The Geopolitics of Food

Thank you very much for the invitation to the International Dairy Federation | Fédération Internationale du Lait World Dairy Summit 2024 and to kick start the conversation zooming out of dairy to speak about the geopolitics of food.

Food is the essence of geopolitics. There is no more basic human need than securing access to food and water. There is no more important geopolitical imperative for national governments than to ensure their people do not starve. A government that fails to provide food security will not stand long.

In history but also today in many parts of the world, access to food is not assured. For millennia human brains have been conditioned to worry about scarcity, so much so that even when we are rich in resources, we continue to compete for them anyway.? ?

The world produces more than enough?food to feed almost 1.5 times the global population and yet global hunger has been on the rise in the last years.

Back in 2021, the United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, had convened a United Nations Food Systems Summit that some of you might remember.

This was a moment of great anticipation for the international community because what the world had before it was a puzzle that needed to be resolved – much like a Rubik cube. ?And here the elements of that puzzle as seen back in 2021

• The world needed to feed a growing world population; an expected population of 9.8 billion people in 2050;
• The world needed to tackle food waste, as around 17% of global production is wasted and around the same amount is lost;
• The world needed to grow more food with less resources; in order to meet the sustainability and climate challenge.? According to the IPCC , the food system currently generates around 30% of global GHG emissions
• And the world needed to aim for better nutrition; privileging quality over quantity to tackle the challenges that ‘nutrition transition’ has brought about, in particular the problem of obesity.? The World Health Organisation tells us that 1 in 8 people in the world live with obesity. Worldwide adult obesity has more than doubled since 1990 and adolescent obesity has quadrupled

So more food, less waste, more sustainability and better nutrition - But how far 2021 now seems!

Since 2021, and in fact during the very course of the United Nations Food Systems Summit, the COVID-19 pandemic struck.? Barely out of the COVID pandemic, and as global logistics were in a flux, Russia’s war in Ukraine struck – a war in one of the main breadbasket regions of the world, a country that was one of the top 3 grain exporters in the world. A major exporter of fertilizers. And without even seeing the end of the Ukraine war, a war in the Middle East has now struck. 2021 now seems like a century ago!

Suddenly the priorities for the global food system changed; they shifted into emergency gear.?? A new Rubik cube presented itself.? And here are the elements of the cube that we are now confronted with

• Major global supply chain disruption affecting the interconnectedness of our food system ?
• The weaponisation of food in conflict zones; food has become another weapon in the arsenal of countries wagging conflicts
• The disruption of major sea routes (like the Black Sea and Suez Canal, whose disruption happened to coincide with major drought in the Panama Canal) and the closure of the airspace above the Ukraine-Russia war zone
• A tendency for governments to no longer want to play by the global rulebook (the rules of the World Trade Organization ) when it comes to food; hoping to hoard their food for themselves and to build mountains of emergency food reserves at the national level - with all of this leading to beggar-thy neighbour policies.? This is all a déjà vu of course – we all know what happened during the 2008 food price crisis, when governments piled one food export restriction upon another in acts of panic, leading the price of staple foods like rice to spiral

So suddenly, whereas the United Nations Food Systems Summit was asking us to look far into the horizon, and challenging us to create a global food system that is fit for the 21century and even the 22 century, we have seen ourselves kicked-back to square one

This should all give us a moment of pause

As we reflect on the geopolitics of food, it is key that we understand just how interconnected the global food system is today.? If we don’t understand our interconnectedness, we will not exit current emergencies or plan for our food system long-term in the way that we should

• Trade is key to global food security.? At the global level, 25% of food production goes into international trade.

Currently, nearly 5000 trillion kilocalories are traded every day - which is more than double what we traded in the year 2000. In fact, daily per capita food trade increased from 930 kcal to 1640 kcal in the last 25 years

Today, the value of food and agricultural trade has reached $ 1.9 trillion in 2022 making it a very significant sector of world trade

The world trades in food, not as a luxury, but as a must.? Let us remember that where countries find themselves on the map is no more than an ‘accident of geography’.? The 联合国粮农组织 also estimates that approximately 32 countries would face starvation were international trade in food to stop.? Look at Gulf Arab countries that import 80-90% of their food.? Shift the globe to Asia, Singapore that imports 80% of its food.? Shift the globe to the Americas, Haiti that imports 40% of its food.

• Trade is also key to global nutrition security.? In 2010, the number of foods available for consumption was almost 60% higher than those produced domestically. In 2020, this percentage had risen to almost 90%, indicating that trade has substantially increased the diversity of foods available for consumption.?? What this means is that we can now eat fruits and vegetables all year round, as well as many other foods.? It is not by chance that life expectancy has gone up globally
• Trade will help us meet the climate challenge.? Part of the reason the world trades in anything is because trade allows for the optimal allocation of resources, this includes natural resources. When we trade in food, we are trading in land, water and energy.? As the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) once told Egypt, to aim for food self-sufficiency in Egypt would require 3 River Niles not one.? We have to grow food therefore where it makes sense to do so
• And increasingly our food is no longer “made in any one country” rather it is “assembled in” much like iphones and washing machines.? Processed food is the fastest growing sector of world food trade, with the FAO estimating that 1/3d of global agricultural and food exports cross international borders at least twice.? In other words, food travels through Global Supply Chains. ?A bar of chocolate will have its cocoa come from Ghana or Ivory Coast, its sugar from Brazil or Thailand, its milk from New Zealand or France, and its nuts and flavourings from other parts of the world, to be finally assembled in one place – misleadingly carrying a “made in” label.

?In short, our food system is more interconnected now than ever before, and for very good cause.? International trade has boosted global food and nutrition security

Given this general picture, we should feel alarmed when we hear that our food is not able to travel across the globe in the way that it should.

And as we reflect in the geopolitics of food, it is worth insisting on how detrimental unilateralism, uncertainty and market fragmentation is to the proper functioning of food markets. In the end, a zero-sum approach to security will hamper efforts to eradicate hunger. This is the message that this global community to send to governments and stakeholders around the world.

Finally, we should not be obliged to shift our focus from the objectives of the United Nations Food System Summit, to move into firefighting mode.? We need to get back to long-term planning for the proper management of our interdependency as soon as we possibly can

I thank you for your attention and wish you a fruitful summit!

Arancha Gonzalez

Dean PSIA - Paris School of International Affairs, Sciences Po