Guyana the wider world
by Dr Clive Thomas
Stabroek News
March 18, 2001
As we have seen over the past three weeks, hunger constitutes one of the greatest challenges facing the international community today. In a world that produces enough food for all, and in which there would be no hunger if this food were to be equitably divided, over 800 million people go hungry and suffer from serious malnutrition. Of these 140 million are school children. Global food security promoted for four decades now remains an elusive goal.
In examining this situation, so far we have considered two of the three global transformations, which I have argued are affecting possible solutions to this problem. One has been the paradigm shift in global approaches to trade in agricultural products in general, and food in particular. The expectation is that "better" arrangements for food trade would rapidly abolish food shortages. The new trade rules seek to bring the global food trade under the same regimen being applied to global trade in manufactures and services. This is an heroic endeavour, in light of the present dominance of special arrangements, protection, and political interference over world trade in food.
The other transformation is the explosive growth of science and technology, especially biotechnology. This has reached a stage where some argue that it offers a permanent "biosolution" to global hunger. We have noted in this discussion that there is considerable consumer resistance to some aspects of this revolution. Particularly as regards the use of chemicals in food production and the cultivation of genetically modified foods and animals for human consumption. Scares related to the current foot-and-mount, and mad-cow diseases in Europe attest to this.
First Stage
The third transformation is the rapid development of "good-practice" in dealing with manifestations of hunger. This is based on a clear line of evolution in theoretical approaches to the problem. In a recent academic paper I have identified five distinct stages in the evolution of thinking and practice in relation to food security. over the past 30 years. The first stage was characterized by concentration on the overall inadequacy of food supplies at the global and national levels. This was the period of the food crisis in Africa in the 1970s. Indeed the World Food Conference held in 1974 endorsed this focus. The effect of this, particularly through the "green" revolution, was a substantial expansion in food output at the global and national levels in subsequent years.
Second stage
Regrettably, it soon came to be realised that the substantial expansion in food supplies which had occurred at the global and national levels in the 1970s and early 1980s, could not prevent the eruption of severe food crises in some countries. Once again this was mainly in Africa. This was the period of Nobel Laureate, Sen's seminal work on Poverty and Famines (1991), which laid the foundation for the second stage. In this work he developed what is known in the literature as the "entitlements approach" approach to the study of hunger. This approach portrays the relationship of the household to its entitlements from which it seeks to secure its livelihood. These entitlements are portrayed as the set of income and resource bundles under the households control. In practice, such entitlements are influenced by a wide array of socio-economic and cultural variables.
This approach led policy makers to focus on two crucial factors when addressing food security. One is the dynamic and creative coping and survival mechanisms that poor households frequently resort to when the threat of hunger emerges. This instinct for survival should not be underestimated. The other is the importance that should be placed on the food and production systems in poor communities, as well as the supply and income side of food demand in determining food security.
Third stage
The third stage takes this work further. It recognizes that food supply is only one element, albeit a very important one, in determining nutritional as well as food security. This stage opened the way for related food security concerns to be taken into account. Included among these are matters such as the environment, cultural practices, education, and health status. All these concerns now enter into the programmes and the means whereby food insecurity is to be tackled.
Fourth stage
The fourth stage sought to link food and nutritional security and to locate both within an array of objectives that poor households pursue for their survival. From this perspective, extreme as it might first appear, hunger (albeit temporary) may be "chosen" by households over other alternatives, if households consider them to be worse. This approach has been termed the "household livelihood security model". It takes a broader, more comprehensive and multi-dimensional understanding of the relationships between the politics and economics of poverty, hunger, and malnutrition, and the complex dynamic strategies that poor households employ to secure their survival.
Current stage
The fifth stage is the current one. Here efforts are underway to link the approaches of the household livelihood security model to the potential of modern biotechnology. This stage also extends the household security model by emphasizing nutrition throughout the life-cycle. In other words malnutrition is a "vicious circle" it can start before birth, then get transmitted during reproductive stages of life into children, where it then lasts into old age.
Observations
A key observation related to the developments noted in this presentation is that direct ú interventions to deal with hunger are now premised on the existence of a continuum. This continuum embraces, relief-rehabilitation and mitigation - development measures. Unlike before, these elements are not treated as separate, discrete, and compartmentalized initiatives to be divided up among separate relief agencies and groups. This permits a "development-oriented programming" approach to the problem. This emphasizes enhancing the capacity of poor households to provide their basic food needs, linked to their protection against destruction of the productive assets they have and the rehabilitation ,of these, if and when, such destruction occurs. It is alongside this that relief is then provided in emergency situations.