INSTITUTE FOR FOOD AND DEVELOPMENT POLICY WINTER 2010 VOLUME 16 • NUMBER 4

Food Security, Food Justice, or Food Sovereignty?*

By Eric Holt-Giménez The New Year saw renewed food riots in India and Africa, and record levels of hunger here in the US. This year also saw transformation in the food movement, with new power and national recognition. The food movement has successfully shone the spotlight on hunger and food access in the US, created a drive for more local food, and gotten better policy from the federal to the local level. The question now is: how do we turn these initial reforms into lasting, food system transformation? How do we know the food movement is a force for transformative change, rather than a passing fad, a collection of weak reforms, or isolated local efforts? To know this, we need a moment of reflection on how the food system is structured historically, politically and economically. We need to build alliances to take on the root of our failing food system.

Corporate Food Regimes One way to imagine the food system is as a “regime.” A food regime is a “rule-governed structure of production and consumption of food on a world scale.” The first global food regime spanned the late 1800s through the Great Depression and linked food imports from Southern and American colonies to European industrial expansion. The second food regime reversed the flow of food from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere to fuel Cold War industrialization in the Third World. Today’s corporate food regime is characterized by the monopoly market power and mega-profits of agrifood corporations, globalized meat production, and growing links between food and fuel. Virtually * This Backgrounder is based on Eric Holt-Giménez and Annie Shattuck’s 2011 article ‘Food crises, food regimes and food movements: rumblings of reform or tides of transformation?,’ Journal of Peasant Studies, 38: 1, 109 — 144. References are at the end of that article which can be accessed at http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/3253 all the world’s food systems are tied Thatcher ushered in our current era the food system. Some efforts are into today’s corporate food regime. of neoliberal “globalization,” in the highly institutionalized, others are This regime is controlled by a far-flung 1980s, characterized by deregulation, community-based, while still others agrifood industrial complex, made up privatization, and the growth and build broad-based movements aimed of huge monopolies like Monsanto, consolidation of corporate monopoly at transforming our global food ADM, Cargill and Walmart. Together, power in food systems around the system. these corporations are powerful globe. enough to dominate the governments Understanding which strategies work and the multilateral organizations that With the global food and financial to stabilize the corporate food regime make and enforce the regime’s rules for crises of 2007-2010, desperate and which seek to actually change it trade, labor, property and technology. calls for reform have sprung up is essential if we are to move toward This political-economic partnership is worldwide. However, few substantive more equitable and sustainable food supported by both public and private reforms have been forthcoming, and systems. institutions like the World Bank and most government and multilateral International Monetary Fund, the solutions simply call for more of the Some actors within the growing global World Food Program, USAID, the same policies that brought about food movement have a radical critique USDA and big philanthropy. the crisis to begin with: extending of the corporate food regime, calling liberal (“free”) markets, privatizing for food sovereignty and structural, Liberalization and Reform common resources (like forests redistributive reforms including land, Like the larger economic system of and the atmosphere), and protecting water and markets. Others advance which they are a part, global food monopoly concentration while a progressive, food justice agenda regimes alternate between periods mediating the regime’s collateral calling for access to healthy food of liberalization characterized by damage to community food systems by marginalized groups defined by unregulated markets, corporate and the environment. Unless there race, gender and economic status. privatization and massive is strong pressure from society, Family farm, sustainable agriculture 2 concentrations of wealth, followed reformists will not likely affect (much advocates, and those seeking quality by devastating financial busts. When less reverse) the present neoliberal and authenticity in the food system these busts provoke widespread direction of the corporate food also fall in this progressive camp. social unrest—threatening profits regime. While progressives focus more on and governability—governments localizing production and improving usher in reformist periods in which Food Enterprise, Food Security, access to good, healthy food, radicals markets, supply, and consumption Food Justice, Food Sovereignty direct their energy at changing are re-regulated to reign in the crisis Combating the steady increase in regime structures and creating and restore stability to the regime. global hunger and environmental politically enabling conditions for Infinitely unregulated markets would degradation has prompted more equitable and sustainable food eventually destroy both society and government, industry and civil systems. Both overlap significantly the natural resources that the regime society to pursue a wide array of in their approaches. Together, depends on for profits. Therefore, initiatives, including food enterprise, folks in this global food movement while the ‘mission’ of reform is to food security, food justice and food seek to open up food systems to mitigate the social and environmental sovereignty. Some seek to ameliorate serve people of color, smallholders, externalities of the corporate food hunger and poverty through charity. and low income communities regime, its ‘job’ is identical to that of Others see it as a business opportunity while striving for sustainable and the liberal trend: the reproduction of and call for public-private healthy environments. Radicals and the corporate food regime. Though partnerships. Human rights activists progressives are the arms and legs of liberalization and reform may appear insist that government and industry the same food movement. politically distinct, they are actually should be held accountable when they two sides of the same system. undermine the right to food. Those The Food Regime—Food Movement who can afford good food promote Matrix helps describe the dominant Reformists dominated the global individual consumer choices (vote trend in the food system according food regime from the Great with your forks). Food justice activists to the politics, production models, Depression of the 1930s until from underserved communities tendencies, issues and approaches to Ronald Reagan and Margaret struggle against structural racism in the food crisis: Corporate Food Regime Food Movements Politics Neoliberal Reformist Progressive Radical Discourse Food Enterprise Food Security Food Justice Food Sovereignty Main International International Bank Alternative fair Via Campesina, Institutions Finance Corporation for Reconstruction trade and many International (World Bank); and Development Slow Food Planning Committee IMF, WTO: USDA (World Bank); FAO; chapters; many on Food Sovereignty; (Vilsak); Global UN Commission organizations in Global March for Food Security Bill; on Sustainable the Community Women; many food Green Revolution; Development; Millennium USDA (Merrigan); Food Security justice and rights- Challenge; Heritage mainstream fair Movement; CSAs; based movements Foundation; trade; some Slow many Food Policy Chicago Global Food Chapters; Councils and youth Council; Bill and some Food Policy food and justice Melinda Gates Councils; most food movements; many Foundation; Feed banks & food aid farmworker and the Future (USAID) programs labor organizations

