Food security and trade: reconciling discourses in the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Trade Organization

Arild Aurvåg Farsund, Carsten Daugbjerg, Oluf Langhelle

17 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A contested issue in the international debate on food security is the role of trade in safeguarding food security at the global and national level. This paper explores how the issue of food security and trade has been discursively framed in two international organizations, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO), from 1945 to 2014. We argue that there are identifiable shifts in FAO’s positions on food security and trade in the 1980s and 1990s towards trade liberalization as advocated by the WTO. The official view of the WTO secretariat and many of its member states (proponents of trade liberalization in agriculture) is that trade liberalization is both necessary and conducive for food security. The FAO has adopted this discourse. Although this is the dominant discursive framing, counter-framings of the food security - trade problem has played an important role in the deadlock of the Doha Round negotiations. We consider how this may influence the global food trading regime.
Original languageEnglish
JournalFood Security
Volume7
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)383-391
Number of pages9
ISSN1876-4517
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2015
Externally publishedYes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Food security and trade: reconciling discourses in the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Trade Organization'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this