Security K

1NC
Hunger and food security in the modern world arent
questions of production but distribution. The 1AC papers
over the multiple structural flaws with food security
measurestrade disparity makes famine and structural
violence over food inevitable
Shepherd 12.

Benjamin Shepherd (Researcher in the Food Security Program of the Centre for
International Security Studies, Univ. of Sydney; Ph.D. Candidate @ Univ. of Sydney, 2011; Master of Intl
Studies @ Univ. of Sydney;). Thinking critically about food security, Security Dialogue 43:3 June 2012.
Pages 196-197.

Hunger in the modern world is neither a natural phenomenon nor the product of an
unbalanced Malthusian equation. It is a structural problem. The issue lies with the
institutional arrangements that dictate who gets what. Simplistically, food
is a commodity that is produced and sold for profit . Notwithstanding
smallholder farmers, the vast majority of global food trade is controlled by
corporations whose primary objective is the generation of profit for shareholders. These tend to
prefer to sell relatively expensive and profitable foods to wealthy consumers
rather than comparatively cheap, low-profit produce to poorer ones. Of course,
there is great complexity in global food-supply chains, and markets and corporations are not the only

There are also governments subsidizing agriculture,

trade rules and agreements, intellectual-property regimes and
commodity speculators, not to mention structures such as wage/income differentials and
technical capacity gaps (e.g. lack of transportation and storage that minimize spoilage). These
institutional arrangements all play a role in determin ing the production, price,
quantity, quality, distribution and availability of as well as, ultimately, who gets to
consume which portions of global food production. Following the work of Sen (1981), who
demonstrated that major 20th-century famines were far more the product of
institutions at work.

social, political and economic relations than they were of exogenous

trigger events

such as drought, Uvin (1994: 5968, 1026) examines this paradigm of states,

corporations and multilateral institutions that embody an international food-trading regime he describes as
the international organisation of hunger (Uvin, 1994: 57), systematically reproducing abundance for the
wealthy and dearth for the poor. Shaws (2007) critique similarly indicts the major food-security institutions

The point is that it is not

productive capacity per se but human-constructed economic and
political structures that control how food is allocated and result in many
going hungry. It is the institutional arrangements that are the source
of the problem. A practitioner from Nairobi described some of these institutional
arrangements as yet another form of colonialism,1 preventing poor
agrarian Africans from developing their economic potential and
resulting in their continuing vulnerability to hunger. Notwithstanding its
pathologies, the international food regime ostensibly seeks the
elimination of hunger through the pursuit of sufficient food for all
people at all times (FAO, 2010). Although there are a plethora of definitions of food security
and its meaning has evolved over time (see Shaw, 2007; Spring, 2009), today, the major foodsecurity institutions including governments, multilateral organizations and transnational food
corporations nearly all follow the definition used by the Food and Agriculture Organization,
which does not mention hunger at all. According to the current version of this
as a considerable part of the continuing problem of hunger.

definition, Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to
sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and
healthy life. (FAO, 2010: 8)

The language of food security is the justification for

imperial domination over under-developed countries.
Their neo-Malthusian securitization coopts instances of
local resistance to famine and makes resource wars
inevitable
Shepherd 12.

Benjamin Shepherd (Researcher in the Food Security Program of the Centre for
International Security Studies, Univ. of Sydney; Ph.D. Candidate @ Univ. of Sydney, 2011; Master of Intl
Studies @ Univ. of Sydney;). Thinking critically about food security, Security Dialogue 43:3 June 2012.
Pages 197-198.

actors use foodsecurity language to legitimize competition over increasingly scarce

food-production resources. The underlying implication is that controlling
or hoarding of resources must be good; however, control and hoarding by some
invariably implies exclusion and deprivation for others. Foodsecurity language has become widely employed as a way of pursuing
particular agendas and legitimizing particular actions, especially those of powerful
actors, but at the expense of others. Food-security language is used to
legitimize the securing of rights over agricultural lands (Alshareef, 2009;
A consequence of casting food security as an availability problem is that

Peoples Republic of China, 2008), which one African scholars described as a dubious way to solve the
food security conundrum in Ethiopia, noting that

it seems paradoxical

that

one of the

most vulnerable countries in the world is handing over vast land

and water resources to foreign investors to help food security
efforts of their home countries .2 It is used by transnational agribusiness corporations in
the legitimization of their profit-generating activities (ArcherDanielsMidland, 2010; Cargill, 2010; Monsanto,
2010), which range from the corporatization and amalgamation of farmlands sometimes pushing smalland medium-sized landholders off their farms to the pursuit of revenues from patented inputs that have
been argued to be detrimental to poor farmers in developing countries (Holt-Giminez, 2011; Patel, 2007;
Shiva, 2002, 2005, 2007). It is used to justify the pursuit of speculative profit by wealthy investors

It is also used in the pursuit of political

agendas for example, in concert with the subsidizing of electorally sensitive rural constituencies
(USDA, 2010; Philpott, 2006) or, contrarily, providing an argument for the reduction
of trade barriers in the quest for greater access to foreign markets.
(Emerging Asset Management, 2010).

