What do we mean when we talk about food security? How is it understood by the actors involved in the food value chain? How does the public perceive food security?
In a recent visit to the Hongkong Museum of History, I visited their “National Security Exhibition Gallery” and was taken in by the global differences in perceptions of security. The West tends to define security in terms of preventing wars and crimes. The Chinese seem to take a more holistic approach — security, they argue, is anything that protects the public and society.
One cannot help but question the context given the infamous National Security Law imposed on the Hong Kong population in 2020 following the 2019 pro-democracy protests.
The exhibit acknowledged a rethink within the Chinese political establishment leading to a new holistic approach to framing public security. It highlighted the need for economic, financial, national and, yes, state security, but also less considered forms like cultural, environmental and technological security.
High up on this list of national security priorities, according to the exhibit, is delivering food and seed security. In this section, tribute was paid to a Chinese seed researcher, elevating him to the status of a national hero or benefactor for having bred a more resistant rice variety.
Do we laud similar reverence on seed researchers in the West? Only Norman Borlaug reached such a stature and only after becoming a Nobel laureate in 1970.
The World Food Prize
The World Food Prize was created in 1986 by Norman Borlaug in an attempt to elevate the stature of seed and food researchers, but it remains a shadow event. How many can name the winner of this year’s World Food Prize? These laureates are truly great people, but the media and cultural institutions have ignored their achievements.
While there should be a Nobel Food Prize, perhaps its telling that the Western public and media takes food and agriculture for granted. When bellies are full, food merely becomes a commodity and agriculture is a profession that can be rationalized.
China’s history is one where bellies had not been full, where population growth threatened development and where agricultural land is scarce. Developing food and seed security is a strategic goal in China and the government’s support of agricultural technologies reflects this.
Safe and Secure
We tend to not notice the nuance between two terms used in food issues: safe and secure. In the Western liberal democracies, these words tend to be interchangeable: we feel safe (free from the risk of harm) when there is security, and public security depends on a population feeling safe. Our food system is perceived as safe and secure when there is an abundance of healthy food free from the risk of harm.
In scientific terms, there is a difference between these terms. Safe is an emotional word that reflects an individual’s vulnerabilities, level of risk tolerance and history. As an absolutist term, scientists never speak of “safe”, opting rather to work on a continuous process to make technologies and products safer (i.e., less hazardous). Safe cannot be measured, whereas secure, the reduction of failures or unintended consequences, can be. Security is what is applied to systems and processes to ensure an optimum performance. Food security is measured in the ability to protect agricultural production to the point of meeting public demands and needs given the challenges a society faces.
The public, the food consumers, do not see seed and food safety in this way.
Seed and Food Precaution
Western publics think food safety is about protecting them from unknown effects of chemicals and gene modifications. The precautionary principle has become the tool to guarantee food security and protect the public. They do not trust the safety of the scientists’ research developments and have put restrictions on their innovations. Seed researchers, today, are far from being celebrated in the West as national heroes.
In the West, sadly, the defenders of seed security are the lawyers and NGO campaigners, both sharing a commitment to blocking seed research and ultimately, food security. These lawyers and activists present themselves and their work as heroic.
But it is not only their work in blocking gene edited seeds and pesticides that gives them cause to celebrate. In the U.S., the state allows lawyers to control patents to restrict seed breeders from introducing biosimilars when seeds go off patent. In the EU, the state has created an obstacle course for seed patents and places heavy precautionary demands on keeping agricultural technologies on the market.
In China, the seed researcher is seen as a national hero, fighting to develop technologies that will ensure food security and the development of the nation. In the West, the national heroes are the tort lawyers and anti-seed technology activist campaigners fighting to block these technologies. As I left the Hong Kong Museum of History, I became more worried about the future of Western food security.
David Zaruk is a professor based in Brussels writing on environmental-health risk policy within the EU Bubble.