Orientation Corporate Development Empowerment Entitlement Model Overproduction; Mainstreaming/ Agroecologically Dismantle corporate corporate certification of produced local agrifoods monopoly concentration; niche markets food; investment power; parity; unregulated markets (e.g. organic, fair, in underserved redistributive land and monopolies; local, sustainable); communities; new reform; community monocultures maintaining business models rights to water and seed; regionally (including organic); northern agricultural and community based food systems; 3 GMOs; agrofuels; subsidies; benefit packages democratization of food mass global “sustainable” for production, systems; sustainable consumption of roundtables for processing, and livelihoods; protection industrial food; agrofuels, soy, forest retail; better wages from dumping/ phasing out of products, etc.; for agriculture overproduction; revival peasant and family market-led land workers; solidarity of agroecologically agriculture and local reform economies; land & managed peasant retail food access agriculture to distribute wealth and cool the planet; regulated markets and supply Approach Increased industrial Same as neoliberal but Right to food; Human right to food to the food production; with increased medium better safety sovereignty; locally unregulated corporate farmer production nets; sustainably sourced, sustainably crisis monopolies; land and some locally produced, locally- produced, culturally grabs; expansion of sourced food aid; sourced food; appropriate, GMOs; public-private more agricultural aid agroecologically democratically partnerships; liberal but tied to GMOs and based agricultural controlled focus on markets; international “bio-fortified/climate- development UN/FAO negotiations sourced food aid resistant” crops Guiding World Bank 2009 World Bank 2009 International Peoples’ Document Development Report; Development Report; Assessment on Comprehensive “Realizing a New “Realizing a New Agriculture Science Framework for Action Vision for Agriculture Vision for Agriculture Technology and to Eradicate Hunger (World Economic (World Economic Development Forum)” Forum)” Time for transformation The current food crisis reflects the environmental vulnerability, social inequity, and economic volatility of the corporate food regime. Absent profound changes we will continue to experience cycles of free market liberalization and mild regime reform, plunging the world’s food systems into ever graver crises. While food system reforms—such as localizing food assistance, increasing aid to agriculture in the Global South, increasing food stamps and funding research in organic Photo by the Growing Youth Project, Alameda Point Collaborative agriculture—are certainly needed Food movements unite! The inequities and injustices of the and long overdue, they don’t alter The challenge for food movements is corporate food regime are the default the balance of power within the food to address the immediate problems of condition between food movement system, and in some cases, may even hunger, malnutrition, food insecurity organizations. These social, economic reinforce existing inequities. and environmental degradation, and political divides of race and class while working steadily towards the can’t be ignored or willed away. An Progressive projects are tremendously structural changes needed to turn honest and committed effort to the energetic, creative and diverse, but can sustainable, equitable and democratic original food justice principles of also be locally focused and issue—rather food systems into the norm rather than anti-racism and equity within the than system—driven. For example, the a collection of projects. This means food movement is just as important as movement to improve access to food that both reform and transformation working for justice in the food system. in low-income urban communities has are needed. Historically, substantive Rural-urban and North-South divides received high level support from the reforms have been introduced to our must also be addressed in practice and White House and the USDA. But the political and economic systems, not in policy for the food movement to causes of nutritional deficiency among by the good intentions of reformists unite in a significant way. underserved communities go beyond per se, but through massive social the location of grocery stores. The pressure on legislators—who then In this regard, the progressive trend is abysmal wages, unemployment, skewed introduce reforms. The social pressure pivotal: If progressive organizations patterns of ownership and inner-city for system change comes from social build their primary alliances with blight, and the economic devastation movements. reformist institutions from the that has been historically visited on corporate food regime, the regime these communities are the result of The food crisis of 2007-2010 has will be strengthened, and the food structural racism and class struggles opened up new opportunities for movement will be weakened. In lost. No amount of fresh produce will reform and transformation, but this scenario, we are unlikely to see fix urban America’s food and health gap has also led to a retrenchment of substantive changes to the status quo. unless it is accompanied by changes liberalization. This suggests that However, if progressive and radical in the structures of ownership and a substantive changes to the corporate trends find ways to build strategic reversal of the diminished political and food regime will originate outside alliances, the food movement will be economic power of low-income people the regime’s institutions—from the strengthened. Social pressure from a of color. To end hunger at home and food movement. Whether or not united food movement has a much abroad practices, rules and institutions the food movement can bring about higher likelihood of bringing about (structures) determining the world’s change depends on whether or not reforms and of moving our food food systems must be transformed. progressive and radical trends unite. systems towards transformation.

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