FOOD SECURITY PART 1:
CONCEPTUAL FUNDAMENTALS
TOPIC 6:
FOOD IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL-ECONOMIC THOUGHT
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
The Religious Dimension In
Christianity, food, in particular bread and wine, is a religious symbol. In John 6:35, Jesus says: “I am the bread of life. Who comes to me will never go hungry.” In Luke 22:19, describing Jesus’ last supper, it says: “And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
The Religious Dimension Similarly
in Islam, food is given spiritual value and access to food is Allah’s blessing. In the Holy Quran, [2, 172-173] it says: “O believers! Eat the clean things which We have provided you and give thanks to Allah, if you worship only Him. He has forbidden you to eat dead meat, blood, the flesh of swine, and that on which any name other than Allah has been invoked; but if someone is compelled by absolute necessity, intending neither to sin nor to transgress, they shall incur no sin. Surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.”
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
The Religious Dimension In
the Holy Quran, [2, 172-173] it says: “O believers! Eat the clean things which We have provided you and give thanks to Allah, if you worship only Him. He has forbidden you to eat dead meat, blood, the flesh of swine, and that on which any name other than Allah has been invoked; but if someone is compelled by absolute necessity, intending neither to sin nor to transgress, they shall incur no sin. Surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.” Similarly, many religions consider fasting a spiritually cleansing experience.
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
The Political Dimension But
not only because of the religious importance of food have leaders all over the world given food particular attention. An increase in food prices has socio-economically much more devastating consequences than an increase of prices of non-edibles. Without any solid food, human beings will die within four to six weeks; without any water within ten days. Because of the importance of food for maintaining life, many consider access to food a basic human right.
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
The Political Dimension In the United Nation’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right for food is implicitly mentioned. Article three states: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” Because food is so essential to life, the right to food is implicit to this article. More specifically, in Article 25(1), it says: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
The “Right to Food” The right to food is explicitly formulated in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Art 11 as: “1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. The States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right, recognizing to this effect the essential importance of international co-operation based on free consent. 2. The States Parties to the present Covenant, recognizing the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger, shall take, individually and through international co-operation, the measures, including specific programmes, which are needed: (a) To improve methods of production, conservation and distribution of food by making full use of technical and scientific knowledge, by disseminating knowledge of the principles of nutrition and by developing or reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilization of natural resources; (b) Taking into account the problems of both food-importing and food-exporting countries, to ensure an equitable distribution of world food supplies in relation to need.”
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
The “Right to Food”
Drawing on the above definition, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food in 2002 defined the right to adequate food as follows:
“Right to adequate food is a human right, inherent in all people, to have regular, permanent and unrestricted access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of people to which the consumer belongs, and which ensures a physical and mental, individual and collective fulfilling and dignified life free of fear.”
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
The “Right to Food” The
Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which is the governing body of the ICESCR, clarifies in its General Comment Nr. 12 For example: 12. Availability refers to the possibilities either for feeding oneself directly from productive land or other natural resources, or for well functioning distribution, processing and market systems that can move food from the site of production to where it is needed in accordance with demand. 13. Accessibility encompasses both economic and physical accessibility
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
“Right to Food” and Sen’s Capability Approach
The “Right to Food” approach emphasizes the idea of Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach. Resources, like land, provide abilities to achieve something. These are capabilities, like “growing food”. Capabilities, in turn, provide opportunities for functionings, like being “adequately nourished.” Functionings have intrinsic values to the individual. Resources Capabilities Functionings Utility
For example: A peasant under feudalism has limited resources, capabilities, and functionings. A land reform increases resources (access to capital), capabilities (better seeds), and functionings (better nutrition). In short: The right to food is not an entitlement per se. Instead, the right to food is an approach to empower individuals with freedoms to take care of themselves.
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
“Right to Food” – Historical Analysis Spitz (1985) argues that in pre-capitalist societies, the right to food was naturally woven into social fabrics. The right to food was mostly threatened by outsiders but barely through dynamics within the group. As opposed to barter-based hunter-gatherer economies that were organized around kinship and tribalism, modern states developed fiscal structures, the use of money, political borders, and military systems. In these early modern states, the predominant tax base was the agricultural sector. The first fiscal revenues were collected in the form of grain and granaries were the first public budgets.
