The World

By Alan Beattie, the FT’s world trade editor

“Food security”: one of those infinitely malleable concepts, now to be defined at a UN summit next week. Does it mean self-sufficiency? No, say companies that make lots of money shipping food. Yes, up to a point, say governments with truculent subsidy-guzzling farmers to placate. (The whispering voice of self-interest can be very persuasive.) Meanwhile no doubt the GMO people will say food security means lots more biotech, the greenies will say it’s all to do with the environment and everyone will leave the Rome summit after a frank, robust and (ahem) fruitless exchange of views. If only warm words were edible.

As for all this money supposedly needed (and now apparently going) for agricultural development aid, I must say I’m a touch suspicious, since 1. money is fungible; 2. earmarking assistance for a particular purpose has rightly been going out of fashion in any case. Relabelling existing aid has been raised to such a high art it could almost qualify for a cultural subsidy itself.

There is basically one global food security deal which could genuinely help ensure a reliable supply: get big agro exporters (Argentina, Thailand, Ukraine) to promise not to whack up export taxes or quotas during a food crisis, and in return secure a promise from the big importers (Egypt, the Philippines), that they won’t slap on import barriers at the same time. The most efficient producers grow the food and it gets to the hungry mouths. Everyone is happy and the spirit of David Ricardo smiles down benignly. Unfortunately, the subject of export disciplines was booted out of the Doha round of trade talks by Argentina years ago.

Am I counselling despair? Actually, there is plenty that governments could do without going anywhere near Rome. If Hillary Clinton really wants to address food security, she could start by reversing her senatorial support for a horrendous US farm bill that rejected even modest Bush administration proposals to improve US food aid, and continued shovelling out the farm handouts that distort global markets and undermine America’s moral authority.

A lot of those subsidies companies don’t go anywhere near real individual farmers, in any case: they benefit the kind of agribusinesses meeting this week in Milan ahead of this week’s summit. If those companies want to know what they can do to help global food security, they could start by admitting they should be coping without handouts.

Enough with the cosmic conflabs. Global governance begins at home.

Related reading:

The global food crisis FT
Food self-sufficiency “is a nonesense” Javier Blas, FT