Political Economy Approaches to Food Regimes
On January 19, 2018 the SOAS Food, Nutrition and Health in Development Research Cluster organises a one-day workshop that brings together topics in contemporary food regime studies examined from a political economy perspective. Topics include inequality and food security, the state and food sovereignty, food regimes and the politics of conflict and financialisation of food and were discussed in four panels covering 11 papers. A full descriptions of the panels and extended paper abstracts can be found below.
The workshop has been recorded and recordings are available via the SOAS Economics Podcast Series.
Panel 1: The Political Economy of Food Quality
Panel 2: Relationship between Food Regimes and Food Sovereignty
Panel 3: Financialisation of Food
Panel 4: Food Regimes and the Politics of Conflict
Panel 1: The Political Economy of Food Quality
Dr Sara Stevano (panel convenor)
Listen to the recording via the SOAS Economics Podcast Series.
Diets are changing globally, as agricultural and food systems have become globalised and created new forms of food production, distribution, and trade. The nutritional implications are seen in rising obesity and non-communicable diseases alongside, particularly in the Global South, the persistence of food insecurity and undernutrition. However, the study of food and diet quality has not been well integrated within the functioning of agricultural and food regimes. Apart from a thin body of literature in the field of global public health and critical nutrition study, detailed explorations of the links between the quality of food, diet and health outcomes with the systems of food provisioning are lacking. This panel draws together studies that shed light on how the organisation of food production, distribution and trade shapes food quality and health narratives.
Paper One: Concentration of power in production: the missing link in developing soy agro-processing
Dr Lotta Takala-Greenish (University of the West of England, UK, and University of Johannesburg, South Africa)
The shifting food consumption patterns associated with the growth of the middle class in Sub-Saharan Africa have triggered a growth in the demand for poultry with a demand pull effect for soybeans, as one of the main components of animal feed. The demand growth and subsequent production and processing responses, have been hailed as a source of optimism and associated with a wide range of economic benefits including job creation, improved food security, skill and technology development, production diversification and greater linkages into other sectors. The underlying perception of the benefits of agro-processing rests on a narrow understanding of the mechanisms by which (sub)sector development can lead to broader economy-wide outcomes such as industrialisation, reduction of inequality, or employment creation. Delving into this conceptual gap, this paper draws on evidence from fieldwork across various South African, Zambian and Zimbabwean soy production and processing activities. The research finds an absence of structural change, a concentration of capital and power in the hands of processors / traders, mistrust and tensions at multiple levels, and a on-going emphasis on prices and costs. There is continuity in (what is observed as) the focus on short-term value capture by dominant firms, resistance to change in production structures, limited regional collaboration, and a narrow view of food quality. This results in a very limited scope for employment growth, changes to food accessibility or quality, and little diversification or linkages to other economic activities that might stimulate broader agricultural or industrial development within or beyond the national borders. Bridging the gap requires an exploration of the alternative forms of sector development that could contribute to broader industrial development and deepening. These focus on the role of labour, shift away from the short-term value capture and the confines of input-output relations, identify and strengthen areas of cross-border collaboration, and promote a redistribution of power and resources in production and processing activities. This also implies a rethinking of policy and industry actions away from ones focused primarily on firm-level competitiveness and dominant commercial interests.
Paper two: Food (Ine)Quality: Consumption of Packaged Foods and Nutrition Narratives
Dr Sara Stevano (University of the West of England, UK)
Scholars investigating diet quality and transitions highlight broad processes of change, including urbanisation and agricultural policies, as important drivers of changing diets. However, few studies identify how macro processes shape individual/household food consumption creating a picture of food inequality. Drawing on a study of food consumption among schoolchildren in urban Ghana, I explore variation in food quality and nutrition narratives. I discuss two key findings of the study. First, consumption of packaged and ultra-processed foods is not only common among wealthier groups but it cuts across wealth groups because these foods are readily accessible for all children, they tend to be relatively affordable and manufactured as desirable through marketing and advertisement. Second, food quality is to be located in nutrition narratives that are overwhelmingly appropriated by the food industry, a pattern that illustrates how the commercialisation of health promotion unfolds with implications for inequality in food quality.
Panel 2: Relationship between Food Regimes and Food Sovereignty
Lorena Lombardozzi (panel convenor)
Listen to the recording via the SOAS Economics Podcast Series.
