IDSA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Food Security, Food Regimes, Decolonization
11 Dec 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Week 10 – Nov 14 – 2018
Political Economy of Food, Hunger, and the Global Food Regime
“Quote”
-tonight, we will continue to look at a number of key development issues
-posted a rubric for grading paper…
-key issue in development and a key goal within the SDGs
Political economy of food
-appears throughout various readings possibly
-political economy – is two terms
-political science – branch of studies focusing on institutions, how rules are made and how
powers are constructed and contested! Who has power?
-economics – dynamics of how diff goods are produced! Supplied? Demand?
-many of us taking economics, many diff ways of looking at the market!
-consumers behavior as rational human being
-these two areas have very distinct concern
-political economy – conscious reminder and approach – cannot think of politics and economy
as separate
-things always take pplace in a political context – struggle for power and such have an impact
on economics
-interactions of politics and economics have an influence of various concepts we have covered
over the term – gender, development, education, food security
Political economy of international dev
-informing us about future studies… for IDS
SDGs
-last week spent time looking at gender and development
-start off by saying when you look at these dev goals, they’re all fine and important
-these issues are not separate
-when understanding gender inequality, it intersects with other issues
-food insecurity and the cost of world hunger, we have to look across these various goals as
well
-how will we reduce hunger to 0? Goal set by UN, we cannot ignore how food production has a
direct impact on the environment…
-life on land, and climate action! Very important
-climate change has an impact on food production and insecurity
-none of these should be considered as a self-contained issue
-reminder, how we will think about these dev issues
-writing our report – sensible to address our issues, as it relates to other possible issues!
-like development, for better understanding of the issues we are focusing on
Objectives
-why do we have so many ppl around the world who go hungry? Yet in the west we have a
surplus of food
-when going to a supermarket, we can just about buy whatever we want
-in many parts of the world that type of access is limited…
-when ppl have food, some are even malnourished…
-introduce concept of Global food regimes to highlight one of the issues which it continues to
structure underdevelopment in many parts of the term
-dependency theory, world system theory, etc… and how these theories allow us to understand
how certain rich countries keep underdeveloped countries underdeveloped
-global food regime – invokes world system theory – how the world of ppl with lots to eat vs ppl
who don’t – how does it relate to the global system of too much and not enough
-there’s also alternatives emerging from grassroots organizations – looking for more sustainable
ways of growing food for their own culture! Not based on maximizing profit
-sustainable well being food seeking system
Some key Terms
-hunger – very serious issue – can cause death
-chronic situation -long term health consequences
-damages to diff parts of bodies, or metabolic systems – growth systems
-not enough food can effect your growth
-some of the impacts can be permanent
-hunger can manifest in various ways
-hunger at individual level and world hunger
-world hunger – more general statement about what constitute world hunger at a macrolevel
-these macro defns include two sub defintitions generally
1) food insecurity – unpredictable access to foods, nutrition and adequate foods, and
safe to eat
2)malnutrition –a chronic problem, different forms of malnutrition – in many developed
countries we may face over nutrition – obesity – over consumption of food – causes
certain types of problematic diseases
-malnutrition does not just effect global south, it effects more and more countries, as
we tend to be funnelled into the same world system of food consumption
-we are eating more and more of the same world food!
-theyre both not simply about not having enough food – there’s other consequences
-when talking about world hunger we tend to be talking about either or both of these two
Two Basic malnutritions
-primary focus has been on protein malnutrition! Insufficient amount of protein and caloreies –
has been a standard measurement of evolution of hunger by international orgs – like WHO, or
FAO
-they use calories and protein intake as a measure of whether a person or pop are under
nutrtion
-one reason why calories or proteins are important
-one criticism of this – when we focus too much on calories, we don’t focus on other aspects of
intake
-nutrition – is our diet sufficiently broad and diverse so we are not suffering from
malnutrition of micronutrients
-if we have a diet that only consists of a single crop – like corn – historically we have
seen pops highly dependent on one crop, many times they suffer from different kinds of
deficiencies like vitamins and minerals
-not the amount of calories, historically measurement focused on calories, but that’s
detrimental
FIGURES
-show how around the world malnutrition effects young ppl!
-when you have very chronic hunger and malnutrition, you waste away!
-slow death!
-many pops experience this…
-stunting – abnormal growth compared to kids who’d have access to regular nutrition
-stunting- growing below the avg – measured in height and weight
-can effect mental growth, ability to study and such!
-there are some signs that these kinds of numbers have been dropping
-but these numbers are still huge
-150 million in this one case
-the number, for instance over weight on far right has been increasing
-we’ve traded one problem with another – with our modern food consumption!
-this is a general overview of some of the consequences of food malnutrition
Number of hungry ppl in the world?
-FAO – about 11% of the current population around the world is suffering from some sort of
chornic malnurishment
-some would argue that this number has been decreasing over time
-but decreasing is not equal around the world
-in china, the number of ppl suffering from chronic malnutrition has dropped a lot
-when looking at individual countries, or regions within the countries – the number may be very
different compared to the place
Organe, yellow chart – pops of hungry people
-in terms of the total number of ppl suffering from hunger and malnutrition, asia the number
has been decreasing in absolute number and %
-2016 number is
-one that is concerning – green bubble @2016 – both the absolute number of ppl suffering
from malnutrition and hunger have both gone up!
-in most African countries, there has been a continued in crease of ppl suffering
-so these are broad numbers, try and locate some of the broader issue
Document Summary
Political economy of food, hunger, and the global food regime. Tonight, we will continue to look at a number of key development issues. Key issue in development and a key goal within the sdgs. Political science branch of studies focusing on institutions, how rules are made and how powers are constructed and contested! Economics dynamics of how diff goods are produced! Many of us taking economics, many diff ways of looking at the market! Political economy conscious reminder and approach cannot think of politics and economy as separate. Things always take pplace in a political context struggle for power and such have an impact on economics. Interactions of politics and economics have an influence of various concepts we have covered over the term gender, development, education, food security. Last week spent time looking at gender and development. Start off by saying when you look at these dev goals, they"re all fine and important.
