A new analysis argues for the need to address
food insecurity by recognizing the interconnected nature of global food
systems.
In a commentary for the journal One Earth,
Franziska Gaupp, Ph.D., a research scholar at the International Institute of
Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), argues that global food insecurity is
increasingly susceptible to shocks because of the interdependence of the parts
that make up the global food system.
For Gaupp, shocks to the supply of food — for example, extreme
weather events that may damage or destroy crops — are challenging.
However, in our increasingly interconnected, globalized world,
these shocks can come from events not directly related to growing food and can
have far reaching consequences.
Gaupp — who is working jointly with IIASA’s Ecosystems Services
and Management and Risk and Resilience programs — points to the COVID-19
pandemic as one such shock that is not directly related to food but has had a
significant effect on global food systems.
Global shocks
Despite the world producing more than enough food for everyone
on the planet, around one-quarter of the
world’s population does not have access to food that is nutritious and
sufficient.
Gaupp argues that this extreme
inequality will get worse as there is increased demand for food from growing,
affluent populations, placing more stresses on the environment that secure food
systems depend upon.
Climate change has also placed severe
stress on global food systems, destroying the quality of land,
increasing desertification, disrupting conventional rainfall patterns, and
causing sea levels to rise.
These stresses will get worse if temperatures significantly
increase, as scientists predict.
However, while these are pressing concerns for the world’s
ability to produce food, the interconnected nature of global food systems means
that many other factors can affect food security.
According to Gaupp, the global supply chain of food is
concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer companies.
Even so, interconnected sectors that depend on many others to be
able to function properly increasingly make up this global chain.
This means that while the system functions within conditions
understood as “normal,” efficiency may be increased for those populations who
have access to these markets and the wealth to engage with them.
However, if conditions are anything
other than “normal,” the interconnectedness of the global food system means
that it is increasingly susceptible to shocks from events not directly related
to food.
These shocks can have a bigger negative effect, as global supply
chains cease to function if parts of the chain break.
Interconnection
In Gaupp’s words, “[t]rade networks are more interconnected and
interdependent than ever, and research has shown that
they can be intrinsically more fragile than if each network worked
independently because they create pathways along which damaging events can
spread globally and rapidly.”
Just as the global supply chain can be affected by events not
directly related to food, so can major negative effects on the global supply
chain affect other social, cultural, economic, or political issues.
Gaupp’s commentary highlights the relationship between the
failure of wheat crops due to 2010 droughts in Russia, the Ukraine, and China,
and the 2011 civil unrest in Egypt.
Other shocks that occur at the same time can also amplify
individual shocks around the world.
Again, the global interconnection, and climate change, make
these shocks more likely to coincide because of their increased frequency, and
their ability to generate other simultaneous shocks themselves.
The COVID-19 crisis
For Gaupp, the COVID-19 crisis has been exemplary at
demonstrating the vulnerability the world faces due to interconnected food
systems and the concentration in ownership of the markets that make up these
systems.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis first, but its effects
have also shaken global food systems.
According to Gaupp, “[a]lthough harvests have been successful,
and food reserves are available, global food supply chain interruptions led to
food shortages in some places because of lockdown measures.
“Products cannot be
moved from farms to markets. Food is rotting in the fields as transport
disruptions have made it impossible to move food from the farm to the consumer.
At the same time, many people have lost their incomes, and food has become unaffordable
to them.”
– Franziska Gaupp,
Ph.D.
How to respond?
To respond to these challenges, Gaupp argues, it requires first
understanding the way the global food system is deeply interconnected with
various other systems operating across the world.
Improving the models that can predict the complex effects of
significant shocks to interconnected systems may help populations avoid the
worst consequences.
Having the tools to predict and understand the effects of major
shocks better could also help in the development of taxes that accurately
reflect the damage done by the actions of major businesses and corporations,
Gaupp writes.
This intervention might, hopefully, ameliorate some of this
damage and dissuade these businesses from causing the harm in the first place.
However, while recognizing the complexity of the global food
system is necessary for solving global food insecurity, it is unlikely to be
sufficient on its own.
Understanding the political economy of global food systems —
that is, the structural effects that economic systems have on both the
efficient distribution of food and the
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