Abstract
Food production, consumption and distribution issues have long been on the international agenda. Recent spikes in food prices and concerns over E. coli in Europe or ‘pink slime’ in American beef have only heightened public concerns about the vulnerability of our food system and food safety. Per Pinstrup-Andersen and Derrill Watson’s new book makes a case for a ‘systems approach’ to understanding and addressing the growing numbers of people across the globe suffering from what they call the ‘triple bottom of malnutrition’ – hunger, hidden hunger, and being overweight or obese. Instead of a simplistic farm-to-table model, Pinstrup-Andersen and Watson describe a dynamic food system that includes the private sector, civil society, the state and forces of globalization, urbanization, and technology. In so doing, they call for ‘a social entrepreneurship approach’ to reducing poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition that will improve health and economic growth and sustainably manage natural resources.
The book brings together the extensive academic and professional experience of Pinstrup-Andersen, the 2001 World Food Prize Laureate, in food policy, agricultural economics, and agricultural research with Watson’s professional and first-hand experience of agricultural problems in sub-Saharan Africa. The authors, who are also both active in the blogosphere, analyze how national and international policies can and should address the primary objectives of the food systems – food security, freedom from poverty, and improved human health and nutrition. They also show the complexity of the food system by analyzing how different policy ‘options affect the various stakeholder groups, and how they interact with the various elements of the food systems’ (p. 3).
Although the book has been designed for university-level students and scholars studying food systems and food policy in a wide variety of disciplines, the book should also be of interest to development policy-makers by demonstrating how governments help to solve complex problems and how those interventions have even more complex repercussions at different scales. Although both authors are economists, they endeavor to present a multidisciplinary work and warn against disciplinary biases that plague academics and policy-makers alike. As a textbook, it introduces key concepts, provides definitions, raises further questions to be discussed and uses graphs and comparative historical and regional data to draw connections across chapters of the study. As the authors suggest, the book can be used alone or together with the three-volume Case Studies in Food Policy for Developing Countries, edited by Pinstrup-Andersen and Fuzhi Cheng, and also published by Cornell University Press in 2009. With dozens of case studies listed at the end of each chapter –from obesity in China to coffee policy in Mexico – the book provides an excellent source for teaching the complexity of food policy.
The book is organized into 11 chapters that explain the systems approach in complex nonlinear ways. The first two chapters define the challenges facing the food system, emerging trends and organizations that impact the food system, and outline the authors’ approach to these issues. Chapters 3–5 discuss the principal purposes of the food system, the policies of human health and nutrition, food security, and poverty alleviation policies. Chapters 6 and 7 describe how markets impact food systems, market deficiencies and food production and supply policies. The following three chapters then elaborate on the biophysical, institutional and international environments in which the food systems operate. They describe the interaction among physical forces (such as climate or energy), physical materials (including soil and water) and government regulations and policies as well as international trade laws and global power structures (such as those espoused by national governments or international organizations).
The book concludes by discussing ethical aspects of the food system, such as food sovereignty, markets and morality, animal welfare, and biotechnology. It argues that many of the most important questions in the food system are ethical questions and cannot be resolved through scientific methods alone. Although it may upset some readers that the authors ultimately ‘introduce questions rather than provide general solutions’ (p. 306), the deeper analysis of the book, especially on poverty and food systems, reflects the authors’ concern about how to achieve ‘a better global food system’ that will reduce hunger, poverty and malnutrition (p. 321).
The authors describe differences among stakeholders and the multi-dimensional aspect of the food system very well. While making clear that ‘the world produces enough food to feed everyone if it were distributed according to the need’ (p. 43), the authors emphasize the need for developing countries to increase productivity through increased public investment in agricultural research and development (Chapters 6 and 7). Improved infrastructure and better access to markets, the authors maintain, will also reduce costs. Similarly, the authors discuss the ethical concerns and the political and economic implications of intellectual property rights related to genetically modifies crops. While they emphasize the benefits of biotechnology to improve agricultural production (p. 210), they also argue that decision-makers should be prepared – and have the right – to choose whether they want to make use of this technology or not (p. 295).
The book provides a comprehensive analysis of policy options for addressing food challenges for developing countries, as diverse case studies from Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Egypt, and many other countries attest. Although many of the arguments in the book have been articulated in earlier works of the authors, the book’s analysis of contemporary food challenges through the food crisis of 2007–2008 captures the complexity of global food systems and policy options.
The authors’ emphasis on poverty alleviation through different tools and policies at the local, national, and global scale is a useful, welcome and important contribution to a growing body of scholarship about social and environmental justice issues related to the global food system. Pinstrup-Andersen and Watson’s book will prove useful not only to students of food systems, but hopefully policy-makers as well.