Delivering food security through international trade

argylesock says… Here are good words about food security, relying on trade not aid. But this report doesn’t mention food sovereignty.

One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World?

ID-10035220When discussing global food security, the issues of access and availability commonly come up.  As One Billion Hungry examines, we currently produce enough food to feed the world, although demand is rapidly outpacing supply as populations and incomes rise and as the impacts of climate change escalate, and yet almost 900 million people do not get enough food to eat. Increasing food production, while critical, is unlikely to solve hunger and malnutrition alone. A new report by the Global Harvest Initiative highlights the importance of trade to food security, examining how our global trade systems can and must change to serve the whole of the population.

Coming at a particularly relevant time, following the success of the Bali trade talks and with negotiations for several bilateral trade agreements underway, the report, International Trade and Agriculture: Supporting Value Chains to Deliver Development and Food Security, was developed by GHI in…

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About argylesock

I wrote a PhD about veterinary parasitology so that's the starting point for this blog. But I'm now branching out into other areas of biology and into popular science writing. I'll write here about science that happens in landscapes, particularly farmland, and about science involving interspecific interactions. Datasets and statistics get my attention. Exactly where this blog will lead? That's a journey that I'm on and I hope you'll come with me.
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1 Response to Delivering food security through international trade

  1. EqFe says:

    900 million people do not get enough food to eat. Okay that’s a fact but I look at this issue very differently from the idea that it’s question of access and availability or waste which is another point written about quite a bit.
    IMHO the reason that food sovereignty is not mentioned in this article is because in away it’s an entirely different idea that world trade. The concept of food sovereignty is one that I’ve often read about in the negative reviews of US food aid. When the US, and gives good aid to starving areas of the country, or to third world allies, it is always part of the US department of Agriculture subsidies of US farmers. The food is bought from US farmers and given away. The food sovereignty issue comes in when the free food reduces the market for the production of local farmers.

    When we look at countries that do not produce enough food for their population, the minority of these countries, like the UK can afford to pay for the food they need, and their are no issues of access and availability of food for the nation as a whole. But just like when one looks at hunger in America, the people going hungry can’t afford to pay for the food they need. And when looking at waste, it’s important to note that in the US people have be arrested for taking discarded food out of supermarket trash bins. This happens in England as well. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/28/three-charged-vagrancy-act-food-skip-iceland
    Other countries where there is insufficient food production in country to feed it’s population can’t afford to pay for enough. Sure in places like the Sudan war is preventing food aid from getting to where it’s needed. But IMHO hunger is largely an economic issue the hungry can’t afford to pay for it. It’s been the experience of this planet that where their is demand, and the means to pay, ways will be found to deliever the goods.

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