Food crisis and food geopolitics

the corporate neoliberal regime and the deepening of the global food insecurity project in the 21st century

Abstract

This article explores the proposals of the new geopolitics of food and food insecurity, or the role of food as leverage in shaping power relations in the 21st century. To empirically support the historical and theoretical analysis, we analyze data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Agribusiness Atlas. From this, we discuss the historical process that led to the crisis in global agri-food systems and the two trends in the new geopolitics of food: (1) one that treats it as a supplement to global competition for resources; (2) another that views it as a market failure or lack of technology. The data suggest a positive correlation between the new geopolitics of food and food insecurity, associated with the dependence on imports from countries in the Global South, the concentration of global production in a few countries, and the control of global trade by a small number of corporations. It is concluded that issues such as hunger, obesity, and food insecurity, as well as land appropriation, the spread of biotechnology, and corporate dominance over global agri-food systems, derive from the crisis of the corporate neoliberal food regime and should influence geopolitical analyses of food.