Advancing the human right to food in Canada: Social policy and the politics of hunger, welfare, and food security

This article argues that hunger in Canada, while being an outcome of unemployment, low incomes, and inadequate welfare, springs also from the failure to recognize and implement the human right to food. Food security has, however, largely been ignored by progressive social policy analysis. Barriers standing in the way of achieving food security include the increasing commodification of welfare and the corporatization of food, the depoliticization of hunger by governments and the voluntary sector, and, most particularly, the neglect by the federal and provincial governments of their obligations to guarantee the domestic right to food as expressed in international human rights law. The interconnectedness of hunger, welfare, and food security issues in a first world society are explored from the perspective of progressive social policy and food security analysis and the development of alternative strategies. In terms of advancing the human right to food in Canada, particular emphasis is placed on the role of the state and civil society, and the social and economic rights of citizenship built on an inclusive social policy analysis and politics of welfare, food security and human rights.     

营养导向型的中国食物安全新愿景及政策建议

经过40年显著的经济增长和发展,中国当前的目标是保持经济中高速增长,在提高可持续性和公平的基础上,更好地连接经济与市场,让市场决定最优的生产水平,农业在这一过程中将发挥重要作用。在健康中国2030、国民营养计划（2017—2030）以及乡村振兴战略等中长期战略推动下,政府及学术界对营养问题的关注持续提升,农业与营养的联系逐步增强,但“农业-食物安全-营养”的有机融合与衔接还尚未形成。在中国经济转型过程中,农业和食品行业将发挥至关重要的作用,由中国食物安全战略决定的国民食物营养与健康状况不仅影响中国的国民身体素质,还将在一定程度上影响中国能否顺利转变发展方式、能否成功跨越“中等收入陷阱”。因此,新的发展阶段,中国需要新的食物安全战略提升国民营养水平,并采取系列政策措施加强农业与食物安全和营养的联系。论文基于国际经验的食物安全战略发展思路,梳理中国食物安全面临的新旧挑战,提出食物安全新愿景以及相应政策建议,为营养导向型农业发展的顶层设计提供决策支持。中国食物安全面临的挑战诸多,与食物安全与营养高度相关的挑战主要表现为：耕地资源不足与退化、水资源紧缺与污染、气候变化与极端天气影响等自然资源和环境压力,农业生产补贴提高带来的财政支出压力,膳食能量摄入不足、微量元素缺乏以及膳食能量和营养摄入过剩的营养不良“三重负担”,食品安全问题以及食物损失与浪费问题。因此中国在经济从注重数量增长转向侧重质量增长的深化过程中,将更加重视结构调整和制度及技术创新,这意味着农业需要生产高价值、营养和安全的食物,更高效地使用水、土地和能源,保护环境和促进平等,因而需要中国食物安全战略顶层设计上的系列转变。据此,本文提出了营养导向型的中国食物安全的新愿景,即将营养指标作为中国食物安全战略的发展目标,到2025年消除饥饿和营养不足,并有效降低食品安全风险和超重率以及肥胖率。为此需要以关键领域的重大改革为基础,改进营养治理、通过市场信号传递营养导向、推动营养目标的农业生产、建立更安全的食品价值链、以政策创新促进可持续的营养饮食、加强营养教育并开展循证发展支持营养导向的食物安全新战略的实施。     

New Vision and Policy Recommendations for Nutrition-Oriented Food Security in China

