Globalization, in the context of food systems, refers “to reduction in barriers to the cross-border movement of goods, services, and capital; an increased flow of commodities, technologies, information, financial capital, modes of distribution and marketing; and, to a certain extent, migration or peoples and labor.”[1] Globalization is a result of political decisions that place international trade as top priority, based on the assumption that increased trade is beneficial. However, the world has grown enough food to feed everyone, yet it doesn’t reach those who need it most. Production levels have greatly increased while food dependency in developing countries has simultaneously grown. [2]
The universality of food makes it an enormous indicator of cultural differences and historical change. Because all societies must produce, distribute, and consume food; necessity, taste, opportunity, social distinctions, and values all intertwine around the dinner table. Diets can gauge economic development as the production of food is fundamentally integrated with labor systems, property arrangement, and available technology.[3] Advancements in food science and agriculture have changed the way people eat; the processes through which food is produced; and the dynamics of public, private, domestic, and international policy. Connections between food and the environment, social organization, systems of agriculture, food preservation, and transportation are constantly being reconfigured in accordance to new knowledge about nutrition principles, biological needs, and changing socio-economic statuses.[4] Through examining the changes in production, trade, distribution and consumption of various foodstuffs, the forces of globalization on economic, political, social, and cultural systems can become quite obvious.
As the world becomes a more globalized community, individuals gain increased awareness of others around them. This greater consciousness allows individual’s access to beliefs and lifestyles dissimilar from their own and thus changes traditional identities through increased freedom of choice. Corporate capital, through globalization, now has the capacity to create demand and domesticate imported products worldwide, shifting the balance between exotic and local cuisine.
Globalization, propelled by new technologies and capitalist mechanisms, seems that it would only bring progress to the universal food market. While it allows global societies to become more closely intertwined through increasing cultural interaction, diversity of diets, and wider ranges of available food, there are also major negative complications. Globalization has put the development of multinational corporate agribusinesses into the forefront; undermining family farm production while forcing rural inhabitants into cities and destroying social relations, subverting local customs, and destabilizing cultural food availability. Rapid advancements in food technology disrupt the natural cycles of food production, pollute the environment to alarming degrees, and cause massive shifts in supply and demand curves in the global food market.
The food and nutrition systems of societies are dependent on the inner workings of producers, consumers, and nutritional values. Food sheds once comprised of local regional products have now expanded to attain goods from global areas as a result of cheaper, faster transportation and improved preservation techniques. This has transformed eating habits, nutrient transitions, and world health issues. With local and global products on the dinner table, what people eat and under what circumstances is directly linked to the forces of globalization.
The increase of global trade has extended the spread of plant and animal varieties, diversifying the food available in wealthier societies, while strengthening broad networks of distribution and processing. However, as distinctly ethnic foods become available worldwide to an ever increasing global population, food supply chains are changing drastically to the benefit of few and to the detriment of many. The variety of available foods in developing countries has been reduced as international agribusinesses push them to produce single crops for international markets that often favor high yield grains with reduced nutrition. The World Bank advised developing countries to develop specialized export areas, but more frequently than not, this hurt peasant economies and had detrimental environmental effects. Varieties of local species were also diminished, forcing ecological, economic, and social losses. When these highly valued, single product exports were developed simultaneously under World Bank guidance in numerous countries, prices collapsed.[5] Consequently, this made regions that were once self-sufficient dependent on importing products and exporting goods with minimal financial gain.
In Mexico, for example, many people making a living from growing maize while supporting a domestic milling industry. The industry sought out the cheapest source of maize and lobbied for the import of U.S. maize, also known as yellow corn, replacing the nutritionally superior Mexican white maize. As a result, the millers, some owned by American grain companies, reaped huge benefits, while the Mexican farmers lost their markets to sell.
