Food security as a global peace and security issue- Blog With Sidra

  When we think of national security, we often think of war elements such as soldiers guarding the border, missiles ready to be launched, wa...

 When we think of national security, we often think of war elements such as soldiers guarding the border, missiles ready to be launched, warplanes and submarines. However, at least as much as these, food security is one of our most important needs that should be remembered in terms of a country's national security. For states, there is a direct relationship between producing sufficient food products that their people need and ensuring that the public has access to healthy and safe food, and the political and social stability of their countries. Problems such as widespread hunger and famine throughout history and today can be the trigger of civil conflicts that disrupt national unity, political rebellions that turn into government coups, and popular uprisings in many countries. Civil conflicts caused by food issues are also associated with international migration, human trafficking, drug traffic, organized crime groups and even terrorism. Food crisis has always played an important role in the migration of Turks from Central Asia to the West and Anatolia, as well as in the uprisings that resulted in the French Revolution. It is known that the sudden increase in food prices has a significant impact on the emergence of popular rebellions in Middle Eastern countries such as Tunisia, Egypt and Syria, which are taking place before our eyes these days. In fact, the basis of the anti-capitalist and anti-globalist movements that are gradually spreading in the richest countries of the world, such as Europe and America, is the effect of the rapid inflation observed in food prices, as well as the increasing unemployment and deepening inequality in these countries.

On the one hand, the financial and political instability caused by the global financial crisis in developing countries, and on the other hand, the mass deaths due to hunger in the poorest countries of Africa, have made food security one of the most important political agenda items in the world these days. While the UN organized the World Food Security Conference in 2009, the most important agenda items of the November-2011 summit meeting of the G-20 countries were the price increase in basic food items and the measures to be taken to ensure food security of poor countries. Some international non-governmental organizations working on the issue recommend the establishment of a global monitoring system on the production, consumption, stocking and price changes of basic foodstuffs that are of critical importance for humanity. Many UN member countries are developing special policies and strategies regarding food security in their own countries. While some are establishing food banks, some other countries that are not self-sufficient in food production are trying to guarantee the food security of their people by purchasing or renting land in other countries, especially in the African continent. Because the issue of food security concerns not only the hungry people of Africa, but also the peace and security of the whole world. For this reason, food and agricultural products have become an issue of strategic importance for states, and perhaps one of the most critical problems of the 21st century will be the issue of food security.

 

What is food safety?

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines food security as having physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious foods that meet the nutritional needs and food preferences of all people, which are essential for an active and healthy life. Food insecurity is the lack of access to sufficient and healthy food due to physical or economic reasons. According to UN reports, one in every six people in the world currently faces the problem of chronic hunger, and the global economic crisis we are experiencing is gradually deepening the hunger problem.

According to projections, the world population will reach 9 billion by 2050, an increase of nearly 50 percent. Ensuring the food security of the new population of three billion depends on the development of the agricultural sector in the next 30-40 years. While the population increases by fifty percent, the demand for food products is expected to increase by 70 percent with the additional demand created by the increase in people's purchasing power. For this reason, the agriculture and food sector will be one of the most strategic and profitable sectors in the coming period for countries that care about the welfare of their people. As a matter of fact, agricultural activities and food production, which until recently were considered an archaic and inefficient field of endeavor compared to the industrial and service sectors, are again becoming an area of ​​economic competition and political struggle. Indeed, companies that until recently invested in weapons technologies, nanotechnology or computer chips have today, interestingly, begun to direct their R&D efforts towards agricultural products. According to UN investment reports, there are significant increases in foreign capital flows towards agriculture and food production in developing countries. The world's leading multinational companies invest in food products by renting millions of hectares of agricultural land in African, Latin American and Southeast Asian countries. Even China, India and Gulf countries are trying to ensure the long-term food security of their people by renting agricultural lands in countries such as Pakistan, Sudan, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar. While everyone thinks that the struggle between countries in the 21st century will be over energy resources, perhaps the real struggle will focus on lands suitable for agriculture.

Hunger is a global human problem

Hunger, which entered the world agenda in the summer of 2011 with the transformation of hunger problems in countries such as Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia into an acute crisis and mass deaths, affects more than 1 billion people in the world today. In fact, the main problem is not that there is not enough food produced in the world. At the heart of the problem lies global inequality and sharing injustice. So, in a sense, the essence of the problem is not economic, but political and even moral. It is the insensitivity of rich people in sharing their bread and money with poor people. As a matter of fact, the world states, which cannot collect the 1.6 billion dollars needed to solve the hunger problem of the Somali people, spend 1.5 trillion dollars every year to prepare for war. However, with a very small portion of this amount, all the hungry in Africa can be fed. Although the issue has been discussed many times at UN meetings and various promises have been made by the G-8 countries to combat hunger, the promises often remain on paper. The food crisis of 2007-2008 and the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 worsened the situation of people who were already living in poor conditions due to drought, environmental pollution or poverty. According to the decisions taken at the UN millennium summit held in 2000, it was envisaged that the number of people living in chronic hunger conditions would be reduced by half by 2015. However, both the 2007 global food crisis and the global economic crisis we are going through make it increasingly difficult to achieve this goal.

One of the reasons for the increase in hunger and poverty in recent years is rising food prices. Unfortunately, food prices have increased tremendously in international markets in recent years. The prices of grain products such as wheat, rice and corn, which constitute the basic nutrition of people, increased by 200-300 percent in a short time. The public revolt against the increase in food prices in Ethiopia, Egypt, Pakistan and some African countries has left the governments of these countries in a politically difficult situation. The food bill of some oil-rich Gulf countries, which meet the vast majority of their food consumption through imports, has doubled. The governments of this country are in a difficult situation. In poorer Arab countries such as Egypt, bread began to be sold with ration cards. The reason behind the relatively easy collapse of the half-century-old authoritarian Arab regimes in our region lies in their inability to provide food security to their people. We are again witnessing vivid examples of the stories that we only read about in history books, about drought and food shortages causing conflict, migration and rebellions among people. The optimism created by the increase in agricultural production in the 1960s, called the "green revolution", has disappeared. Scientists are of the opinion that humanity will not be able to easily overcome the global food crisis due to the pressures of population growth, changes in climate conditions and worsening environmental conditions in the coming years. Malthusian pessimistic prophecies began to become attractive again.

In summary, when it comes to security, it is no longer only the security of the national borders of countries. As Galtung emphasized years ago, the understanding of security includes both protecting the individual against threats and saving him from future concerns that prevent him from looking at the future with confidence. Factors that cause people to worry, such as hunger, poverty and political oppression, constitute elements of structural violence for people's material and spiritual existence. Therefore, the duty of states is to protect their citizens against direct threats and to combat factors such as hunger and poverty that prevent people from living an honorable life. For this very reason, sustainable food supply and agricultural production for a humane life is both a national security problem and a global humanity problem.