For example, the official Australian food-security policy position is that developing countries must reduce

This privileges Australias

major agricultural exporters over the agrarian poor in the developing
countries. In such ways, the current paradigm of food security is used to
privilege the interests of certain actors, often at the expense of
others, including those at risk from the inability to access adequate food. The commandeering of foodtrade barriers in preference to supporting local food producers.3

security language helps explain the contradiction that, while it is ostensibly about hunger (achieving

food security has instead become a game

for powerful actors competing for advantage (profit or scarce resources such as
agricultural land) in an increasingly resource-constrained world . One response to
sufficient food for all people at all times),

this has been the idea of food sovereignty, promulgated by grassroots organizations such as La Via
Campesina, which argues that people should have the right to take control of their own choices over food
and its provenance. Food sovereignty has been put forward as a central element of attempts to frame food
as a new human and livelihood security challenge (Spring, 2009: 471). A core strength of the concept is
its emphasis on the democratization and localization of food-producing resources and distribution of
production, however a substantial weakness is that the concept is equally open to usurpation by powerful
players in the global food regime.

Governments

are now starting to

use food-

sovereignty language to legitimize their efforts to secure control over

food supplies and food-producing resources. In recent meetings with the author,
for example, policymakers from several Gulf Cooperation Council
member-states referred to food sovereignty as the rationale behind
their respective governments efforts to pursue certain food-security
strategies.4 Strategies to address the problem of hunger should discourage this kind of coopting and instead attempt to challenge such actors to engage in
the process of tackling the fundamental issues. Moreover, given the rise of neoMalthusian fears, the inability of existing food-security strategies to
address hunger should prompt a search for alternatives. Indeed, even if the
insecurity of hunger had been adequately addressed in the past, that would not mean that the same
strategies would continue to be adequate for a high-population future.5 Commentators are already
flagging stress and potential conflict as a result of increasingly tight global food supplies (IISS, 2011). It is a

if the world cannot overcome the problem of

widespread hunger when there is surplus production capacity, then finding solutions will
become increasingly fraught as constraints become tighter, the desire to resort to competitive
securing of food resources increases and risks of violent conflict over food
resources intensify.
reasonable premise that

Structural violence from food-disparity comes firstit

controls the direction of their impacts and comparatively
outweighs
Shepherd 12.

Benjamin Shepherd (Researcher in the Food Security Program of the Centre for
International Security Studies, Univ. of Sydney; Ph.D. Candidate @ Univ. of Sydney, 2011; Master of Intl
Studies @ Univ. of Sydney;). Thinking critically about food security, Security Dialogue 43:3 June 2012.
Page 199. //dtac
Given the scale of hunger in the world, there are at least five reasons why hunger warrants greater
attention from security scholars, notwithstanding the divergent views of what constitutes a security

hunger is far more of a threat to life and a

on a massive scale than deprivation of land, income, capital,
political voice or basic dignities. About one billion people regularly go hungry (FAO,
2009b,c, 2010). Many hundreds of millions more live in poverty and have
little capacity to avoid the risk of future hunger in the face of
exogenous shock, such as even a small rise in the price of staple foods. For many of
these people, hunger is an existential threat . They risk early death from lack of
problem. First, as the deprivation of food,
far greater source of physical harm

nutrition or from lack of resilience to injury, infection or disease, and hunger dramatically curtails the

hunger and
malnourishment erode their livelihoods and limit their capacity as
human beings. To paraphrase Booth (1997: 111), regardless of whether or not this is labelled a
security issue for and by the elites who define security agendas, it is an existential threat
for those one billion people. Second, by allowing this physical harm to continue, elites are
failing in their self-assigned role as protectors and guarantors of security. In theory at least, this can
be seen as a significant undermining of political legitimacy and the
legitimization of security practices. Third, and more practically, vulnerability to
hunger is a possible antecedent to conflict. Risks of deprivation
physical and cognitive development of their children. For the remainder,

conflicts

and associated political violence

could

conceivably

be mitigated if the

underlying pressures were addressed . Fourth, pervasive hunger is demonstrative of

a substantial lack of capacity not only for the individuals but also for the communities and states that carry
its burden. Finally, as this article intends to demonstrate, despite some limitations in existing security
frameworks,

there is significant value, both practical and conceptual, to

be gained from approaching the problem of hunger with the tools of

security scholarship.

The alt is to reject the representations of the 1AC and

embrace the spirit of the emancipatory security project
this not purely negation but affirmation of alternative
ways of thinking and understanding the processes that
create the material conditions of hunger. This allows for a
better epistemological approach to actively resolving the
violence of the 1AC
Shepherd 12.

