Think Piece | The Political Economy of Trade and Food Security
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The Political Economy of Trade and Food Security PDF • 0.41 MB
Securing enough food to meet the needs of a growing global population requires managing the complex interplay between farming at home and trade with others. Andrea Woolverton, Anita Regmi and Ann Tutwiler look into challenges of political economy that undernourishment presents and how donors, such as the US, may be able to help.
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the amount food what this world has not insufficient. but its needs the proper awareness of storage and utilize according to the requirement. ofcourse usa can contribute in a positive way by creating awareness among the educated mass, those wasting highest amount of food particules, through training, workshop, conference etc.It has money and human resource also … so…
The problem of food security is more a problem of supply management than actual food production. Reports indicate that billions of dollar of food get wastes in the US and European countries. In developing countries, such as in South Asia and also others, the problem is of managing supplies and ensuring that food reach to poor people who just find it difficult to manage their ends. Raising food production is important but more important is managing supplies.
This paper highlighting the political economy dimensions of food security is interesting and mentioned US initiative laudable.
But care should be taken to characterise consumer-producer relations underlying the mentioned political economy situation correctly and in a manner which appreciates that the potential both for conflict and for achieving positive synergies between these two classes would vary across countries.
In a country like Argentina the case is probably one of a classic consumer-producer conflict where I suspect producers would be better organised and more powerful though one needs to review the progress of the consumer movement there and the trajectory of its influence over the political class.
In India and many other densely populated countries th distinction between consumers and producers is fuzzy as many farmers are marginal (very small holdings of less than an acre) and therefore net consumers of food. Moreover, both consumers and non-marginal farmers have a common adversary in intermediaries — the strong presence of this last group has resulted in very low prices at the farm gate co-existing with very high prices at the retail/wholesale level. In otherwise, the potential for a positive-consumer producer alliance is huge.