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
“Right to Food” – Historical Analysis The ancient Moroccon term makhzen, in fact, meant both granary and government. The word makhzen is the root of the modern term magazine and has always some connotation with storage. The magazine that we read, for example, stores information. The term magazine, however, is also used to describe the storage of modern states’ means to enforce their monopoly of power. It is the state and military’s magazines, where governments store their weapons. And, of course, one of the oldest forms of public expenditures, if not the oldest, are defense expenditures.
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
“Right to Food” – Historical Analysis Spitz
(1985, p. 308) argues that “[…] in the process of development of the state in pre-capitalist societies, with the concomitant development of coercive fiscal and military systems, the right to food was progressively denied by the state itself to many of its own subjects, and particularly to those who were producing food, while food was guaranteed to non producers, such as soldiers, priests and civil servants.”
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
“Right to Food” – Historical Analysis At
the same time, early rulers of agricultural societies were well aware of the dangers of a food crisis for their own political survival, which is why the agricultural sector and food markets have been subject to substantial regulations. This tendency was common to all major civilizations.
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
“Right to Food” – Historical Analysis Confucius, for example, listed eight items that are essential for the well-being of societies, among which the first is food, followed by clothing, shelter, an enriched state, a growing population, peace, and Gods’ blessings. Political advisors of the time also knew that high food prices hurt consumers and low prices producers while either high or low prices hurt the government. According recommendations for anti-cyclical stabilization policy can therefore already be found in China around 400 BC.
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
“Right to Food” – Historical Analysis
The uniqueness of food as a commodity was also recognized by the Greek. Greece imposed strict regulations for the trade in grains, like quotas for traders to avoid speculative purchases and sales. Officials failing to stabilize prices and supply or traders being caught selling more than their assigned quota were sentenced to death. Spitz (1985, p. 309), quotes a speech by Lysias, in which he refers to traders as follows: “When do they make the biggest profits? When the news of a disaster enables them to sell at high prices. Your misfortunes are so welcome to them that sometimes they hear of them before anyone else, sometimes they invent them.”
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
“Right to Food” – Historical Analysis
In the political thought of the great 14th century Arab thinker and politician Ibn Khaldun, the uniqueness of food as a commodity is omnipresent in his famous introduction to his universal history, the so-called Al-Muqqadmia. Not only describes he four centuries prior to Adam Smith the benefits from the division of labor using the theme of food production, he also agrees with the Greek that speculative hoarding of grain is harmful to society’s well-being. As opposed to the Greek though, Khaldun argued that “[i]ntelligent and experienced people in the cities know that it is inauspicious to hoard grain and to wait for high prices […]. The reason may perhaps lie in the facts that people need food, and that the money they spend on it, they are forced to spend. Therefore, their souls continue to cling to (their money). The fact that souls cling to what is theirs may be an important factor in bringing bad luck to the person who takes (someone's money) giving nothing in return.” Despite the fact that Khaldun hoped for the good in traders’ spirits, he also advocated the supervision of markets that make sure that economic activity serves the public interest.
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
“Right to Food” – Historical Analysis Around
the time of the 1789 French Revolution, the right to food was increasingly seen to be realized best not by means of regulation and supervision but farmers’ economic empowerment and free trade (Capability Approach). In the prelude to the French Revolution, the so-called Physiocrats like the famous thinker Francois Quesnay, provided the ideological basis for the revolutionary moment.
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
“Right to Food” – Historical Analysis Beginning
with the industrialization, the emergence of markets and democratic structures, the right to food became developed in the social contract. Factors like the right for workers to organize themselves in unions, greater accountability of governments, and the presence of social assistance programs have helped to protect the right to food for most people.
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
“Right to Food” – Historical Analysis The
situation is still very much different in developing countries. As in pre-revolution France, the problem with violations of the right to food begins with farmers’ empowerment. Spitz (1985, p. 310) identifies a major problem in the extraction/retention dichotomy, “which is subjected to the conflicting forces of extraction for the market on the one hand, and of retention for self-provisioning on the other.”
