Contending World Hunger
Norms
Marc J. Cohen
Workshop on Informal Institutions and
Intractable Global Problems
Purdue University, April 16-17, 2012
Is Food Insecurity
“Intractable”?
• No progress on Millennium Development
Goal & World Food Summit targets
– Contrast with MDG poverty target
• Number of food-insecure people up since
1995
• Solutions are hotly contested
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Terms of Debate
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Needs vs. Rights
Top-down approach vs. Empowerment
Availability vs. Access
Trade vs. “Food First”
“Public Action” vs. Market Orientation
Official institutions vs. civil society as “norm
entrepreneurs”
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Needs-based Approach
• Focus on meeting “basic human needs”
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Food
Shelter
Health
Education
• 1970s approach of World Bank, USAID
• State action essential
• Very top-down
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Source: FAO.
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1970s Paradigm: Hunger
• Seen as a question of inadequate food
production
– Solutions focused on growing more food
(Rockefeller Foundation, mainstream science and
social science)
• Green Revolution, technological approach
• Trade part of solution
• Very top-down
– Grow more food in developing countries (“Food
First”)
– Population growth, lifeboat ethics (Lester Brown,
Paddocks, Garrett Hardin, Club of Rome)
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1974 World Food Crisis and
Conference
• Focus on improving global institutions
• Created GIEWS, IFAD, World Food Council,
FAO Committee on World Food Security
• Aborted effort to create internationally
coordinated system of national grain reserves
• 10 mmt global food aid target
• Lofty rhetoric, incomplete gains
– Soft reference to rights, mostly needs-oriented
• Orientation remained on supply side, with
trade squarely on agenda
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Challenge to Production Lens
Amartya Sen on famines (1981):
•Stem from entitlement failures, not inadequate supplies
– People lose their normal channels for access to food
(production, purchase, transfer, gift)
– Food may still be readily available
•“Public action” and democratic institutions are essential
to famine prevention
– Accountable governance
– Free press
•Authoritarian rule may be effective against chronic
hunger (India vs. China)
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1990s Paradigm Shift (1): Food
Security
• World Food Summit, 1996:
Food security exists when all people, at all times,
have physical and economic access to sufficient,
safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary
needs and food preferences for an active and
healthy life
• Politically negotiated text
–Effort to add “with dignity” at end defeated,
opposed by USG
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Multiple Dimensions of
Food Security
• Availability
– Adequate supplies
• Access
– Sen’s “entitlements”
• Utilization
– Focus on nutrition and dietary quality, not just
calorie intake
• Norm entrepreneurs: World Bank, FAO,
bilateral aid agencies (USAID)
• More recently, an increasing focus on stability
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Dimensions, cont’d.
• Large role for trade AND domestic food
production
– Agnosticism on balance
• Big role for market
– State provides public goods and “enabling
environment” for private entrepreneurship
– Civil society has major role as well
• Mix of top-down and bottom-up
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Food Security and Rights
• Needs-based approach
• No state obligations, relies on governments to
“do the right thing”
• Intimately bound up with right to food:
– Realization of the right = A state of food security
(UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural
Rights, General Comment 12)
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Post-Cold War
Reconceptualization
• Food security part of human security
– Freedom from want
– Freedom from fear
• Distinguished from national security
• Focus on security of people rather than
nation states
• Not necessarily rights-oriented
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WTO and Food Security
• Unlike GATT, agriculture now covered
– All but poorest members supposed to liberalize
agricultural trade
• Provides for intellectual property rights over
plant varieties
– Weak, implicit protection of “farmers’ rights”
possible
• Covers animal and plant health regulations of
imports (SPS)
• Human rights & food security “non-trade”
concerns
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1990s Paradigm Shift (2): Food
Sovereignty
Civil-society driven (La Via Campesina peasant
association federation; presented at World Food
Summit)
•“The right of peoples to define their own food
and agriculture”
•Major focus on countering WTO and trade
liberalization
•Loosely defined
•Lots of items on agenda (GMOs, biodiversity,
indigenous people)
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Food Sovereignty, cont’d.