The panel discusses the relations between Food Regimes and Food Sovereignty from three different lenses. In particular, speakers look at recent debate on economic sovereignty and the role of the state in addressing issues of food security, nutrition and power relations between actors within the food provision system. The first paper by Dr. Mark Tilzey (University of Coventry) analyses and discusses the assumptions and definitions of Friedman’s food regime approach under a theoretical perspective. The second paper by Lorena Lombardozzi (panel convenor, Open University and SOAS) looks at the case of Uzbekistan to assess the role of the state in food self-sufficiency. The third paper by Dr Merisa Thompson (University of Sheffield) analyses the political discourse around food security and food sovereignty in the Anglophone Caribbean.
Paper one: Food Regimes, the State, and Food Sovereignty: Friedmann and McMichael Revisited
Dr Mark Tilzey (Coventry University, UK)
Friedmann and McMichael’s work has been foundational to our thinking about capitalism and agriculture as food regimes, and has been very influential in structuring thought and action around food sovereignty. Given the forthcoming thirtieth anniversary of the publication of their seminal 1989 paper in the journal Sociologia Ruralis (Agriculture and the State System: The Rise and Decline of National Agricultures, 1870 to the Present) it is perhaps appropriate to anticipate this event by undertaking a reassessment of that paper. I propose to undertake such a reassessment by examining and critiquing:
> The theoretical assumptions and what I identify as lacunae in the paper, particularly in relation to capitalism, class, and the state;
> And, flowing from this, their periodisation of food regimes and the dynamics underlying them.
First, therefore, my paper identifies a number of difficulties with the theoretical frame that informs Friedmann and McMichael’s depiction of food regimes in general and of the capitalist-state system that lies behind them. These difficulties, I propose, comprise:
>Their (implicit) definition of capitalism;
>The relation between capitalism and the modern state;
>Their treatment of class and ‘class struggle’;
>Their understanding of what might comprise ‘counter-hegemony’, anticipating the debate surrounding food sovereignty.
Second, I comment on Friedmann and McMichael’s substantive analysis and periodisation of particular food regimes.
Paper two: Perspective of wheat self-sufficiency policy: The case of post-Soviet Uzbekistan
Lorena Lombardozzi (Open University-SOAS, UK) and Nodir Djanibekov (IAMO, Germany)
There is a controversial debate about which is the best strategy for the state to supply affordable and stable staple food to its citizens. Using an example of Uzbekistan, this paper contributes to the current debates on wheat self-sufficiency policy. The paper tries to shed lights on the shortfalls and perspective of such policy. It is argued that wheat production can generate benefits not only to poor consumers, but even larger to state actors in supply chain. Urbanization and income growth can offset its social benefits, but not for the state actors.
Paper tree: Searching for (Food) Sovereignty in the Anglophone Caribbean
Dr Merisa Thompson (University of Sheffield, UK)
The notion of ‘food sovereignty’ is often conspicuously absent in food and agricultural discourses in the Anglophone Caribbean, where over the past half century agricultural development has tended to align with conventional ‘food security’ discourses that dominate global policy circles. This paper explores why this might be. In order to do this, firstly, it draws on indigenous development theory to broadly map the English-speaking Caribbean’s distinctive integration into the global political economy since colonisation, illustrating the persistence of structural legacies. Secondly, it explores how dominant approaches to agricultural development and ‘food security’ have played out since the 1970s by charting changes in the policies of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Thirdly, it interrogates the meaning of both ‘sovereignty’ and ‘food sovereignty’ in this distinctive context. It finds that whilst in the Caribbean the former goes beyond questions of ‘the nations’ and ‘the peoples’ to include questions of ‘regional’ or ‘collective’ sovereignty, mobilisation of the latter often conflates a focus on local food production with the ideological principles of food sovereignty as a political project. Ultimately, this paper shows how the distinctive historical and inequitable integration of the Caribbean into the global food system continues to structure its relations, and that neither conventional nor radical discourses map easily onto the unique context of the Caribbean.
Panel 3: Financialisation of Food
Dr Sophie van Huellen (panel convenor)
Listen to the recording via the SOAS Economics Podcast Series.