Benjamin Shepherd (Researcher in the Food Security Program of the Centre for
International Security Studies, Univ. of Sydney; Ph.D. Candidate @ Univ. of Sydney, 2011; Master of Intl
Studies @ Univ. of Sydney;). Thinking critically about food security, Security Dialogue 43:3 June 2012.
Pages 204-205.
And, more concisely, that it is simply not possible to provide a political recipe for all concrete situations

these defenses are valid, they do not quite address the

issue of needing a systematic approach not only to think about but
to also do something about these millstones. While embracing the spirit of
Booths emancipatory security project , this article engages with this latter criticism by
(Booth, 2008: 440). While

embarking on a process one whose scope is considerably greater than that of the present article alone

seeks to develop a pragmatic, but heterodox, approach to the

problems of hunger and food security. It does not seek to apply every Boothian ideapearl to the problem, but responds to his Habermasian provocation to defy
orthodox frameworks for thinking about food security in the light of
paradigmatic failures, and proposes a reframing that seeks to open
alternative strategies for thinking, and doing something, about the
insecurity of hunger. At the heart of the contestation between food security as political strategy
and as hunger is the relationship between the state and the citizen. For Booth (2007: 257), the
emancipatory security project is about creating conditions for the
pursuit of what it might be to be a human being, as opposed to
merely being human. Creating conditions necessitates the
engagement of systemic and empowered actors especially states but also
others at the same time as privileging indi viduals. Booth (2007: 205) refuses to
that

privilege the state, but recognizes the role of states in the emancipatory security project as necessary but
flawed institutions that will remain for an indefinite future and must despite their failings and challenges

The relationship between

the citizen and the state is a key component of the historical founda tion of the idea of security. The nature of this relationship is derived in significant part from
... [continue] to provide the frameworks for public institutions.

Hobbes Leviathan ([1651] 1994) and Rousseaus Social Contract ([1762] 1968). The Leviathan is the
protector provider of security of the citizen from the violence of the Hobbesian state of nature, while
the social contract is the deal made between the citizen and the state for the sacrificing of natural

such as the freedom to use violence in the pursuit of a basic

human need such as food in return for security from violence by
others. This provides the somewhat paradoxical civil freedoms to live a long, safe and fruitful life. The
freedoms

security from violence by others is the crux of the social contract whether the protection is from internal
violence (crime) or external violence (security threat) and the lynchpin on which conventional security
and the legitimacy of its government rest. But, as Hobbes also realized, at the same time as being the
guarantor of security, the Leviathan is a major source of insecurity to its citizens. The question arises as to
what are citizens legitimate expectations of the security protection to be provided by the state under the
social contract (and thus what the state must deliver if it is to be accepted by the citizens as legitimate).9
Foremost and uncontested among these is the provision of security from violence by others, including
violence by the state itself. However,

the violence of armed conflict is not the only

form of violence inflicted on humans by others, and while the social contract
continues to form the basis for legitimization of power, participants in the social
contract (citizens) are entitled to expect the same protection from all
kinds of violence, real and threatened, as they are from armed
violence.

Links

Freedom Value
Emancipatory security solves and is comparatively better
than freedommy implication of responsibility is key.
Shepherd 12.

Benjamin Shepherd (Researcher in the Food Security Program of the Centre for International Security
Studies, Univ. of Sydney; Ph.D. Candidate @ Univ. of Sydney, 2011; Master of Intl Studies @ Univ. of
Sydney;). Thinking critically about food security, Security Dialogue 43:3 June 2012. Pages 207 //dtac
Second, proponents of the broader conception of human security might argue for the language of

the language of freedom is that

places less onus, or conditionality of action, on actors of agency. Freedom, even
more than security, is one of political theorys most contested concepts (Booth, 2007:
113), and its language less powerful: security is language of priority and
proactive action; freedom, rarely so. Moreover, conceptually, it is not
possible to free people from the structures that are the nature of the socially
constructed world, but it is undoubtedly possible to secure or protect them from
malignity in those structures.
freedom over that of security. However, the limitation of
it

Human Security-Focus
Human security is the wrong framework to approach food
securityfails to prioritize threats, implies a zero-sum
ontology, and leaves distribution in the hands of
disinterested corporations.
Shepherd 12.

Benjamin Shepherd (Researcher in the Food Security Program of the Centre for
International Security Studies, Univ. of Sydney; Ph.D. Candidate @ Univ. of Sydney, 2011; Master of Intl
Studies @ Univ. of Sydney;). Thinking critically about food security, Security Dialogue 43:3 June 2012.
Pages 201-202 //dtac
Although state-centric security thinking still holds considerable sway, it has been profoundly contested
from many angles. One of the major contestations has been the privileging of the human being over the
state. This has opened a wide domain of approaches under the human security banner. More than many
other forms of human insecurity, excepting personally directed violence, hunger threatens actual physical

hunger specifically should be a

central focus of human security concern. Certainly, the shifting of the
referent object of security from the state to the individual has
turned the attention of security scholars and practitioners toward
confronting the challenge of hunger as widespread insecurity. However,
despite drawing attention to hunger as an insecurity, human security approaches have
tended to allow hunger to be conflated with a multitude of rights,
freedoms and insecurities. Hunger frequently remains largely
undifferentiated from other, less damaging, human insecurities and
deprivations. For example, work on food security as human security by
Spring (2009, 2011), Thomas (2007) and Raymundo (2006) is embedded into broader
environmental or developmental security collections. From its inception in
harm and, in extreme cases, death. This suggests that

