Basic food security is an important step towards good governance and socio-economic development. It is good governance to feed one’s people. It allows them to be governable; it should be the first priority in national security. Globally food security is said to exist for some 4.7 billion persons with another two billion being food insecure. If global population stabilizes at 9 billion around 2050, food demand will probably rise to an equivalent of 12 billion of today’s persons due to such factors as affluence-induced food preferences and food wastage in urban supply chains. In Asia where more than half of the world lives, more than 90% of world rice, 40% of cereals and 40% of meat are produced and are mainly consumed in the country of production. After 30 years of economic growth and significant reductions in poverty, Asia still contains more than half of the world’s poor. Unless food security is realistically defined as basic food for survival, it is not achievable without major changes in our worldviews. Yet the aid world, caught up in an ideology derived from non-essential commodities in the Western world, issues statements such as unless food trade is kept open and relative prices are allowed to reflect market scarcity, severe consequences will emerge.
By examining three philosophical perspectives - food as a commodity, tradable as any other item; food as a product of nature to be balanced with other products; and food as a human right, this paper explores the disconnect between the current worldview of ‘donors’ who allocate solutions to food insecurity to aid agencies, and the small third-world farmers who produce the food from farms of less than two hectares and feed half the world.
Professor Lindsay Falvey, a Fellow of the Academy of Technological Science and of Clare Hall University of Cambridge, was foundation Dean of Land and Food and Chair of Agriculture at the University of Melbourne. Awarded by both the Australian and Thai governments for his work with small farmers and agribusiness, his PhD is based on research in northern Thailand, his Higher Doctorate on 30 years work across the globe, and his honorary Doctorate, on contributions to Thai agriculture. Among his 12 books are Thai Agriculture - Golden Cradle of Millennia and Religion and Agriculture - Sustainability in Christianity and Buddhism. His most recent book is Small Farmers Secure Food - Survival Food Security, The World’s Kitchen and the Critical Role of Small Farmers, free copies of which will be available at his talk.
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