Deregulation of commodity futures markets in the early 2000s precipitated a growing interest of financial investors in commodity derivative markets, including food. This ‘financialisation’ of commodity markets arguably fuelled price volatility and speculative bubbles. The link between financial markets and food prices has served as one of the main transmission channels of the financial meltdown in 2008 to world trade and the real economy, with severe consequences for food security and income for some of the world’s poorest. At the same time, liberalisation of domestic markets paired with soaring and volatile food and fuel prices over recent decades have fostered an increasing dominance of large corporations in agri-food sectors with implications for the distribution of income across stakeholders. This panel aims to draw together several papers that shed light on the complex and multitude of linkages between finance and food.
Paper one: Financialisation Along Agro-Food Chains – Towards an Analytical Framework
Dr Susan Newman (University of the West of England, UK)
Economic geographers and critical business scholars increasingly recognise the co-evolution of globalisation and financialisation and have sought to integrate finance into network approaches to the study of the dynamics of the global economy (Coe et al. 2014). To this end, there is a growing number of case studies that investigate the process of financialisation at the levels of: global commodity markets; firm resource allocation and corporate restructuring; and, the changing structures and relations along transnational supply chains. These studies have revealed great diversity in the nature and forms that financialisation take depending upon specific industry features, including market structures and institutional settings. The paper first offers a typology of the modes and mechanisms by which finance intervenes in production and distribution along agro-food chains. Second, the paper addresses the question of an appropriate approach to the investigation of the extent to, and ways in which, parallel processes of financialisation and the vertical disintegration and spatial dispersion of production are integrated and co-constitutive by interrogating how these two, arguably defining, features of contemporary capitalist development have been dealt with within the literature both theoretically and empirically in order to identify methodological issues (such as the appropriate linking of macro and micro) and propose a way forward based upon detailed empirical work conducted at the meso level of analysis.
Paper two: How Financial Investment Distorts Food Prices: Evidence from US Grain Markets
Dr Sophie van Huellen (SOAS University of London, UK)
Convergence between commodity futures prices and the underlying physical assets at each contract’s expiration date is a pivotal condition for the market’s functioning. Between 2005 and 2010, convergence failed for several US grain markets. This paper presents a price pressure-augmented commodity storage model that links the scale of non-convergence to financial investment channeled through indices, which are traded in commodity futures markets. The model is empirically tested, using Markov regime-switching regression analysis. Regression results strongly support the model’s predicted link between index investment and the extent of non-convergence for three grains traded at the Chicago Board of Trade: wheat, corn, and soybeans.
Paper tree: Profiting from Food Crisis? Farmers, Commodity Traders and the Distributional Dynamics of Financialization
Dr Joseph Baines (King’s College London, UK)
This presentation considers the domestic and international ramifications of financialization and grain price instability in the US agri-food sector. It finds that toward the end of the last commodity supercycle, the average income of large-scale farms reached the earnings threshold of the top percentile of US households, and agricultural commodity traders markedly outperformed other corporate groups. In contrast, small-scale farms, particularly those involved in cattle and wheat production, have struggled to manage the uncertainty brought by price tumult. The presentation goes on to examine the role that these uneven distributional dynamics play in debates around how hedging and speculation should be defined and regulated in the wake of the food crisis of 2007–08. It shows that a coalition of small-scale farmers has actively pushed for a far-reaching definition of speculation and concomitantly wide-ranging curbs on what they deem to be speculative activity. Conversely, the major commodity traders and a plurality of organizations representing large-scale grain producers have called for a narrower interpretation of speculation which leaves the extant regulatory regime largely in place. With these insights, I suggest that financialization and associated price volatility tend to reinforce inequality in rural America while possibly exacerbating social instability and hardship abroad.
Paper four: Cargill’s ‘Global Acquisition Agenda’: Increased Control Through Financialisation
Dr Tania Salerno (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)
In the past decade, a global revaluation of land and agriculture has occurred. Following the convergence of the financial, food, and fuel crisis in 2008, public and private sector actors became attracted to agricultural land for a myriad of reasons. While some food insecure governments began seeking out land to ensure domestic food security, selected agribusinesses and financial investors began to capitalise on issues of global food insecurity by investing in land and agricultural production, and increasing agricultural commodity derivatives trading. This paper explores the revaluation of land and agriculture with a focus on the main intermediary actors in the global agricultural system – agro-industrial commodity traders. These traders handle, process, and financially speculate on much of the agricultural products consumed daily. Since the 2008 crisis, the largest agro-industrial commodity trader, Cargill, began pursuing a ‘global acquisition agenda,’ which involves a global investment strategy focused on agricultural land, commodities, companies, and supply. This article analyses Cargill’s acquisition agenda and positions it within the transforming, and increasingly financialised, agricultural system. It argues that Cargill is likely using the transformation to gain further control over and within the agricultural system, through a diversified approach to agricultural production, consumption and supply.