2005 until the end of 2011, the Journal of Human Security had published only one article dedicated to food

human security
theorizing is built upon the ideas of freedom from fear and freedom from want. One of the
major criticisms of this is the conflation of many problems faced by humans as
security threats. In its broader conceptions, the human security worldview argues that
security (written by Siegenbeek van Heukelom, 2011). Much broader

deprivation is a form of insecurity in and of itself. The question for human security scholars, and one that
frequently leads to contestation, is at what point such deprivation becomes a security problem and why.
The broadest conception of human security, after the multi-page definition developed in the United Nations
Development Programmes Human Development Report 1994, includes safety from such chronic threats
as hunger, disease and repression. And ... protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the pattern of

A
concept that lumps together threats as diverse as genocide and
affronts to personal dignity may be useful for advocacy, but it has
limited utility for policy analysis. It is no accident that the broad
conception of human security articulated by the UN Development Programme in its muchcited 1994 Human Development Report has rarely been used to guide research
programs. (Human Security Centre, 2005: viii) Perhaps more to the point is the inability, or
failure, to prioritize insecurities when human security is so broadly
conceived. Although addressing such diverse threats to human well-being as
daily life (UNDP, 1994: 23). The critique made is that such conceptualization is analytically useless:

lack of education and healthcare, worsening pollution and environmental degradation, and denial of politi-

is important if people are to fulfil their human potential, most

of these become inconsequential in the face of the threat of
immediate physical harm, such as from hunger. The too many
threats argument against considering hunger as a security matter facilitates the
convenient exclusion of it and other seemingly intractable problems
from security practice, despite some scholarly attention. This exclusion
cal voice

highlights that issues like hunger need to compete for a position on the agenda of the security organs of

This exclusion in turn reflects the limitations of the

competitive, zero-sum security ontology in which even security
threats have to battle it out for primacy. There are two points to be
drawn from this. First is the paucity of an ontology that allows an
important problem to go under-addressed. Second is the co-option
of human security agendas by the predominant paradigm. This can be
the state.

seen in food-security work that takes a human security approach but effectively follows the corporatized
and competitive food-availability framing of food security and sidelines the central problem of hunger (e.g.
Kuntjoro and Jamil, 2008).

A human security framework is the worst framework for

governments, reproduces colonial practices and power
inequities, and is co-opted by elites.
Shepherd 12.

Benjamin Shepherd (Researcher in the Food Security Program of the Centre for
International Security Studies, Univ. of Sydney; Ph.D. Candidate @ Univ. of Sydney, 2011; Master of Intl
Studies @ Univ. of Sydney;). Thinking critically about food security, Security Dialogue 43:3 June 2012.
Pages 201-202 //dtac
An alternative, narrower, conception of human security as proposed by the Human Security Report 2005
limits human security only to protecting people from violent armed conflict. The logic for the reports
authors is that: There are already several annual reports that describe and analyse trends in global
poverty, disease, malnutrition and ecological devastation: the threats embraced by the broad concept of
human security. There would be little point in duplicating the data and analysis that such reports provide.
(Human Security Centre, 2005: viii) While this logic might justify the narrow focus of the report, it is
inadequate to justify the exclusion of physical harm that is caused by humans to other humans but that
does not manifest in the form of violent armed conflict. The scale of death arising from armed conflict
pales next to that arising from hunger as a source of harm. For example, Figure 2.4 of the Human Security
Report 2005 states that there were 27,314 reported deaths from political violence in 2003 (Human Security
Centre, 2005: 73).7 This compares to an estimated 5.3 million children dying from malnutrition each year
(Unicef, 2006:1). Every one of these deaths from both armed and structural violence is equally
important and similarly avoidable. Indeed, deaths from hunger may arguably be more easily avoidable.
Yet, the narrow conception of human security has not provided an adequate argument why they should not
be treated as equivalent security problems. The critiques of the narrow conceptualization of human
security extend beyond the inability of its proponents to offer a rationale for excluding other forms of
physical harm. Grayson (2008: 384) argues that the narrowing of human security thinking reflects the
subsuming of human security principles into security orthodoxy, facilitat[ing] the incorporation of human
security as a variable central to governmental calculations. Chandler (2008) is more critical, arguing that
human security so defined is less about protecting humans from violence than about protecting the core
from instabilities, violence, unrest and alienation in the periphery. Duffield and Waddell (2006) takes this
critique still further to argue that this framing of human security has become a tool of Westphalian
neocolonialism, legitimizing the Western model of the powerful state and facilitating the intervention of
powerful actors from the core into the lives of those at the periphery. The point to be drawn from these
critiques is the susceptibility of the human security idea to co-opting by elites, ultimately leading to the
continued exclusion of hunger from consideration as a security matter. All this suggests that a balance
needs to be struck between recognizing physically harmful insecurities for human beings such as hunger
and conflating any number of bad situations with security threats. Hunger is a harbinger of deprivation and
a source of widespread physical harm, and it undermines individual, community and state capacity. The
insecurity of hunger begs a challenge to inadequate frames of security that elide it, not the continued
marginalization of the problem.

