The World Food Economy : A 40 Year Perspective on the Past , and a Look Forward
that insists that this all works perfectly . But we have to make these markets work pretty well because we need those billions of transactions done every day automatically and they ’ ve got to point the economy in the right direction instead of the wrong direction .
Once markets are working pretty well , governments have to do the right things and they have to stop doing the wrong things . The problem is of course : What ’ s right ? What ’ s wrong ? If I had really been trained in Chicago ( instead of Harvard ), I might have been able to give a fairly simple answer to that — markets work perfectly all the time . But I wasn ’ t . What ’ s right and what ’ s wrong varies by country , by stages of development , it changes over time — and it requires continuous policy analysis — and it requires pretty significant flexibility on the part of policymakers . We have heard about knowledge-based learning in the policy process . That ’ s exactly what we have to have . Because , as circumstances change policies will have to change and you have to know what ’ s going on in order to bring informed analysis to the debate .
The bottom line , unfortunately , is that the political economy of this is really tricky . That is because we need policymakers to understand what ’ s going on in the markets and when things are going bad for income distribution , economic growth , and stability — all of which the market doesn ’ t really care about , but citizens do . When those market outcomes are not working on behalf of the welfare of citizens , governments need to do the “ right thing ” and not the “ wrong thing .” The analytics of determining what to do are difficult , but the political economy of doing it is really , really difficult .
Defining Food Security : 3 Pillars and 2 Platforms
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think of food policy as having three basic pillars — columns if you like — and those pillars sit on one base and also have a top , so there are two platforms . The pillars now are well received in the food security literature and debates — availability , access , and utilization .
You cannot have food security unless the food is available . So , availability is one of the pillars , perhaps even the first pillar . It depends on food production , plus imports , minus exports — obviously there can also be changes from losses and storage — but the basic point is important . Please understand that the availability pillar is not just food production . Trade is an important component for almost every country in the world in being able to achieve food security . It ’ s very important that we keep that trade option . But it is also true that the earth as a planet is closed . We can ’ t trade with the moon or with Mars . So in a global sense , production really does determine availability . In the very short run we can worry about how large food reserves are . But over the longer run — production is critical — you cannot consume the food unless you produce it .
The second pillar is access to food . It took quite a while — it took really until the food crisis in the 1970s for the profession to really understand that food security is anything more than production and reserves . There was plenty of food in the world . The 1983 book Food Policy Analysis starts out by doing the caloric conversion of the major grains and root tubers , the protein crops — it didn ’ t even look at meat — just the calorie and protein conversions , added them up , divided by
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