Coupled with corporate consolidation and redistribution of profits, farmers are reduced to a marginal role in food supply chains. Despite internet opportunities for web based marketing, cooperative initiatives, and production forecasts, farmers are finding they have less economic power in the global market, have very limited access to buy or sell in local supermarkets, and are being squeezed by huge input suppliers and grain companies. Large corporations use agrochemicals, hybrid plants, and genetically modified plants to produce food in uniform quality, size, and shape.[6] These products suited for name brands flood the marketplace and push small scale farmers out of business. Global patent laws restrict technical and knowledge exchanges, giving firms with access to patent courts more advantages. The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights gives monopoly power to firms that patent life forms, supporting corporations such as Monsanto in their ownership of over 90 percent of genetically engineered seed in global commercial use. [7] Articles of agreement within the new World Trade Organization will give unrestricted freedom to food corporations to enter seed markets and establish plant breeder rights and intellectual property rights, forcing smaller farmers to purchase input supplies through large corporations.
Globalization has strengthened the power of the private sector and weakened the public space available for debate on how food and agricultural systems can be best managed. Even with government subsidies, money is removed from small farms and placed into input supplies, land cost, and payment of debt.[8] With advancements in refrigeration, transportation, and preservation of perishable goods, supply chains are growing longer and more concentrated. Globalization, tied with capitalist distribution, has made access to specific foods a matter of means. “Changes in trade and investment laws under the auspices of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization have made it easier to import and export foods, making legally possible what technology is making physically possibly”.[9]
Ethnic and regional identities of foods have become codified, losing some of their cultural symbolism. Markets advertise available foods at predictable prices to expecting customers at specialized restaurants and marketplaces with predefined cuisines. Consumer taste in certain aspects has actually fragmented the global market, with shifts from mass produced products such as coffee to specialty beans from small, flexible suppliers.[10] For example, the success of Bolivia’s native crop quinoa has boosted farmer’s incomes but hurt local consumers. The soaring demand for quinoa in rich, health conscious countries has tripled its price, allowing local farmers to earn more but making it unaffordable for many Bolivians to consume. Locals now embrace cheaper, processed foods with no nutritional rewards.[11]
The alteration of diets to incorporate more processed foods stem negatively out of dietary convergence and dietary adaptation, two phenomena distinct to globalization.[12] Income and price of food leads to dietary convergence, as increased reliance is placed on a narrow base of staple grains; increased meat and dairy consumption; increased brand name processed and store bought food; and increased appeal to foods with greater amounts of fat, oil, sugars, and sweeteners. Supply and availability of these foods determines dietary convergence, pushing consumption of foods readily available at cheap prices. Often times both dietary convergence and dietary adaptation is supported by global marketing and advertising schemes put in place by supermarkets and multinational fast food chains.
Foreign investment has contributed to the rise of fast food restaurants and western style grocery stores, influencing consumer food choices. The increased global consumption of fast food products is already showing detrimental effects. Local culture and food traditions are disappearing, crop bases are narrowing, biodiversity is decreasing, and environmental degradation is increasing. Although developing nations are able to increase their caloric intake and reduce under nutrition, diet related chronic diseases and obesity rates are growing rapidly. Some studies suggest that the adverse shifts in dietary consumption are “taking place at a much higher speed than potentially beneficial changes”[13], promoting excessive energy intakes, and undoubtedly contributing to the adverse health risks observed throughout the developing world. The rapid speed of this change is concerning because individuals with very poor nutrition earlier in life can be at greater risk for adverse health consequences such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or weight gain. For example, in Kenya in 1930 there were no incidences of diabetes, but a study in the late 1970s showed it had become quite common.[14]Because of this, “the human and economic toll could be dramatic and, for many, the exit from food poverty may be associated with a straight entry into health poverty”.
