing ● expanding networks ● calling in debts or cancelling debts Political ● unrest Retrenchment (hypo-activity) Economic ● restrictive and secretive stockpiling
● Irish revolution as a result ● no clear interventions by England made it worse Soup kitchen in pre-modern era ● small-scale organization ● only deserving cases could attend ● moralising attitude towards hunger and scarcity Indian Great Famine ● immediate cause: el Nino ● 6-10 million deaths ● deadly ● taxation ● farmers were forced to produce cash crops instead of food crops ● British hesitant to interfere Parallels between Ireland and India ● both part of Britisch empire ● peasants were victims, detached from the elites ● lassez-faire policies dominated, no interventions in market ● land tenure policies (Ireland) and cash crops versus food crops (India) Responses British Empire ● liberal reforms ● free trade ● soup kitchen ● laws ● provincial famine code 20th-century famines World War I ● siege and counter-siege ● Britain blocks German ports ● Germany cuts British imports with submarines ● US upholds food export to UK, Germans surrender Holodomor ● to kill by starvation ● food forcefully taken from farmers by soviet union for red army ● 6 million dead ● Stalins 5-year plan for rapid industrialization ● resistance, regime responded with terror which resulted in famine ● genocide? World War II ● Greek famine, allied blockade, 300000 dead ● Siege of Leningrad, 1 million dead, encircled by German and Finnish army ● Dutch hunger winter, railway strike, German retaliation, 20000 dead
Great Leap Forward ● Mao wanted his own 5-year plan like Stalin Post-war responses ● starving a population is a war crime ● United Nations formed ● WFP formed Sen Food Availability Decline ● FAD approach: assumes famines are caused by reduced food supply ● triggered by natural disasters ● Malthusian logic Entitlement failure ● food insecurity does not depend on food availability ● no moral or legal reason for a market to meet subsistence needs Entitlement approach ● famine is a decline in entitlements for a group of people ● the access to food should be a right ● focus on starvation, not on mortality Types of entitlement ● production: being able to grow food ● trade: being able to buy food ● own-labor: being able to work for food ● inheritance and transfer: being able to receive food Critiques entitlement approach ● is food only available through legal means ● democratic institutions are not necessary to prevent famine ● lack of empirical factors to understand context The Green Revolution History ● started in 1940 with plant breeding sponsored by huge companies ● combined with fertilizer, pesticides and irrigation ● high-volume cross-breeding ● old varieties died out A success? ● made farmers and consumers dependent ● big environmental cost ● social inequality segregation
● multiple households work together ● cope well with food insecurity Links food crises and conflict ● food and food aid are used as a weapon ● food insecurity due to violence ● cycles of underproduction ● shortages mobilizes people to protest violently and rebel ● famines are collateral to war
Lecture 5
Sen
Entitlement approach Moral and legal approach: all humans should have access to food A focus on starvation, not on famine mortality Famine mortality is not only caused by hunger, but also by population movement and breakdown of sanitary facilities Bengal famine ● natural hazard ● rice shortage ● foreign dominance ● feudalism ● prioritization of urban areas Ethiopian famine Lecture 8 Pacific is ruined by western influences, dietary colonoiaism. Farmers have a bad reputation Pressure on fishing Solutions Private food sharing: everyday moving between households. People go and eat at the people who have food. People learn sustainable agriculture and move back to rural areas Long term feasibility
Lecture 10
US ships American USAID food to a crisis area, instead of helping a local economy Local market gets flooded It is better to buy local food, or to just hand out vouchers or money Lecture 11 O’Grada 2009
Food Crisis - Notes Food Crises
Vak: Food Crises: the Big Picture (SDC-51806)
Universiteit: Wageningen University & Research
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