III. Food security: multiple definitions and the necessity
for a multilevel governance
Achieving food security is the second of the seventeen
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by world leader in September 2015.
The SDG's took over for the Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) that expired
at the end of 2015. In this section we will address the ever evolving
definition of food security, how the concept of food security is addressed by
the different international, regional and Sierra Leonean stakeholders, and
study how the policies at those three levels are then implemented
nationwide.
1. The evolution of the concept of food security
The many attempts at defining the concept of food security
attest that it is complex but also appears to be flexible. 15 years ago,
hundreds of definitions could be found in different publications and reviews.
The plethora of definition was also the product of interpretations and many
were designed to serve a biased vision (Maxwell et Frankenberger 1992). The
concept of food security has evolved in response to the major events of the
20th and 21st centuries. It has gained increasing importance and now occupies
an essential place in international, regional and national agricultural
policies. Over the past 40 years, the continuous modifications of the
definition indicate the ever-evolving way of thinking and produced profuse
viewpoints including the entitlement theory and the livelihood approach
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(Gibson 2012).
a. The different approaches that shaped the concept of
food security
Food security is a concept created in the middle of 70's
during a global food crisis. The World Food Conference (WFC) was a product of
international negotiations after the international community realised that the
Green Revolution didn't meet with the objective of mechanically reducing
poverty, levels of malnutrition and the occurrence of famines. During the first
World Food Summit (WFS) held in Rome in 1974, the issue of hunger was
galvanized when the American Secretary of State ambitiously declared that no
child would go to bed hungry within the next 10 years. To say that the bold
declaration didn't lead to satisfactory results is an understatement.
Nevertheless, the issue of hunger was now on the global agenda. At the time, it
was believed that sufficient supply would insure availability and automatically
counter malnutrition and food insecurity (Staube Tercier et Sottas 2000), which
led to the following definition :
«availability at all times of adequate world food
supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption
and to offset fluctuations in production and prices» (UN, Report of
the World Food Conference 1975)
The United Nations subsequently created the Committee on World
Food Security (CWFS), an intergovernmental body in specifically in charge of
the conversation surrounding food security. The concept was originally
envisioned as tripartite indicating: availability, access and stability. Be as
it may, the definition was rapidly reconsidered by scholars from different
academic fields.
i. The entitlement theory
The work of Indian economist Amartya Sen questioned the
definition of the concept. According to him availability doesn't guarantee the
reduction of food insecurity. He based his theory on observations made in India
and set his focus on the demand rather than the availability of food on the
market. The Green Revolution, insured a more important production of food, but
even then millions of Indian were still facing poverty, hunger and food
insecurity. He studied the reasons behind the difficulty for some people to
simply have enough food to satisfy their nutritional needs (Staube Tercier et
Sottas 2000). The issue
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resides in the capacity of people to access food, availability
doesn't mean much if the food insecure can't access it (Sen 1981). A person's
ability to access food is just as valuable as the availability of the food. Sen
introduced the Theory of entitlement, where people have rights over the food
they need. These rights can be formulated in 3 different ways:
· Directly: through local farms or garden
production by cultivating their own food
· Exchange: through trading-off food
they produced or using their salary to purchase food
· Transfer: through receiving food
aid, gifts or inheritance in the form of food or money.
He stresses that it is the lack of entitlement that spawns
hunger (Sen 1997). Sen's entitlement theory establishes «an ethical and
human rights dimension into the discussion of food security» (Gibson
2012).
Consequently, the FAO adapted its definition and added the
dimension of `access' to food security in 1983. The definition then read:
«Ensuring that all people at all times have both
physical and economic access to the basic food that they need» (FAO
1983)
ii. The livelihood approach to food security
De Waal, a British expert on issues concerning Africa and more
specifically Sudan, challenged Sen's assumption of a passive individual who
resigned to selling his assets to feed himself (De Waal 2005). According to
him, Sen neglected the `choice' factor, which can greatly influence an
individual's decisions and actions. In keeping with that logic, people faced
with hunger would sometimes rather deliberately endure hunger than sell their
assets (De Waal 1991). Populations subjected to prevalent food shortage,
develop coping mechanisms like reducing food consumption. Instead of selling
their assets, they will consider the long and short term stakes and acts
accordingly, demonstrating that unfortunately food isn't always a priority (De
Waal 2005).
iii.
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The human security and rights-based approach
In 1994 UNDP Human Development Report advocated for
human security, a paradigm which includes different components comprising food
security. The human security approach is closely tied to the human rights
perspective that influenced debates about food security and contributed its
evolution (FAO 2003).
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