Globalization and food security: novel questions in a novel context?

This paper argues that analyses of food security highlight fundamental contradictions at the heart of the globalization project. It examines the concept of food security and evaluates how national strategies to promote it have been undermined by economic liberalization since the 1980s. It finds that unless current policies are drastically reformed, traditional patterns of food insecurity will continue to hinder development in the South. It also identifies new problems of malnutrition, in the form of obesity, that are set to ravage populations in the North and South. The diffusion of obesogenic environments is allied to globalization and presents a new challenge for public health policy. Globalization and health are inherently linked and, by reconceptualizing the concept of food security, this paper draws attention to this link and argues that such connections should inform national policy in an era of globalization. Imbalances in power throughout the food chain help explain food insecurity in the past and present. The paper concludes that, as in the past, purposeful public intervention is required to promote food security.