The international food system is increasingly at risk. Increasing demand, limited and diminishing resources and rising volatility are putting new pressures on the agriculture sector globally. One of the growing critical threats to global stability and security is the inadequacy of food resources. This threat, exacerbated by global population growth, is illustrated by shifts in consumption patterns toward protein-rich diets and the growth of multinational food retail, which bring about a greater reliance on food imports. This book compares the food security policies of selected countries in Asia and the Middle East, and reviews the outcomes of policy applications in a broader context. Themes discussed include: -Shifts in regional and international foreign policy, such as new alliances between countries with rich agricultural resources and wealthier importing states -Creation of food security policy competition across regions -Foreign investments and investment risks for farmland investments -Social implications, such as potential unrest -Environmental sustainability of food security programs, such as the depletion of water resources -Impact of food security programs on trade policies and fiscal policies, such as import taxes and subsidies

A description of the current global food system, this book challenges our ethical responsibility to the global poor and implicates us all for failing to curb global hunger and malnutrition. The Politics of Food: The Global Conflict between Food Security and Food Sovereignty argues that our current global food system constitutes a massive violation of human rights. In this impassioned, well-researched book, William Schanbacher makes the case that the food security model for combating global hunger—driven by the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other organizations—is a failure, too dependent on trade and too reliant on international agribusiness. Instead, the emerging model of food sovereignty—helping local farmers and businesses produce better quality food—is the more effective and responsible approach. Through numerous case studies, the book examines critical issues of global trade and corporate monopolization of the food industry, while examining the emerging social justice movements that seek to make food sovereignty the model for battling hunger.

With only five years left until the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, food security still is a dream rather than reality: 'a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life'. Political commitments at world summits on food security, market-based agricultural policies, science-based food safety regulation and voluntary guidelines on the right to food have not ended hunger, malnourishment or food safety crises in our world. The question arises whether food insecurity is a situation that exists in spite of these commitments and legal measures, or rather due to them? This book has three purposes. Firstly, it offers insights in how law, politics and the right to food contribute to food security in both positive and negative ways. For this purpose, different theories, concepts and methodologies from legal, political, anthropological and sociological sciences are used and developed. Secondly, the book explains that food security and food policies cannot be treated as given, at one level or in one domain only. This is done in different ways: by pointing out the emergence of new paradigms on food security, human rights and science that shape food policies; by showing how law and policies at one level affect food security at another level; and by treating food security and food policies as linked to governance regimes of agriculture, food, feed, water or property. Finally, the book offers scholarly analysis of paradigms and practices but also presents social science-based ways to indirectly contribute to food security, varying from improving justiciability to building trust, from seeking ways to address non-scientific concerns to creating room for plurality of lifestyles and norms, from unmasking dominant discourse to understanding or strengthening abilities or arrangements to cope with vulnerability.

In a lively and easy-to-navigate, question-and-answer format, Food Politics carefully examines and explains the most important issues on today's global food landscape.

We all witness, in advertising and on supermarket shelves, the fierce competition for our food dollars. In this engrossing exposé, Marion Nestle goes behind the scenes to reveal how the competition really works and how it affects our health. The abundance of food in the United States--enough calories to meet the needs of every man, woman, and child twice over--has a downside. Our over-efficient food industry must do everything possible to persuade people to eat more--more food, more often, and in larger portions--no matter what it does to waistlines or well-being. Like manufacturing cigarettes or building weapons, making food is big business. Food companies in 2000 generated nearly $900 billion in sales. They have stakeholders to please, shareholders to satisfy, and government regulations to deal with. It is nevertheless shocking to learn precisely how food companies lobby officials, co-opt experts, and expand sales by marketing to children, members of minority groups, and people in developing countries. We learn that the food industry plays politics as well as or better than other industries, not least because so much of its activity takes place outside the public view. Editor of the 1988 Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health, Nestle is uniquely qualified to lead us through the maze of food industry interests and influences. She vividly illustrates food politics in action: watered-down government dietary advice, schools pushing soft drinks, diet supplements promoted as if they were First Amendment rights. When it comes to the mass production and consumption of food, strategic decisions are driven by economics--not science, not common sense, and certainly not health. No wonder most of us are thoroughly confused about what to eat to stay healthy. An accessible and balanced account, Food Politics will forever change the way we respond to food industry marketing practices. By explaining how much the food industry influences government nutrition policies and how cleverly it links its interests to those of nutrition experts, this path-breaking book helps us understand more clearly than ever before what we eat and why.

This book deals with an important and timely issue: the political and economic forces that have shaped agricultural policies in the United States during the past eighty years. It explores the complex interactions of class, market, and state as they have affected the formulation and application of agricultural policy decisions since the New Deal, showing how divisions and coalitions within Southern, Corn Belt, and Wheat Belt agriculture were central to the ebb and flow of price supports and production controls. In addition, the book highlights the roles played by the world economy, the civil rights movement, and existing national policy to provide an invaluable analysis of past and recent trends in supply management policy.

Feeding Frenzy traces the history of the global food system and reveals the underlying causes of recent turmoil in food markets. Supplies are running short, prices keep spiking, and the media is full of talk of a world food crisis. The turmoil has unleashed some dangerous forces. Food-producing countries are banning exports even if this means starving their neighbors. Governments and corporations are scrambling to secure control of food supply chains. Powerful groups from the Middle East and Asia are acquiring farmland in poor countries to grow food for export — what some call land grabs. This raises some big questions. Can we continue to feed a burgeoning population? Are we running out of land and water? Can we rely on free markets to provide? This book reveals trends that could lead to more hunger and conflict. But Paul McMahon also outlines actions that can be taken to shape a sustainable and just food system.