• Strongly rights-oriented
– Incorporates right-to-food language
• Strongly production-oriented
– Emphasis on national/local food production
– Less emphasis on consumption, nutrition, access
• Often placed in opposition to food security
– Latter characterized as “neo-liberal” approach to
hunger
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Haiti Case Study
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Food Insecurity in Haiti
• Endemic poverty
– ~90% of rural Haitians live on less $2 per day
– Two-thirds live on less than $1 per day
• ~ 3 of 5 Haitians are food-insecure
– Only Burundi, DR Congo, and Eritrea have worse
levels of hunger
– ~20% of preschoolers malnourished
• Worst income inequality in the Western
Hemisphere
• Often illusory promise of Port-au-Prince lures
75,000 migrants annually
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“Neglect and Extract” Rural
Development Policy
• Majority of Haitians live in rural areas
• Agriculture employs 60% of workforce and
accounts for 28% of GDP
• Historic neglect of rural development
– 4% of Haitian government budget
– 2.5% of aid
• Increasing emphasis since mid-2000s
– Food price shock of 2008
– Key pillar of post-earthquake reconstruction for
government & donors
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The Price for Restoring
Democracy
• Clinton Administration pressured Haiti to cut
rice tariff from 35% to 3% (~0%) overnight
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Quid pro quo for bringing back Aristide
As LLDC, no WTO requirement for tariff cuts
CARICOM average rice tariff 25%
Dominican Republic tariff 20%
• Liberalization => a flood of cheap U.S. rice,
driving Haitian prices down 25%
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Trade Liberalization:
Comparatively Disadvantageous
• Today Haiti imports 80% of rice and 60% of all food
• 2nd largest US rice export market in 2010-11
– Only Mexico bought more US rice
• Consumer benefits fleeting
– Haiti buffeted by 500% increase in world rice price
2003-08
– Price of “mudcakes” up 300%
– Led to protests, violence in capital
– Fall of Alexis cabinet
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Players and Stances
• Government has launched “Aba Grangou”
agriculture and food security initiative to
eliminate hunger by 2020
– Not rights-oriented
– Recently ratified International Covenant on
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
• Ag/food security now priorities for main
donors
– US, multilaterals, Canada
• Key Haitian civil society organizations
strongly advocate food sovereignty
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US Aid to Ag in Haiti
• Watershed Initiative for National Natural
Environmental Resources (WINNER) Project,
2009-2014, $120 million
– Supports productivity gains in rice production
• Support to National Agricultural Investment
Plan development after earthquake
• Ag/food security 1 of 4 “pillars” of US aid
• Haiti enrolled in Feed the Future ($110m)
• Strengthening capacity of Ministry of Ag
• Some shift from US-sourced food aid to cash
& vouchers
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Incoherence in US Aid
In 2010 —
•US aid to agriculture in Haiti: $90 million
•US payments to US rice farmers: $400 million+
•Haiti has a million farming households
•70,000 US rice farmers receive government
support
•Haiti consistently among top 3-4 US rice
markets
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Pressures Against New Haitian
Ag Trade Policy
• IFIs, US likely to oppose higher tariffs
• Brazil a major donor, leads UN Stabilization
Mission, #2 rice seller (with export subsidies)
• A higher tariff would raise prices and help
Haitian farmers, but:
– Nearly half a million still displaced since
earthquake
– No social protection system in place
• Rice importing is big business
– Politically influential families involved
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Saving Grace?
• CARICOM & DR could support tariff
harmonization
• Donors should insist on good return for big
investments in Haitian ag
• Obama & H. Clinton prestige staked on
successful reconstruction, including ag
• Payments to US rice farmers on budget
chopping block:
– Ryan budget seeks slash in US farm payments
based on high commodity prices
• Does discussion of norms help?
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