After four-decade significant economic growth and development, China sets a series of goals aiming at sustainable medium to high speed economic growth,reasonable equity, and better market oriented economy. In this pursue, agriculture will take a crucial role. Under the Health China 2030, National Nutrition Plan (2017-2030) and Rural Vitalization Strategy, more attention has been paid on nutrition both in policy and research field, meanwhile the linkage between agriculture and nutrition is enhancing, but the integration of Agriculture-Food Security-Nutrition system is not yet completed. During the economic transformation, agriculture and food industry will play a key role, especially when considering the nutrition and health status will impact the national physical fitness and therefore influence the economic transformation approach. It may also impact whether China can move out of the Middle Income Trap to some extent. In the new development era, China needs a new food security development strategy to improve the national nutrition status and sets of policies to strengthen the integration of agriculture and nutrition. This paper reviewed the major challenges about China’s food security and put forward a new vision based on international experiences, which aimed at providing recommendations for designing China’s food security strategy. The key food security challenges include natural and environmental pressure, such as insufficiency and degradation of land resources, shortage and pollution of water resources, climate change and extreme disaster, fiscal pressure caused by increasing agriculture subsidy, Triple Burden of malnutrition, food safety issues and food loss and waste. It requires institutional and technical innovations for the transformation of agriculture development which means that more value added, nutritious and healthy food should be produced, the productivity and efficiency of water, land and energy should be improved, and environmentally friendly social inclusive development should be considered. All of those call for a transformation of China’s food security strategy. This paper put forwards a new vision for China’s food security: China should set nutrition-oriented food security strategy with nutrition indicators as key targeted goals, aim to eliminate hunger and undernutrition by 2025 while effectively reducing overweight/ obesity and food safety risks. Therefore policy innovations are recommended including: Improve nutrition governance, Market motivated and nutrition oriented agriculture support system, Promote Nutrition-based Food Production, Establish efficient, safe, and inclusive food value chains, Policy innovation for sustainable nutritious diet and nutrition education, and Evidence based research to support policy making.     

Food sovereignty or the human right to adequate food: which concept serves better as international development policy for global hunger and poverty reduction?

The emerging concept of food sovereignty refers to the right of communities, peoples, and states to independently determine their own food and agricultural policies. It raises the question of which type of food production, agriculture and rural development should be pursued to guarantee food security for the world population. Social movements and non-governmental organizations have readily integrated the concept into their terminology. The concept is also beginning to find its way into the debates and policies of UN organizations and national governments in both developing and industrialized countries. Beyond its relation to civil society movements little academic attention has been paid to the concept of food sovereignty and its appropriateness for international development policies aimed at reducing hunger and poverty, especially in comparison to the human right to adequate food (RtAF). We analyze, on the basis of an extensive literature review, the concept of food sovereignty with regard to its ability to contribute to hunger and poverty reduction worldwide as well as the challenges attached to this concept. Then, we compare the concept of food sovereignty with the RtAF and discuss the appropriateness of both concepts for national public sector policy makers and international development policies. We conclude that the impact on global food security is likely to be much greater if the RtAF approach predominated public policies. While the concept of food sovereignty may be appropriate for civil society movements, we recommend that the RtAF should obtain highest priority in national and international agricultural, trade and development policies.     

Farm to school in British Columbia: mobilizing food literacy for food sovereignty

Farm to school programs have been positioned as interventions that can support goals of the global food sovereignty movement, including strengthening local food production systems, improving food access and food justice for urban populations, and reducing distancing between producers and consumers. However, there has been little assessment of how and to what extent farm to school programs can actually function as a mechanism leading to the achievement of food sovereignty. As implemented in North America, farm to school programs encompass activities not only related to school food procurement, but also to the development of student knowledge and skills under the framework of food literacy. Research on farm to school initiatives has largely been conducted in countries with government-supported national school feeding programs; this study examines farm to school organizing in Canada, where there is no national student nutrition program. Using qualitative fieldwork and document analysis, we investigate the farm to school movement in British Columbia, in a context where civil society concerns related to education and health have been the main vectors of farm to school mobilization. Our analysis suggests that, despite limited institutional infrastructure for school meals, the British Columbia farm to school movement has contributed toward realizing goals of food sovereignty through two main mechanisms: advocacy for institutional procurement of local and sustainable foods and mobilizing food literacy for increased public engagement with issues of social justice and equity in food systems.     

粮食生产过程中的不协调性分析——以河南省为例

分析粮食生产过程中的不协调性,对促进主产区粮食生产和保障国家粮食安全具有重要意义。利用粮食生产统计数据,对粮食生产的时序动态和空间变化进行的分析表明,粮食产量的大幅度增长主要依赖于粮食单产的提高,土地高产出(粮食单产)与资源低效率并存;粮食生产成本的增加与粮食价格不能同步提高,出现粮食主产区财政收入和农民纯收入的"双低"现象,成为影响粮食安全的障碍因素。粮食产量的波动与粮食政策关系密切,确保国家粮食安全,粮食政策具有发挥作用的空间。粮食主产区对保障国家粮食安全具有重要作用,制定有利于粮食主产区发展的财政、金融、价格等政策,探索一条粮食产量与农民收入同步提高、主产区与主销区利益协调和不以牺牲粮食主产区生态和环境为代价的粮食生产持续稳定和谐发展之路。     