State Security Focus

State-centric approaches to food security are doomed to
failurewarrant warrant (the latter end is baller here).
Shepherd 12.

Benjamin Shepherd (Researcher in the Food Security Program of the Centre for International Security
Studies, Univ. of Sydney; Ph.D. Candidate @ Univ. of Sydney, 2011; Master of Intl Studies @ Univ. of
Sydney;). Thinking critically about food security, Security Dialogue 43:3 June 2012. Pages 199-200 //dtac

security has been thought about in terms of the

assurance of the survival of the state, combined with either competition
to maintain (or improve) its relative position within the international system (neorealism) or the
pursuit of absolute gains for the state through either competition or mutual cooperation
Conventionally, international

(neoliberal institutionalism). Security studies has traditionally focused on military capability as the
machinery for sustaining state survival, so neither food supply nor hunger have had much place within

hunger is
frequently a consequence of war and conflict; wars have long been
fought over fertile lands, especially to capture resources to feed a growing
empire; and the deprivation of food and water was the essence of medieval siege
warfare. The potential role of food as a weapon also had a very minor role in the literature during
traditional security literature. Nonetheless, there are peripheral relationships:

the Cold War (Paarlberg, 1982; Tarrant, 1981). Even though there is growing interest among security
scholars in political violence linked to the deprivation of food, say from sudden price rises or production
calamities, or where the prospect of interstate violence looms over food-producing resources (Dupont,
2001: 106), state-centric scholarship on food security and hunger is scarce. Waltzs (1979: 126) systemic
theory of international politics states that in anarchy [the international system], security is the highest
end, and that only if survival is assured can states safely seek other goals such as tranquillity, profit and
power. This effectively defines security in terms of survival of the state. However, Waltz continues by
arguing that, in the pursuit of security, the first concern of states is ... to maintain their positions in the
system. He implies that security is more than just the condition of survival but also includes the states
behaviour within the competitive paradigm of the international system. Food-security strategies that
pursue one states interests at the expense of another such as a wealthy countrys acquisition of
farmland in countries with large hungry populations can fit this view of state behaviour, just not in
military terms. However, it is not states per se who fear losing their positions, but those states regimes.

For many of the regimes taking actions to secure their food supplies, such
as China and the states of the Arabian Gulf, their continued power is, in part,
predicated on the provision of economic prosperity for their constituents, of which
cheap and plentiful food is a fundamental component. Similarly, the regimes of
poorer states whose agricultural lands and fisheries are being
targeted facilitate (or at least acquiesce to) the actions of the more powerful
states in pursuit of self-interested objectives. The poorer states regimes
seek to balance the imperative of regime survival with the pursuit of individual gain. This suggests that

accept a level of domestic

instability in return for a flow of benefits to the regime or individuals
within it. These dynamics fall outside state-centric security thinking, even though they revolve around
these regimes are working to a security praxis that is willing to

a fundamental security concern for the state domestic stability and occur when the drivers of instability
arise from external sources. They present a challenge to state-centric approaches that see states as
unitary actors in competition with each other. These situations see the developing countries elites allied
with foreign interests against groups of their own constituents. From a structural systems perspective, this
situation fits the World Systems Theory model (see, for example, Hopkins and Wallerstein, 1982) of the
world economy split into a core and a periphery more neatly than Waltzs states as balls-on-a-billiard-table.

scholars have pointed out the core role of

developing-country regimes as abusers of agricultural resources (Un
and So, 2010) and agents of hunger and famine (Salih, 2009). Furthermore, foreign activities
like land acquisition or market manipulation (leading to food price hikes) can
create domestic conditions of deprivation and risks of internal
Indeed, some Asian and African

conflict 6 that are not effectively accounted for by state-centric

approaches. Critical critiques of state-centric security point out how security agendas
seek to secure the interests of those defining the agenda
Wyn Jones, 1999).

(Dalby, 1997;

This extends to consideration of hunger as a security

matter. For security elites, hunger is distant, easily excusable and

unthreatening. Acknowledging the insecurity of hunger would
necessitate the prioritization of hunger as an issue for elites and
require the dedication of substantial efforts and resources to
addressing it. Not only is there little benefit to elites in allowing this to happen, but it potentially
risks challenges to institutional arrangements that underpin existing power structures. Hunger is also easy
for elites to dismiss. First, hunger is continual, not an extraordinary threat. Although statecentric security has become tolerant of non-military sources of threat, hunger is not considered one (nor,
usually, are possible interruptions to food supplies).

