Will the global food price crisis cause us to rethink food systems?

The solution to managing those limits is a topic of considerable debate, with vociferous advocates for positions on all sides. While this well-spring of ideas and concern is very welcome, careful thought and attention are needed to finding the best solutions.

In many places, the capacity and will to govern the appropriate use of agricultural lands has declined and is now very weak, and the government role in food systems has declined, leaving a vacuum filled by the private sector, NGOs, civil society groups, or not at all. But the need to move on fixing our food systems is urgent, especially as implementing change in farming, processing, distribution and retail practices will require considerable investments in time, infrastructure, technology, and most importantly, human capacity.

Achieving long term, adaptive food systems that can buffer shocks and reconcile the competing objectives will require rethinking through a number of issues. Fundamentally, we need to rethink the role of agriculture and who engages in it, which has significant consequences not only for type of food we eat but also employment opportunities for rural populations.

Rethinking the role of agriculture will also raise questions about its ability to contribute to economic growth and food security, along with environmental protection. Will some goals have to be subsumed to others, and who will make these decisions and enforce them, especially if some groups have to change their eating habits?

Concomitantly, we need to rethink the design of agriculture: will it be large scale and high input, or smaller, localised and high management? Or is a blend of these models the most realistic option, as different types of agriculture fulfil different needs and objectives.

Third and following from the first two, we need to rethink and better co-ordinate natural resource use, governance and regulation so that we don’t have these failures of coordination between objectives of agriculture, food policy and responses to price shocks.

We must not be naïve about the efforts required to bring about this debate. Food and agriculture are very political issues, and no change or reform will happen without serious and extensive negotiations among powerful private and public actors.

We need to invest in capacity to analyse issues and propose alternatives at multiple levels of society, from households to international bodies. At the moment we are hearing calls for reform both from the environmental change community and the global trade community, as well as from the development community. However, as long as the responses to these calls perpetuate conflict between interests with unequal power, we run the real danger of further perpetuating the food price crisis.