How then shall we eat? Insect-eating attitudes and sustainable foodways

Negative attitudes toward invertebrates are a deep-seated, visceral response among Western peoples. These internalized aversions toward insects and other terrestrial arthropods, both in general and specifically as a food source, subtly and systemically contribute to unsustainable global foodways. Insect cuisine is, for Westerners, emblematic of the alien, a threat to our psychological and cultural identity. Yet failure to embrace entomophagy prevents us from seeing the full humanity of those of other classes, races, and cultures, and leads to agricultural and food policy decisions that fail in their objectives to improve nourishment for all people. Key to enabling the world’s peoples to live sustainably with the land are: (1) awareness of the psychological and cultural barriers to a more insect-positive perspective (2) embracing insects as a desirable food resource, (3) understanding the processes by which those barriers are constructed, their negative consequences, and (4) identifying strategies for transforming our attitudes.     

中国粮食安全百年变化历程

以人粮关系为主线、以中国社会经济发展为辅线,重点回顾了近百余年中国粮食安全变化历程及其社会经济背景。提出粮食安全问题分析的4个纬度,即农民生计、土地制度、农业科技、政策管理。认为重粮重农不轻工商、控制人口过快增长、完善土地使用制度、发展农业科技、维护国家长治久安是保障粮食安全的5个要素。最后指出应树立包括数量安全、结构安全、生态安全、质量安全在内的广义粮食安全观,系统地构建粮食安全保障体系。     

北京市农民工社会保障及其政策效应分析

近年来,北京市出台一系列社会保障政策来维护农民工的合法权益,但这些政策在实施过程中存在很多问题。从五大政策效应分析可以看出,北京市农民工社保政策保障水平低、保障范围有限、保障项目发展失衡,对农民工在劳动力市场上的供需结构,甚至就业都产生很多负面影响。为此,政府部门要科学合理的设定农民工社保政策,重视发展急缺险种,降低参保门槛,扩大覆盖范围,对农民工和企业主进行社会保障理论培训,通过多种渠道保障农民工利益。     

全球性重大突发公共卫生事件对我国粮食安全的影响及其防范

重大突发公共卫生事件在全球持续蔓延,人员、物资、商品等流动必然会受到限制,对粮食供求产生不利影响,危及粮食安全.基于对我国粮食安全现状的判断,剖析了全球性重大突发公共卫生事件对我国粮食生产安全、流通安全、消费安全、贸易安全等的可能冲击,从保障粮食生产要素供给、创新粮食销售业态、完善粮食储备体系、畅通国内国际粮食双循环等...     

Exclusions in inclusive programs: state-sponsored sustainable development initiatives amongst the Kurichya in Kerala,India

We critically discuss the impact of sustainable development initiatives in Kerala, India, on biodiversity and on women farmers in the matrilineal Adivasi community of the Kurichya-tribe in Wayanad. By contextualizing development programs regarding the specifically gendered access to land, division of labor, distribution of knowledge and decision-making power, we situate our analysis within the theoretical framework of feminist political ecology. We first outline women’s gaining of social and political space in local self-government institutions (Panchayath) and then critically discuss the impacts of women’s farming groups (Joint Liability Groups: JLGs). Decentralization and development programs have aimed at empowering women and reducing poverty through improved food security. However, little success has materialized, as patriarchal power structures concerning decision-making processes as well as control over the most valuable resources (land and rice) and traditional knowledge have been maintained. Whereas women’s self-help groups (Kudumbasree) in Kerala have enhanced their position, women’s farming groups (JLGs), by contrast, have brought little betterment. In some cases they have even downsized women’s management and knowledge of resources related to agriculture and do not integrate or enhance Kurichya women’s knowledge. As some women are now introducing high-yielding rice seeds and fertilizer and as it is impossible for them to control land and get access to traditional rice seeds—the domain of men—we contest the notion of women being considered the preservers of agrobiodiversity. We argue, rather, that the construction and transformation of ecological traditional knowledge is highly dependent on the gendered multi-scaled power structures of state and community.     

