World Food Policy Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 113
World Food Policy
economic development can become
more broad-based (Dorward 2009;
2013). While the movement to cities and
factory and service sector jobs can mean
a move away from a lifetime of drudgery
as peasant farmers, this particular view
of peasant farming has been criticized
as too simplistic because it overlooks the
multiple reasons that farmers have for
being on their own lands working for
themselves (van de Ploeg 2008).
The movement of people out of
agriculture and into factories and service
jobs, referred to as “de-agrarianization”,
can lead simultaneously to higher
national incomes as well as an increase
in urban poverty (Lipton 1984; Patel
2013). Davis (2006) has argued that the
practice of urban in-migration is leading
to a planet of slums, and all too often the
shanties and other accommodation to
house growing numbers of urban workers
is taking place on lands which previously
grew food. Peri-urban expansion may be
accompanied by the need to import more
basic food stuffs, which in turn requires
the requisite household income to access.
For those rural citizens who leave the land
and who cannot find work in cities, or
who can secure only the most precarious
jobs, income, and food poverty follow
(Martinez-Gomez, Aboites-Manrique,
and Constance 2013). Their return to
rural areas as landless peasants can also
result in higher rates of rural poverty.
Ministries of Agriculture concentrate on
agricultural production; Ministries of
Trade oversee food import and export
policies; Ministries of Health focus on
food safety and nutrition education; and
Ministries of Social Security and Taxation
oversee househol d income policy. More
recently, Ministries of the Environment
have become involved because of their
responsibilities
for
environmental
conditions which directly influence food
production—such as water, soil, and
conservation values.
Fragmented
efforts
across
government departments have been
compounded over the last 20 years with
increasing emphasis on government
deregulation (Davey and Richards
2013). This is alongside the rising
influence of bodies such as the World
Trade Organization, World Bank and
International Monetary Fund, pushing
for food supplies to come under the rule
of international agencies and treaties
(McMichael, P. 2005). The influence
of middle-class consumers over food
supplies through activism regarding
animal welfare, sustainability, and other
ethical positions plays a paradoxical role
in undermining government authority
(Gibson et al. 2011).
Lack of national regulatory
oversight has fostered a global food
system characterized by Kickbusch (2010,
25):
3.5 - Fragmented oversight of food and
nutrition security at national and global
levels
• considerable environmental strain
and contributing to global warming;
• increasing chronic disease worldwide
—endangering the sustainability of
In many nations, food security is
health systems;
approached through the uncoordinated • the control of a small number of very
efforts
of
numerous
ministries:
large and influential companies, which
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