Unlike the prospect of, say, unrealized

nuclear exchange that threatens hundreds of thousands of deaths and widespread physical harm
in an extraordinary moment, deaths from hunger are just another daily reality.
Second, hunger is widely excused as being a natural phenomenon , not the
product of human agency and therefore not within the remit of security scholars and practitioners.

the threat of hunger does not come from an enemy

that is personalizable in the way that it suits elites to portray security threats for example,
in terms of communists or terrorists. None of these reasons offer sound
Consequently, third,

justification for the exclusion of hunger as a security consideration. Moreover, the exclusion of hunger is
unjustifiable when state-centric security defines itself in terms of the states role in protecting the state
and by extension its constituents from physical harm or the threat of physical harm arising from external
others, particularly when those threats are of an extraordinary and/or existential nature.

Hunger is

such a form of harm, but one that confronts the periphery, not the
core.

Impacts

SV 1st
Weigh structural violence above interpersonal violence
warrants
Shepherd 12.

Benjamin Shepherd (Researcher in the Food Security Program of the Centre for
International Security Studies, Univ. of Sydney; Ph.D. Candidate @ Univ. of Sydney, 2011; Master of Intl
Studies @ Univ. of Sydney;). Thinking critically about food security, Security Dialogue 43:3 June 2012.
Page 205 //dtac
As one of the major milestones in overcoming violence, Booth (2007: 68) identifies Galtungs invention of
the notion of structural violence. Galtung (1969) distinguished between personal violence and

structural violence, where the former is physical harm directed by other humans, such as an
attack by a person or persons against others, and the latter physical harm to humans by other humans but

caused by institutional or systemic, rather than personal, forces.

Structural violence is routinely excluded from consideration when
the state is determining its own security agendas. So, although hunger
results in actual physical harm, inflicted on humans by others, because it stems from
structural forces it is excluded from state-centric security
scholarship. This is unsurprising. The Leviathan both determines security agendas and is
the central (but not the only) systemic actor in the creation and perpetuation of
institutional arrangements that give rise to structural violence against humans. It is to be
expected that empowered elites will avoid subjecting their own power structures to scrutiny and challenge.

the exclusion of structural violence from a theoreti cal

perspective is problematic. For security approaches legitimized by the social
However,

contract (including state-centric and some human security approaches, such as that of Kaldor [2007:

are failing in their self-assigned role as guarantors of security and protectors

from physical and existential harm. The states legitimacy is, in theory, undermined
187]), elites

when an entire class of human-caused lethal violence is excluded from its obligations under the social
contract. As with the problem of human security conflating security threats, the case has been made that

structural violence should not be regarded as a security problem

because it turns too many things into security problems , and that if there

are too many security problems the concept of security becomes worse than useless (Thomas, 2010). It is

conflating security issues together can limit the ability to

deal with each individual problem effectively. However, defining security in ways
logical that

that exclude insecurities especially sources of physical harm simply because there are too many of

Hunger is both a structural problem and a

source of violence in that it does physical harm. Widespread sources of physical harm like
hunger need to be treated as the insecurities they are. To confront such
insecurity requires a process of stand[ing] outside prevailing structures, processes, ideologies and orthodoxies ... with a view to developing more
promising ideas by which to overcome structural and contingent
human wrongs (Booth, 2005: 15).
them is weak and difficult to justify.

Alt Solvency

Prereq
Our reframing of politics surrounding food security opens
the pedagogical gate to new methods of research and
understanding of the material condition of structural
violence in other contexts which is a prereq to good
policies and provides better policy education.
Shepherd 12.

Benjamin Shepherd (Researcher in the Food Security Program of the Centre for
International Security Studies, Univ. of Sydney; Ph.D. Candidate @ Univ. of Sydney, 2011; Master of Intl
Studies @ Univ. of Sydney;). Thinking critically about food security, Security Dialogue 43:3 June 2012.
Page 207-208 //dtac

The reframing of food security proposed here has been motivated by

pathologies in the existing food-security paradigm and gaps in the state-

centric and major human security approaches to contemplating the two sides of the food-security coin:

food-security behaviours by empowered actors and hunger as

widespread human insecurity. Booths emancipatory security project that
conceive[s] security as the means and emancipation as the end (Booth, 2007: 115, emphasis in original)

provides a useful framework for

rethinking food security to privilege the disempowered and hungry without
coincidentally two sides of the same coin

ignoring the centrality of states, corporations and multilateral actors. The work undertaken here lays down

It proposes a
starting point for future research, analysis and practice. The next steps are
to expand the proposed reframing of food security into a comprehensive set of
methodological tools. This would entail using the new definition to
generate research questions that are then applied to practical
situations. One example of such a situation is the acquisition of land in poor countries by wealthy
ones in pursuit of secure food supplies. Another concerns the role of women in
developing-country agrarian systems and the possibilities that
empowering these women offers in terms of alleviating hunger and
delivering emancipatory food security. Research questions grounded
in this framing can be used to evaluate existing situations, test claims
made by actors and help shape outcomes. For example, to evaluate an existing situation,
questions can be posed that seek to uncover what is the nature of the
structural violence of poverty and hunger for the vulnerable populations in question? And,
the challenge to develop a proactive heterodox approach to world hunger.

