Dealing with Complexity, Power and Resources: the Importance of Tri-Sector Partnerships for Advancing World Food Security

By Nicanor Perlas

Today, there are an estimated 1 billion people who go to bed hungry every night. Yet, billions of dollars have been spent and dozens of programs have been launched in the last 30 years trying to address the issue of food security, global poverty, and hunger. And yet the problem continues to worsen through time. It is clear that the paradigm used and the consequent actions undertaken using this paradigm are totally inadequate to address this problem

 Food security is not simply an agricultural and economic problem, as has been the prevalent assumption of past approaches. Food security is deeply embedded and shaped by the way a country organizes itself including, not only its economic system, but its political, cultural, and social systems as well. In addition, food security is decisively affected by the way a country relates to other countries in the world. One can immediately bring in the issue of trade under the regime of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to see how this adversely affects local food security. But one also needs to add other international factors to gain a more complete picture of how food security is affected. It is therefore important to have a more comprehensive framework that enables us to deal with the complex of interrelated issues connected with food security.

 A comprehensive framework of sustainable development; like the one used in Philippine society, identifies the different dimensions of development– ecological, economic, political, cultural, social, human and spiritual. This framework can show how agriculture and food security impact and are, in turn, impacted by the different dimensions of society. This framework can also indicate how local food security is increasingly being determined by global social factors, especially economics and technology, that lie outside the realm of the local.

 Concretely, based on this framework, some prominent issues related to food security can be identified. These issues include:

 1.      Human dimension. The life and dignity of the human being continues to be degraded through massive child malnutrition.

2.      Political dimension. One hundred thirty five nation states created the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture (AoA). The WTO continues to allow massive agricultural subsidies from industrialized economies to undermine the agricultural production of poorer nations. In addition, many governments of poorer nations do not have the capacity to handle trade and food security concerns. This is aggravated by fiscal deficits in these countries which do not allow them to set up the adequate infrastructures for agriculture.

3.      Economic Dimension. The continued liberalization of financial markets can seriously damage the real economy of agricultural goods and services as graphically illustrated by the Asian financial crisis. Green revolution and biotech agriculture continue the adverse impacts on human health and the environment.  These environmental and human costs come on top of the diminishing returns on the different factors of agricultural production; including water, fertilizer, machinery, and so on, declining per capita cereal production and declining prices for cereals;

4.      Cultural dimension. Sophisticated indigenous agricultural systems are ignored by mainstream donor agencies and mainstream universities. This, despite the fact, that the productivity of small-scale agricultural production systems has been meticulously documented by path-breaking scientific studies. Massive advertising creates an artificial demand for junk foods which have minimal sensitivities to the complex social issues surrounding agriculture.

5.      Social dimension. The increasing lure of urbanization and migration depopulates rural areas and farming communities, threatening national and global food supply. Reductionist approaches to poverty reduction fail to address the complex needs of farmers as human beings.

 This list is by no means exhaustive and one could still widen it to include other issues such as agrarian reform, gender issues, intellectual property rights, reductionist scientific approaches, all the “green box” measures enumerated in the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, and so on. But the list more than helps to explain why food security remains a major global problem despite dozens of initiatives, including rural development programs and investments to spur economic development.

 We can speak of idealized approaches to food security and make a checklist of issues to be addressed and to prioritize. We can make this as comprehensive as we can. However, what actually gets done, what actually happens in the field is connected with whose interest and concerns are addressed and pursued. In short, the present configuration of global food security is shaped by power relations.

 To gain an idea of the future direction of world food security, we need to look at the “Battle in Seattle” over the future direction of the WTO.  For there, the three major forces that are shaping globalization and the discourse on food security clearly showed themselves. The economic power of large business interests and the political power of governments we are all familiar with. But the so-called “third force”, the cultural power of global civil society also manifested itself with a certain elemental force. The future of world food security will depend on how these three global forces determine the agenda for deliberation and programs for action and implementation.

 After the “Battle of Seattle”, these three global forces continue to be at war in the various economic and political forums of the world that deeply affect the future of global food security. Meanwhile, one billion people continue to be malnourished, including in the United States, and tens of millions die every year due to starvation.

 The situation therefore calls for social innovation.

 In the late eighties and early nineties, governments started recognizing the importance of the private sector in development. In recent years, the important and constructive role of civil society in the pursuit of broad based sustainable development, including food security, is also now generally recognized. Therefore the time is ripe for threefolding or tri-sector partnerships in pursuit of sustainable world food security. In such partnerships civil society, government, and business agree on unifying principles, respect their differences, and join hands to develop comprehensive and realistic programs to address world food security.

 A threefold approach recognizes the advantages inherent in tri-sector partnerships. First, as we have seen, the problem of world food security is complex. Therefore it is advantageous to have the perspectives of the key institutions of culture (civil society including NGOs, academics, foundations, media, and people’s and peasant organizations), polity (governments including their multilateral lending and donor institutions) and the economy (businesses). In this way, the understanding and the programs will be closer to reality instead of just being a pet theory or project of a powerful institutional actor. Second, tri-sector partnerships develop commitments from the key institutions that actually shape the direction of food security. These commitments harness power for something (food security) instead of fostering, by default, power against something. And third, tri-sector partnerships mobilize a broad range of resources – including media, indigenous knowledge, policy environment, financial, and natural, to advance the attainment of sustainable world food security.

 Of course, there will be problems encountered in advancing this important social innovation. There will continue to be mistrust as parties, traditionally at odds with each other, will not have an easy time sitting at the same table. Tri-sector partnerships can also be venues for co-optation especially of civil society organizations which sometimes are dependent on government and/or corporate funding. Or worse, these partnerships can become an occasion for the more powerful partner, especially powerful governments, to develop a more sophisticated approach to total systems engineering without radically reducing the extent of world food insecurity.

 However, the need for this social innovation, for threefolding or tri-sector partnerships, is urgent. Already, the world is facing declining per capita trends in cereal production. Most factors of agricultural production are reaching their point of diminishing returns. Yet one-sided interests are urging governments not to build up their internal capacity for food security but to instead rely on developing the purchasing power of their population so that they can import their food needs.

 Thus, there will come a time in the future when nations and their governments can no longer depend on an unstable and expensive global food supply to meet their food security needs. And when they turn to their indigenous agricultural capacities for help in attaining their food needs, they will only be faced with a retarded agriculture sector.

 Tri-sector partnerships, however, can deal with the complexities, power, and resources needed to have a balanced, realistic, and effective approach to world food security. In effect, it means mobilizing all the key institutions in the various spheres of society for the great work of ensuring that all human beings have enough food to eat and a decent life. Nothing else will accomplish the task.