Book Review: Bryan L. Macdonald, Food Security
| Published date | 01 January 2012 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829811425314 |
| Author | Daniel White |
| Date | 01 January 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
426 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 40(2)
Bryan L. MacDonald, Food Security (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010, 205 pp., $22.95 pbk).
The 2008 food crisis led to a resurgence in interest in food security issues amongst
international policymakers. They primarily responded with a renewed focus on bolstering
agricultural production and competitiveness in the developing world.
Bryan L. MacDonald’s book, however, is a useful reminder that the nature of food
insecurity transcends agricultural productivity or competitiveness problems in individual
countries. MacDonald argues that threats to food security are playing out against a backdrop
of increasing global interconnectedness, natural resource exploitation, growing populations
and their relationship with food systems at large. For example, cultural globalisation and
rising incomes have led to increased meat and dairy consumption in the high population
growth countries Brazil, China and India. This increase in meat production has resulted in
fewer net-calories produced with more environmental and agricultural resources, having
significant environmental and food scarcity effects throughout the rest of the world (p. 57).
While MacDonald’s framework falls short of fully articulating his proposed alternatives,
or capturing the role of state and private sector behaviour and interests as root causes
of these chronic problems, he still paints a comprehensive picture of the current nexus
of global food security problems.
MacDonald asserts that there are three broad sources of food insecurity. First is
malnutrition, which encompasses three kinds of diet maladies: ‘energy deficiencies, nutrient
deficiencies, and excessive net energy intake’ (p. 77). Availability of food is not the sole
cause of malnutrition, as it is also caused by ‘health, infrastructure, and cultural practices’
(p. 87). Second is global environmental change, caused in part by overstraining agriculturally
vital natural resources and pollution from agricultural by-products (pp. 98–9). Third is
food safety, which is threatened by the ‘networking’ effects of globalisation, including the
increasing complexity of food supply chains. The complexity and speed of these networks
make proper monitoring of contamination or disease difficult, and suggest that re-localisation
of select food systems may be the best solution (p. 146).
MacDonald continuously returns to localisation or ‘selective de-coupling’ (p. 146) of
food production and consumption from the global food system as a solution to these
problems. He cites the slow food movement and non-profit organisations like Heifer
International (p. 159) as examples of locally focused responses to the problems of
globalised food systems.
While ‘de-coupling’ seems a necessary first step to making these formidable challenges
more manageable, MacDonald does not demonstrate how something like the slow food
movement, currently a marginal, upper-class cultural tendency to eat local gourmet foods,
could be transformed to address the systemic dependency on global supply chains and
factory farming while still feeding as many people as possible.
Even less persuasive is the author’s heavy reliance on treaty language and international
declarations as primary evidence of state intent or behaviour. This is a methodological
error in a book on international food systems. While states have committed themselves
to significant food security-related goals through organisations like the UNFAO and
declarations like the Millennium Development Goals, those states’ willingness to follow
through on their international pledges has proven to be limited. The author underemphasises
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