what are the existing institutional arrangements giving rise to these situations? For testing claims made by

to challenge existing discourses and to evaluate strategies, policies

and behaviours, questions should seek to uncover how such
institutional arrangements are legitimized and perpetuated ? And, to
actors,

challenge actors benefiting from such institutional arrangements or proposing new policies or strategies, it
might be asked how does the proposal improve, perpetuate or worsen the structural violence of hunger for
the vulnerable population? Finally, for shaping outcomes developing policies, projects and programmes
pertinent questions may ask what alternative institutional arrangements can limit/reduce the structural

a new
agenda for food-security research and practice might be pursued
that opens up the possibility of overcoming structural pathologies
and creating the conditions for human emancipation.
violence of poverty and hunger for the vulnerable population in question? In such ways,

Solves Case
Adopting the emancipatory security frame solves hunger,
puts the vulnerable at the center of attention and shifts
responsibility to the most culpable institutional actors
states and companies.
Shepherd 12.

Benjamin Shepherd (Researcher in the Food Security Program of the Centre for International Security
Studies, Univ. of Sydney; Ph.D. Candidate @ Univ. of Sydney, 2011; Master of Intl Studies @ Univ. of
Sydney;). Thinking critically about food security, Security Dialogue 43:3 June 2012. Pages 206-207 //dtac
The assignment Booth gives us is to challenge the conventional framing of food security and to rethink it in
emancipatory terms, in terms of the hungry, as opposed to terms that suit or are readily co-opted by
global and systemic actors. For Booth (2007: 112), emancipation seeks the securing of people from those
oppressions that stop them carrying out what they would freely choose to do, compatible with the freedom
of others. Hunger is one of the most basic oppressions that people must be secured against. In this light,
food security can be framed in terms of securing vulnerable populations from the structural violence of
hunger. Thinking about food security in this way de-privileges currently privileged actors in order to
centralize the needs of those who must be the central focus of food-security strategies: human beings
experiencing or vulnerable to hunger. It centralizes the hungry and those at risk of hunger as the focus of
food-security activity. This framing also seeks to place an onus on institutional and systemic actors of
agency. That onus is first to assess their own agency in securing the vulnerable from malign structures and
second to challenge the agency of others. This is fundamental to creating the conditions of human
emancipation. In pursuit of these conditions, it is crucial that this new framing offers some practical
purchase in terms of guiding strategic and tactical decisionmaking for any actor engaging with a food
security problem. Certainly it provides a basis for designing, implementing and evaluating practical and
measurable strategies, policies and actions for creating food security. (It should be easier to plan a project
and measure its success on the basis of identifying and taking appropriate actions to help secure a group
from its vulnerabilities to hunger than on the basis of guaranteeing that all people at all times will have
adequate food.) Moreover, this framing is active. By adopting this framing, an actor with agency one with
capacity to analyse, influence, modify, reshape or halt existing, malignant institutional arrangements
must be ready to act, and to be challenged by others, in terms of how its policies, behaviours or actions
assist in this ultimate objective of securing those going hungry or vulnerable to hunger. The challenge by
others is crucial. This framing provides a normative position that can (must) be used by actors to validate
and evaluate the actions of others. Actors need to be able to be held to account for their food security
policies and actions and how they are securing the vulnerable against hunger. By facilitating actor
accountability, this framing seeks to limit the risk of co-option by self-interested actors and the creation of
conditions for human emancipation is sought. Helping place an onus on actors with agency to secure the
vulnerable from malign structures is a major shift from making utopian claims of freedom from hunger to
making pragmatic improvements in institutional arrangements that perpetuate the structural violence of
hunger and poverty. This is an important step in developing a systematic approach, not only for thinking
about, but also for acting in response to the insecurity of hunger. It seeks to pursue the emancipation of
humans from structural malignity and facilitate practical approaches for making material improvements in
reducing hunger. This pragmatic goal is also one of the key reasons for framing food security in terms of
structural violence. Because structural violence is the result of institutional arrangements, this definition
provides some direct purchase on the tasks of developing and evaluating strategies, policies, actions and
behaviours. It forces the questions to be asked of any particular initiative: What are the existing
institutional arrangements? What changes are likely to result? And, what impact will they have on, or for,
the hungry? This reframing of food security offers some additional advantages. Shaw (2007: 384) has
described the pathologies of the existing global food-security paradigm and concludes that it is shackled
by the problem of institutional incoherence: with so many multilateral, bilateral and non-governmental
organizations and international institutions involved, food security has tended to become everybodys
concern and so, in reality, no ones concern. Shaw also struggles with the huge complexity of the foodsecurity problematique, recognizing dimensions that range from nutrition, employment, poverty,
education, health, finance, technology, land rights, trade, human rights and gender through to
environmental degradation and population. Focusing on the plight of the vulnerable forestalls the
nobodys problem and institutional incoherence by narrowing food-security activity towards a clear and
specific set of outcomes. This framing also manages to avoid excluding any of Shaws dimensions of food
security and allows the development of responses in terms of any of them. At the same time, the framing
of food security as primarily an economic matter is avoided and the co-opting of food-security discourses
for the purposes of securing resources by powerful actors is made more difficult.

