Review: Food by Jennifer Clapp
Food by Jennifer Clapp. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012. 200 pp, £12.99, paperback, 978 0745649368
In Food, Jennifer Clapp aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the global economic dimension of food, thus complementing studies that are more local or more issue specific in nature. She endeavours to accomplish this by unfolding the key forces that have shaped the world food economy, specifically governments, private foundations, TNCs and financial actors, and analysing the middle spaces that they have created for themselves to develop new norms, practices and rules to govern. In doing so, Clapp offers a fascinating read for anyone interested in understanding the complex issues underpinning the world food economy. Written in a sharp, comprehensive and concise way Clapp offers a valuable introduction to a wide audience, including academics, practitioners and concerned citizens, on the inequalities, injustices and ecological vulnerabilities that are associated with our daily food.
In chapter 1, Clapp sets the stage. Inviting the reader to pause and reflect on their breakfast, she underlines the physical and mental distance that often exists between consumers and their food, and explains the need to unpack the world food economy and understand the processes that have led to the commodification of a resource as vital for survival as food. Chapter 2 analyzes the rise of the global food market, in the 60s and 70s, on the basis of agriculture policies tied to food aid and export strategies by surplus countries serving their economic and political objectives while creating dependency among the poor. Chapter 3 exposes the developments that led to the replacement of national rules for trade with global rules, in the 80s and 90s. Starting with what can be regarded as the noble objective of removing protectionism from wealthy industrialised countries, Clapp demonstrates that world trade rules ended up being highly uneven in favour of these same countries. Chapter 4 explicates the growing size and power of TNCs and their new role in the world food economy not only as economic but also as political actors developing rules and standards for producers of their global supply chains with questionable results. Chapter 5 navigates the reader to the interconnection between food and global financial institutions. In a remarkably clear and concise manner Clapp shows how the intensification of food-related financial investments, from the 90s onwards, expanded the middle space in the world food economy to include a growing number of financial investors, often with little awareness of the sector in which they are investing, and with enormous impact on people’s access to food. Chapter 6 alters the mood by discussing possibilities for transforming the world food economy. From Fair Trade aiming to adjust injustices by demanding better access to small developing country producers in the world economy to more radical movements such as La Via Campesina advocating food sovereignty, Clapp’s assessment is that alternatives to the current model exist and can flourish.
As a whole, Clapp’s argument is well balanced providing a fair representation of both proponents and opponents of the current architecture of the world food economy. Her analysis reveals, however, that the middle spaces opened up in the world food economy are currently dominated by relatively few and powerful. A particularly valuable contribution of this book is the historical exposition of those political moments that contributed to the development of a highly uneven world food economy at the detriment of the poor. Enlightening is the unravelling of the rhetoric of the major economic and political forces regarding ecological, economic and social failures in the global food system. Discourse analysts will find extremely interesting the prominence of scientific rationale as a regular recipe in overcoming food shortages, e.g. on the basis of the Green and Gene revolutions. Within this frame anomalies, Clapp argues, including food crises, are attributed by governments of wealthy states, donors and global financial institutions, to factors unrelated to the intensification and industrialisation of agriculture, and often to the poor themselves. As the author reminds us in her final argument, however, the middle spaces can also be (re)claimed by ecological and social movements. Clapp is convincing in stressing that the path that will prevail in the world food economy depends not only on few political and economic actors but also on decisions taken by millions producers and consumers. In sum, Clapp does a fantastic job in opening up a space herself to act upon global injustices in the world food economy by shortening the mental distance that exists between us, food consumers, and the social, economic and ecological relationships associated with the food we eat.
Agni Kalfagianni is Assistant Professor of Global Environmental Governance at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), VU University of Amsterdam. Her current research focuses on the role and relevance of private transnational institutions in the global governance for sustainability. Among her recent publications are articles in the peer reviewed journals Business and Politics, Agriculture and Human Values, Marine Policy and contributions to edited volumes with MIT press and SUNY Press. She is managing editor of the journal International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics and editorial board member of the journal Agriculture and Human Values.