Beyond agriculture: the counter-hegemony of community farming

In this paper we seek to understand the interplay between increasingly widely held concerns about the hegemony of industrialized agriculture and the emergence of counter-hegemonic activities, such as membership of community supported agriculture (CSA) initiatives. Informed by Blackshaw’s (Leisure, Abingdon, Routledge, 2010) work on “liquid leisure,” we offer a new leisure-based conceptualization of the tactics of counter-hegemony, arguing in the process that food politics offers a rich site for new, transitional identity formation. Using a case study of a well-established community farm in southeast England, we demonstrate how the community members devote themselves to transient and inconsequential activities as a means of attempting to realize a larger self-related identity project. We also demonstrate how the seemingly close inter-personal bonds typical of CSA may not reflect the permanence accorded to them, with members able willingly to leave these communities once they can no longer progress their identity project. We conclude by arguing that our findings are emblematic of society in transition, with people moving well beyond the work/leisure activity into a world in which they embody the idea and the practice of being an active co-producer—in our case, of food. While recognizing that this does not necessarily mean that there is simple causality between practice and identity formation, we do argue that there is evidence of an increasing relationship between activity, time, and the performance of a new form of civil labor practice.     

日本粮食储备制度发展历程、政策框架及启示

日本历来重视粮食安全问题。经过多年改革完善,日本政府建立了一套行之有效的粮食储备制度,并根据时代要求不断优化制度设计与运营模式。日本在储备量确定、竞标收购以及市场投放等方面进行了细化管理,并从完善政府管理体制、强化信息收集整理、稳定粮食供给以及促进价格流通等多方面入手,建立了粮食安全综合对策。中国应该借鉴日本建立严密的调查和信息发布体系、优化政府一体化管理体制、充分发挥民间储备的积极作用、综合运用多种干预措施等有效做法,进一步完善相关政策。     

Normalised,human-centric discourses of meat and animals in climate change,sustainability and food security literature

The large-scale, intensive production of meat and other animal products, also known as the animal-industrial complex, is our largest food system in terms of global land use and contribution to environmental degradation. Despite the environmental impact of the meat industry, in much of the policy literature on climate and environmental change, sustainability and food security, meat continues to be included as part of a sustainable food future. In this paper, I present outcomes of a discourse analysis undertaken on a selection of key major international and Australian reports. After highlighting common themes in the ways that meat and animals are discussed, I draw on the animal studies literature to critically analyse the assumptions underpinning such policy documents. My analysis illustrates that animals are effectively de-animated and rendered invisible in these bodies of literature by being either aggregated—as livestock, units of production and resources, or materialised—as meat and protein. These discursive frames reflect implicit understandings of meat as necessary to human survival and animals as a natural human resource. A critical examination of these understandings illustrates their dual capacity to normalise and encourage the continuation of activities known to be seriously harming the environment, climate and human health, while at the same time obstructing and even denigrating alternative, less harmful approaches to food. In response, I offer some conceptual and analytical modifications that can be easily adopted by researchers on climate change, sustainability and food security with the aim of challenging dominant discourses on meat and animals.     

Understanding the organization of sharing economy in agri-food systems: evidence from alternative food networks in Valencia

Despite the proliferation of sharing economy initiatives in agri-food systems, the recent literature has still not unravelled what sharing exactly entails from an organizational standpoint. In light of this knowledge gap, this study aims to understand which resources are shared, and how, in a heterogeneous set of sharing economy initiatives in the context of food and agriculture. Specifically, this study compares the organization of various forms of alternative food networks (AFNs), which are recognized to be frugal forms of sharing economy initiatives (i.e., locally based, small-scale and with limited use of information technology), in terms of leadership, bureaucracy, shared resources and participants’ engagement. Data from a comparative case study across 18 AFNs identify five sharing economy models of AFNs with distinctive shared resources and organizational mechanisms: consumer groups; commercial community gardens; as well as network-based, privately owned and publicly owned self-consumption community gardens. These models also display notable differences in terms of their origins, participants’ goals and constraints which, to some extent, may be associated to the nature of their organization. Findings inform policy-makers, AFNs’ leaders and stakeholders—especially those seeking to support innovative models towards sustainable transitions—on how to tailor institutional norms and develop networks to meet the heterogeneous needs of different typologies of sharing economy initiatives in agri-food systems.     

