From hunger to food insecurity: technocracy and sustainability

• Autor(a) principal: Calado, Virgínia Henriques
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/35934
• topic: Food security; Sustainability

This paper is an anthropological contribution to a theoretical, conceptual, and methodological discussion of the concepts of food (in)security. The decision to focus on these concepts is related to their relationship with sustainability issues and also to the fact that they are of fundamental importance in the evaluation of the nutritional status and food situation of different individuals and populations. The fact that the notions of food (in)security are at present indispensable to conduct research on issues such as adequate food, satisfaction, or deprivation of food, also justifies the attention devoted to it in this text. Moreover, the circumstance that the concepts of food (in)security give rise to relevant studies, arguments, and narratives that are used by different actors (intergovernmental structures, governments, industry, farmers, populations…), for purposes not always convergent, is another reason to pay attention to this topic. Taking also into account that food (in)security assessments mostly produced by experts are at the origin of programmes and measures through which public policies are implemented, the attention to these concepts is justified even more. Key concepts in the construction of discourses on food scarcity, production, and quality, which are drawn up by the United Nations, states, and other actors, are appropriated by different entities and can be used in different ways. They may appear, for example, to support political positions about forms of agriculture that are mainly focused on the quantity of foods produced and on intensive and extensive forms of agricultural production than on the protection of small farmers. These concepts are not neutral, neither in their uses nor in the way in which they are conceptualized, thus requiring continuous scrutiny.