World Food Policy Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 110

Advancing Health Promoting Food Systems

of their household income; increasing
their risk of micro-nutrient deficiencies in
overweight and obesity 5.

The risks and benefits of cheap
food are not simply experienced at the
household level. The process of national
development which moves a country
from peasant or agrarian societies to
industrial and service sector economies is
based on the availability of cheap calories
(Friedmann and McMichael 1989; Dixon
2009). Cheap food allows wages of factory
and service sector workers to remain low,
thereby increasing company profitability
and investment in new ventures which
in turn generate growth in employment
and national revenues. However, national
development based on cheap calories is an
approach which overlooks the economic
needs of the global rural population (3
billion people), 50 percent of whom work
in agriculture (Altieri, Funes-Monzote,
and Peterson 2011). While agricultural
households benefit from cheap food,
they also need to derive decent/fair
incomes from their activity in order to
stay in agriculture and not relocate to
cities to become the urban poor. Favoring
cheap, processed foods as central to the
national food supply also ignores the
environmental externalities generated by
industrial chains geared only to greater
efficiencies and economies of scale
(Ingram, Ericksen, and Liverman 2010).

infrastructure, low levels of education
and skills, and limited investment in
agriculture. In turn, food insecurity is
believed to contribute to famine, civil
unrest, warfare, degradation of land, and
protectionist trade policies (Wahlqvist
et al. 2012). It is in this sense that food
insecurity is both a cause and an outcome
of human insecurity.

III - Why do these problems persist
and why haven’t they been solved?

F

ive major barriers to the pursuit of
health promoting food systems have
been identified.

• The evolving and contested nature
of definitions of food security
undermines clear policy direction.
• A narrow productionist approach to
food systems.
• Capital accumulation among a few
corporations to the exclusion of
wealth sharing.
• Urban
migration
and
deagrarianization policies.
• Fragmented oversight of food and
nutrition security at national and
global levels.

3.1 - The evolving and contested nature
of definitions of food security undermines
clear policy direction

2.6 - The relationship between food and
Definitions of food security have
human insecurity
evolved over time, with some unintended
consequences. As Pinstrup-Andersen

Countries that have high (2009) notes, early definitions of food
food insecurity commonly have poor
5

In some high-income country settings (United States), where there are few fresh markets, supermarkets can improve access by poorer populations to dietary diversity (White 2007).
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