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
“Right to Food” – Historical Analysis Farmers suffer from various extraction forces. Spitz (1985) mentions four: First, direct taxation of agricultural production and input factors. Secondly, the presence of credit system that forces farmers who are net food buyers to use shares of future harvests to repay current consumption, often at high interest rates. Thirdly, the practice of tenancy farming that requires farmers to use a share of production to pay for the use of land. Lastly, price ceilings that are often imposed to protect the urban poor and to keep the real wage bill low redirect resources from the primary to the secondary sector of the economy.
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
“Right to Food” – Historical Analysis
In protecting the right to food for rural producers, Spitz (1985, p. 312) advocates “land reform legislation, security of tenure, fairer share-cropping systems, redistribution of landholdings exceeding a certain size (to benefit the most deprived), regulating the use of common pastures and equitable allocation of fishing rights. It also requires the adoption of laws curbing usurious practices and the creation of more liberal agricultural credit systems. In addition, credit and marketing systems organized along cooperative lines supported by an adequate legislation could help small village craftsmen to increase their production and competitiveness, thereby safeguarding important sources of seasonal employment and income. However, all these laws will be ineffective if the potential beneficiaries do not have the right to organize themselves in order first to contribute to the drafting of such legislation and secondly to guarantee its enforcement.”
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
Food in the History of Economic Thought This inevitability of boom and bust cycles had let Malthus to advocate seemingly unorthodox policy recommendations. Although he was a man of the church in addition to being a political economist, the results of his political-economic studies weighted heavier than, for example, the virtues of solidarity and compassion. Malthus was against England’s “Poor Laws” that provided the poor with shelter and food in so-called work houses. He considered the poor laws to create perverse effects in terms of even higher population growth rates and more adverse busts.
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
Food in the History of Economic Thought It
is probably safe to say, that it was Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) who first systematically addressed the issue of food security for the well-being of society. For him, the problem was simple. Population will eventually outgrow the available productive capacity. Because agricultural production is subject to diminishing returns, ever less productive land will have to be exploited. Population growth, on the other hand, occurs exponentially. Boom and bust cycles are therefore inevitable.
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
Food in the History of Economic Thought The
Malthusian theory of population growth is known as the congestion hypothesis and stands in contrast to Adam Smith’s more optimistic view of population growth, known as the innovation hypothesis. According to Smith, population growth increases the market size and allows for increasing the division of labor. In terms of economic growth, Smith’s division of labor offsets diminishing returns.
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
Food in the History of Economic Thought David
Ricardo (1772-1823) agreed with Thomas Malthus in principle. He though emphasized opportunities to increase food availability through trade. This has become known as the theory of comparative advantage. Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage was motivated by the Corn Laws, which were tariffs on imports from France (as a retaliation for Napoleonic wars with England).
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought Food in the History of Economic Thought The
Theory of Comparative Advantage
8 7 6 5 England's PPF Cloth
France's PPF
4
Utility Function Autarky 3
Terms of Trade Utility Free Trade
2 1 0 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8 Grain
Through free trade, England could increase food consumption without forgoing cloth consumption!
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought
Food in the History of Economic Thought Engels
Curve
The
observation that as income increases, the share spent on food decreases.
The
Giffen Good
As
prices for bread go up, people buy more bread. Bread is often an inferior good for latent food insecure people.
Food in the History of PoliticalEconomic Thought Food in the History of Economic Thought Revolutions and Modernization
n on A
gricul t
ure
Excess Labor After Green Revolution
Ag ric ul tu al on di ti Tr a
Effect
of Gre e
n Rev
re
olutio
Traditonal Excess Labor
In a dual economy, a green revolution frees up excess labor, increases food supply, lowers subsistence wage, and allows for a greater expansion of manufacturing.
t uc r od bo Pr La al ial gin tr ar us M Ind of
Total Agricultural Output
Green
Marginal Industrial Product Industrial Labor Supply
Subsistence Wage Agricultural Labor
Industrial Labor Supply (=Excess Agricultural Labor)