Lastly, in the age of globalization, man has also created hunger. Food aid is sold by governments on local markets below domestic market prices.[15] Cheap foreign supplies destabilize local markets, hinder the production and consumption of essential food staples, and impoverish farmers. The IMF World Bank structural adjustment program undermines all economic activity that does not directly serve the interests of the global market system. As domestic food supplies diminish, tariff barriers are lifted, more people are pushed into poverty, politics begin to deteriorate, and civil society collapses. [16]The removal of tariff barriers allows northern countries to capture third world markets through subsidized commodities that undermine local food production. Globalization is forcing people in the poorest parts of the world, namely Africa, Asia, and Latin America to sell more food than they consume. [17]
In the future, to keep effective markets and supply chains functioning, countries will need to consider the health of their material flow and trading practices. The regulation of food supply will need to reestablish partnerships between national, regional, and international trade relationships. Political bodies will need to rework the distribution of foodstuffs, health assistance, and infrastructure development. As the world population continues to grow, remaining tightly interconnected, we must reevaluate the true costs and benefits of globalization.[18] With deepening food and resources crises and political and national conflicts, the global community cannot continue business as usual.
Bibliography
Chossudovsky, Michel. "Peace Magazine V12n3p14: The Causes Of Global Hunger." Peace Magazine: Welcome. 1995. Web. 08 Mar. 2011. <http://www.peacemagazine.org/
Chossudovsky, Michel. "Global Famine." GlobalResearch.ca - Centre for Research on Globalization. Global Research, 02 May 2008. Web. 08 Mar. 2011. <http://www.globalresearch.ca/
Fajardo, Luis. "Impact of globalization on food consumption, health and nutrition in urban areas of Colombia." FAO Food and Nutrition Paper 83 (2004). Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Web. May 2011.
Grew, Raymond. The History of Food and Global History. Vol. 1. Print.
Hartarska, V.. "Global Supply Chains, Standards and the Poor: How the Globalization of FoodSystems and Standards Affects Rural Development and Poverty. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 91.4 (2009): 1154. Research Library, ProQuest. Web. 8 Mar. 2011. < http://proquest.umi.com/
Kennedy, Gina. "Globalization of Food Systems in Developing Countries: a Synthesis of Country Case Studies." FAO Food and Nutrition Paper 83 (2004). Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Web. May 2011.
Kinabo, Joyce. "Impact of Globalization on Food Consumption, Health and Nutrition in Urban Areas: a Case Study of Dar Es Salaam, United Republic of Tanzania." FAO Food and Nutrition Paper 83 (2004). Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2004. Web. May 2011.
Lee, Robert, and Terry Marsden. "The Globalization and Re-localization of Material Flows: Four Phases of Food Regulation." Journal of Law and Society 36.1 (2009): 129-44. http://proquest.umi.com/
Mendez, Michelle, and Barry Popkin. "Globalization, Urbanization and Nutritional Change in the Developing World." FAO Food and Nutrition Paper 83 (2004). Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Web. May 2011.
Murphy, Sophia. “The global food basket”. Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy. Knoxville:Summer 2001. Vol. 16, Iss. 2, p. 36-42 (7 pp.)
Murphy, Sophia. "Globalization and Corporate Concentration in the Food and Agriculture Sector." ProQuest. Palgrace Macmillion, Dec. 2008. Web. 1 May 2011. http://proquest.umi.com/
Romero, Simon, and Sara Shahriari. "Quinoa's Global Success Creates Quandry at Home." The New York Times 19 Mar. 2011. Print.
Stokes, Bruce. "Food Is Different - Sunday, January 30, 2011." NationalJournal.com. 07 June 2008. Web. 04 May 2011. <http://nationaljournal.com/
[1] Luis Fajardo
[2] Gina Kennedy
[3] Raymond Grew
[4] Raymond Grew
[5] Michel Chossudovsky
[6] Gina Kennedy
[7] Sophia Murphy
[8] Hartarska
[9] Sophia Murphy
[10] Sophia Murphy
[11] Simon Romero
[12] Gina Kennedy
[13] Michelle Mendez
[14] Joyce Kinabo
[15] Michel Chossudovsky
[16] Michel Chossudovsky
[17] National Journal- Food is Different
[18] Robert Lee
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