The resilience of long and short food chains: a case study of flooding in Queensland,Australia

This paper provides new insights into the food security performance of long and short food chains, through an analysis of the resilience of such chains during the severe weather events that occurred in the Australian State of Queensland in early 2011. Widespread flooding cut roads and highways, isolated towns, and resulted in the deaths of people and animals. Farmlands were inundated and there were food shortages in many towns. We found clear evidence that the supermarket-based (long) food chain delivery system experienced significant difficulties in supplying food to flood-affected towns. In contrast, more localized (short) food supply chains—which relied upon supply from growers in peri-urban areas and community-based food initiatives—remained largely intact, and provided food at a time when the supermarkets were limited in their ability to respond to consumer demand. However, on closer examination of food distribution during flooding in the regional city of Rockhampton and in the State capital, Brisbane, the demarcation of success between “long” and “short” food chains became blurred. Both types of food supply chains shared some key resilience characteristics in responding to crisis but diverged in other important ways. We argue that conceptualizing food chains in terms of key elements of resilience—scale, diversity, flexibility and cohesion—may be more fruitful than the short-long dichotomy alone. This approach is particularly useful when prioritizing food security as the basis for evaluating food system sustainability in a context of predicted increases in extreme weather events and future climate change.     

保证粮食安全的土地银行经营模式

建立农村土地银行是确保国家粮食安全、发展现代农业、解决农村资金瓶颈、建立农民增收长效机制的需要,也是我国实现农村重大变革的战略之举。基于粮食安全,以土地银行为研究视角,利用动态博弈中的相机选择问题分析模型,主要解决其运营需保持的最小经营规模及粮食作物与经济作物的种植比例,并提出相应的政策建议。     

经济政策不确定性对中国粮食安全的影响

为探究经济政策不确定性对中国粮食安全的影响,基于2000—2018年中国31个省(市、自治区,统计数据未含港澳台地区)的面板数据,采用PVAR模型,研究经济政策不确定性对中国粮食供给安全、获取安全、稳定性安全和资源安全的影响及区域差异。结果表明:1)总体上,经济政策不确定性对中国粮食安全具有负向影响。2)分区域看,粮食主产区的供给安全受经济政策不确定性负向影响最大,粮食主销区的获取安全受经济政策不确定性冲击最为明显,经济政策不确定性对粮食产销平衡区的冲击最小。3)从粮食安全衡量维度看,经济政策不确定性对供给安全、获取安全和资源安全具有抑制影响,对稳定性安全呈现正向冲击作用。为确保粮食安全,中国应继续加强对粮食生产政策支持、稳定国内粮食价格和健全保障粮食安全的制度机制。     

Do locavores have a dilemma? Economic discourse and the local food critique

Local food critics have recently argued that locavores, unaware of economic laws and principles, are ironically promoting a future characterized by less food security and more environmental destruction. In this paper, we critically examine the ways in which mainstream economics discourse is employed in arguments to undermine the proclaimed benefits of local food. We focus on several core concepts in economics—comparative advantage, scale, trade and efficiency—and show how they have been used to challenge claims about local food’s benefits in the areas of economy, environment, food security, and food quality. After reviewing the arguments, we then evaluate some shortcomings that emerge from this reliance on economic logic and, importantly, we assess what local food proponents may take away from these critiques. We conclude by identifying several pathways for future research.     

Consumption strategies in Mexican rural households: pursuing food security with quality

Food quality is an important issue on the global agenda, particularly in high- and middle-income economies, but of little concern in designing Mexico’s food policy. Food policy has focused on quantity and in the case of maize, on satisfying domestic demand by supporting large commercial agriculture and importing from abroad. However, and as argued in this paper, obtaining a food staple (maize-tortilla) of quality is also an important issue for rural households and contributes to motivating continued smallholder production. Based on case studies in the rural district of Atlacomulco, in the state of Mexico, as well as in two regions of the state of Chiapas, this paper analyzes the production and consumption strategies of rural households. We focus on goals of food security and quality and note differential trends among households of varying characteristics and local contexts. We find that the motivation of small-scale producers to grow maize should be supported by Mexico’s food policy.