2.8.6: Student Resources

Key Terms/Glossary

• Agri-food system: the complex networks through which food flows from both small-holding and corporate farms across the world into the hands of those who need it.
• Entitlement approach: the standards by which people become eligible to claim a share of available food
• Famine: an acute crisis caused by a lack of access to food.
• Food power a practice of some states to use the donation or withholding of food as leverage to secure foreign policy goals.
• Low birth weight: a consequence of malnutrition and defined as less than 2500 grams (approximately 5.5 pounds).
• Malnutrition: lack of proper nutrition, caused by not having enough to eat, not eating enough of the right things, or being unable to use the food that one does eat.
• Malthusian catastrophe: famine resulting from excessive population growth, which grows beyond the ability of the environment to provide food.
• New famines: famines associated with a lack of access to food, rather than a lack of food itself.
• Out-cropping: the potential for GMO grain to germinate and cross-pollinate with local crops.
• Overweight: a common consequence of stunting early in life, overweight may also be a consequence of malnutrition and/or a lack of access to fresh and healthful foods
• Severe food insecurity: having such limited or inconsistent access to food supplies that people must go without any food for a day or more.
• Speenhamland Scale: an attempt to prevent low wages from endangering the British working class and extended the promise that the state would intervene to make up the difference between earnings and the cost of bread.
• Stunting: consequence of malnutrition and defined as being too short for one’s age.
• Undernourishment: the condition by which a person doesn’t have access, on a regular basis, to the amount of food that is sufficient to provide the energy required for conducting a normal, healthy and active life, given his or her own dietary energy requirements, the full name is the Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU) indicator
• Wasting: a health condition that prevents the body from being able to absorb nutrients, leading to extremely thin limbs and making one vulnerable to myriad illnesses

Summaries

8.1: Introduction

Nearly 3 billion people around the globe continue to experience some degree of food insecurity, and in 2024 there were food crises in Gaza, Sudan, and Yemen, among other places. For many who do not have adequate food, recent years have been worse because of the war in Ukraine, which has had a significant impact on global grain production, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in a significant decline in global food trade as countries struggled to contain the spread of the virus. There is great concern that as a result of the crises, the world will not achieve an end to hunger by 2030, as the United Nations has committed. Malnutrition, which is measured indirectly by tracking birth weight, stunting among those under 5, wasting among those under 5, and overweight, has been on the rise especially in the lowest-income regions of the world, including the Caribbean and Africa, south of the Sahara. Increasing the number of food secure people around the world will require thoughtful regulation of the agri-food system to ensure sustainable food production and reasonable food distribution.

8.2: Background - Responses to Food Crises

Although humankind has long struggled to secure adequate food, the global community began to craft a transnational response during the Second World War. The Germans were enacting a "hunger plan" in Eastern Europe and millions were at risk. The response to this grew into the World Food Programme, which was created to move excess food from high production countries to areas of the globe where the food is needed. This response grew from a growing understanding that famines can be both made and prevented by human action. Since the early Nineteenth Century, major food crises have been more closely linked to colonialism, as in Ireland in 1845 and Bengal in 1943, conflict, as in Biafra, and problematic agriculture and price regulations, as in China in 1959. However, some have sought to use this knowledge coercively as "food power" trying to influence the actions of fellow nations through trade embargoes.

8.3: Theories - The Causes and Consequences of Persistent Global Hunger

Theories about global access to and distribution of food fall into two broad categories: nature-focused and socio-political. The nature-focused theories emphasize natural causes for human hunger, for example Thomas Malthus's concern about human population growth. They tend to emphasize a need to constrain human consumption or increase agricultural production, an achievement that was the focus of Norman Borlaug's career in botany. Socio-political theories focus on how food is distributed among human beings. How does one become eligible to get food- through possession of money or community belonging or role? Amartya Sen has considered how hungry people can alert national or international institutions before a crisis, while Alex DeWaal has tracked the use of hunger as a weapon deployed against the week during war, as in the Darfur region of Sudan.

8.4: At Home and Abroad - The Hunger Season

The hunger season is an idea that is most commonly associated with subsistence farmers, who must stretch food stores through the summer as a new food crop grows. It has more recently been used to described the experience of American school children who may lose access to necessary school breakfast and lunch programs during the summer, when schools close. This persistent problem was made glaringly obvious during the COVID-19 pandemic when schools closed and children were left without the resource indefinitely. Many states reacted by implementing access to school meals all year. Around the globe, school feeding programs had to grow in similar ways. Low-income countries increased their expenditures on meal programs for school children by 15 percent between 2020 and 2022. These programs represent the largest social safety net program in the world.

Suggestions for Further Study

Websites

World Central Kitchen

World Food Programme

World Peace Foundation- History and Future of Famine

Books

DeWaal, A.  (2005).  Famine that Kills (Revised edition).  Oxford University Press.

Shiva, V. (2015). Seed Sovereignty, Food Security: Women in the Vanguard. Spinfax Press.

Shree, S. and D. Pickering.  (2022).  Hunger: an anthology. Transcendent Zero Press.

Journal Articles

Kanjii, L.  (2016). "Famine or Feast: Climate Change and the Future of Food Production". Harvard International Review.  37(3), 55-58.  

Sachs, C. and A. Patel-Campillo.  (2014).  "Feminist Food Justice: Crafting a New Vision.  Feminist Studies.  40(2), 396-410.

Sagaskie, H. F.  (2019).  "The Impact of Colonization: Food insecurity among American Indian and Alaska Native Adults". Michigan Sociological Review.  33(Fall), 101-114.

 

Review Questions

1. What is the primary goal of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations?
   1. To coordinate the production of enough food for the health of all the people in the world
   2. To distribute food aid to low-income countries (LICs)
   3. To advocate for agricultural subsidies to sustain farmers within individual nations
   4. To direct the flow of excess food stuffs from food exporting nations
2. Which is the largest social support program in the world?
   1. Disaster relief programs
   2. School Lunch programs
   3. Old Age Pension programs
   4. Unemployment programs
3. According to the most recent estimates, what portion of the world population experiences malnutrition?
   1. 40%
   2. 25%
   3. 9%
   4. 3%
4. To what does the gender food gap refer?
   1. The global tendency to provide less food for women
   2. The increased responsibility of women to cook food
   3. The large number of programs that provide food to pregnant women
   4. The roles of women in international agri-food systems
5. What is included in the contemporary concept of the agri-food system?
   1. Farmers who grow food
   2. Processing plants that package and refine food stuffs
   3. Transportation companies that ship food products worldwide
   4. All of the above

Critical Thinking Questions:

1. How are the concepts of food as a human right and "food power" different from one another? Can both be realized at the same time?
2. Why is improving the protection of women's rights around the world part of strategies to reduce hunger and malnutrition?
3. Do you have a sense of how the agri-food networks function within your region? What information would you look for if you more clearly understand how you access food?