Panel 4: Food Regimes and the Politics of Conflict
Prof Jane Harrigan (panel convenor)
Listen to the recording via the SOAS Economics Podcast Series.
The dynamic inter-linkages between food security and conflict are increasingly being recognised as key issues in both conflict studies and work on food and nutrition security. Food and conflict have become intimately related in many conflict zones such as in current day Syria and Somalia and famine studies have long acknowledged the importance of war famine. Lack of food security and struggles over food-related natural resources such as land can be important sources and triggers of conflict whilst conflict itself usually worsens food and nutrition security. It does so in two ways. Firstly indirectly by threatening entitlements to food and increasing vulnerabilities, for example via the disruption of agricultural production and secondly, more directly when food is used as a weapon of war for example by withholding food or food aid from certain groups or plundering resources such as cattle and livestock. More recently, it has also been acknowledged that food issues are important in the transition from conflict and in rebuilding post-conflict societies and that this has to be approached from a political as well as a socio-economic perspective. This panel aims to draw together several papers on this topic making use of diverse country studies from both an academic and development practitioner perspective.
Paper one: Food Security in Palestine – The Effects of Occupation on Policy Space
Prof Jane Harrigan (SOAS University of London, UK)
This paper assesses the state of food security in Palestine and finds that food insecurity is primarily caused by lack of access to food related to poor labour entitlements. Its originality is two-fold: in the approach it takes and in the questions it poses. Firstly, it adopts a systems-wide macro/micro approach to food security, applying lessons from the Middle East and North Africa and further afield to Palestine. Secondly, it assesses the constraints to Palestinian policy space caused by the Israeli occupation. It argues that occupation has constrained food security policy space and that this has resulted in reliance on social protection as the route to food security at the micro level of individual food security. This has had two effects, one positive, one negative. Palestine has developed a good social protection programme, although the impact of occupation means that the social protection approach lacks a longer-term developmental perspective. At the level of national aggregate macro food security we also demonstrate how the systems approach to devising effective policies has been hampered by the effects of occupation. Despite limited policy space we outline feasible second-order policy prescriptions to improve food security in Palestine.
Paper two: The Political Economy of Food in the Syria Crisis
Nicholas Vagen-Weeks (SOAS University of London, UK)
Food has occupied a central place in the Syria conflict, in both its genesis and evolution. Food’s effects have been complex and paradoxical. In more than six years of conflict, the World Food Programme (WFP) has seen first-hand how food can fuel, shape and mitigate violence. Food – its absence, high cost, limited supply, armed actors’ control of access and the food supply, or merely the threat thereof – has shaped the most fundamental dynamics and direction of the fighting.
For these reasons alone, the shape and state of Syria’s food systems will have a profound bearing on the future course of the conflict and its eventual resolution. And for these same reasons, food should be at the centre of planning for a future beyond conflict. The nexus between food and security is both widely overlooked and poorly understood. For WFP and sister agencies, NGOs, and all other humanitarian and development actors in Syria and the region, this neglect translates into failure to adequately program and plan, whether in the context of active conflict, in countries at risk of descending into violence, or recovering from conflict. Today, the world faces the almost unprecedented threat of four famines. The challenge for both humanitarian and development actors – one they have, at best, imperfectly met – is to deliver food assistance that saves lives today while laying the foundation for durable food security, peace and sustainable development. To succeed in this mission, it is necessary first to understand better the place of food in the context of active conflict, to maximise the effectiveness of both prevention and response efforts.
Perhaps nowhere is this observation more pertinent, and this need more pressing, than in Syria. This paper presents several key elements of WFP’s experience in Syria during more than six years of conflict, with the view to stimulate further discussion. The paper concludes by suggesting how these findings might translate into recommendations for closer partnerships and areas of research that could support improved programming, and policy considerations – not only for today, but also for the day when the guns finally fall silent.
Paper three: Starving Them: Causes and Functions in Sudan, Syria and Yemen
Professor David Keen (LSE, UK)