A2

threats real, o/w

1. My argument is not that threats arent real or that
creating threats is bad- its that their framing of food
insecurity threats is bad the K predicated on the
ontology that underlies the affs specific form of
constructing food as a threat, not threat construction in
general.
2. Their discursive construction of instability and the
need to secure food production relies on framing debates
exclusively in terms of power wars and global conflict
this methodologically screens out analysis of structural
violence that is comparatively worse than their isolated
scenarios.
Shepherd 12.

Benjamin Shepherd (Researcher in the Food Security Program of the Centre for International Security
Studies, Univ. of Sydney; Ph.D. Candidate @ Univ. of Sydney, 2011; Master of Intl Studies @ Univ. of
Sydney;). Thinking critically about food security, Security Dialogue 43:3 June 2012. Pages 202-203

more to the point is the inability, or failure, to prioritize insecurities

when human security is so broadly conceived. Although addressing
such diverse threats to human well-being as lack of education and
healthcare, worsening pollution and environmental degradation, and
denial of political voice is important if people are to fulfil their
human potential, most of these become inconse quential in the face
of the threat of immediate physical harm, such as from hunger. The
too many threats argument against considering hunger as a
security matter facilitates the convenient exclusion of it and other
seemingly intractable problems from security practice, despite some
scholarly attention. This exclusion highlights that issues like hunger need
Perhaps

to compete for a position on the agenda of the security organs of

the state. This exclusion in turn reflects the limita tions of the
competitive, zero-sum security ontology in which even security
threats have to battle it out for primacy. There are two points to be drawn
from this. First is the paucity of an ontology that allows an important
problem to go under-addressed. Second is the co-option of human
security agendas by the predominant paradigm. This can be seen in foodsecurity work that takes a human security approach but effectively follows the corporatized and
competitive food-availability framing of food security and sidelines the central problem of hunger (e.g.
Kuntjoro and Jamil, 2008). An alternative, narrower, conception of human security as proposed by the
Human Security Report 2005 limits human security only to protecting people from violent armed conflict.
The logic for the reports authors is that: There are already several annual reports that describe and
analyse trends in global poverty, disease, malnutrition and ecological devastation: the threats embraced
by the broad concept of human security. There would be little point in duplicating the data and analysis

this logic might justify the narrow

focus of the report, it is inadequate to justify the exclu sion of physical harm
that is caused by humans to other humans but that does not
manifest in the form of violent armed conflict . The scale of death
that such reports provide. (Human Security Centre, 2005: viii) While

arising from armed conflict pales next to that arising from hunger as
a source of harm. For example, Figure 2.4 of the Human Security Report 2005 states that
there were 27,314 reported deaths from political violence in 2003
(Human Security Centre, 2005: 73).7 This compares to an estimated 5.3 million
children dying from malnutrition each year (Unicef, 2006:1). Every one of
these deaths from both armed and structural violence is equally
important and similarly avoidable. Indeed, deaths from hunger may arguably be more
easily avoidable. Yet, the narrow conception of human security has not provided an adequate argument

The critiques of the narrow

conceptualization of human security extend beyond the inability of
its proponents to offer a rationale for excluding other forms of
physical harm. Grayson (2008: 384) argues that the narrowing of human security thinking reflects
why they should not be treated as equivalent security problems.

the subsuming of human security principles into security orthodoxy, facilitat[ing] the incorporation of
human security as a variable central to governmental calculations. Chandler (2008) is more critical,

human security so defined is less about protecting humans from

violence than about protecting the core from instabilities, violence,
unrest and alienation in the periphery. Duffield and Waddell tool of Westphalian neocolonialism,
legitimizing the Western model of the powerful state and facilitating
the intervention of powerful actors from the core into the lives of
those at the periphery. The point to be drawn from these critiques is the
susceptibility of the human security idea to co-opting by elites,
ultimately leading to the continued exclusion of hunger from consideration
arguing that

as a security matter. All this suggests that a balance needs to be struck between recognizing physically
harmful insecurities for human beings such as hunger and conflating any number of bad situations with

Hunger is a harbinger of deprivation and a source of

widespread physical harm, and it undermines individual, community
and state capacity. The insecurity of hunger begs a challenge to
inadequate frames of security that elide it, not the continued
marginalization of the problem.
security threats.

utopian
The alt is practical, any change is good change, and even
if I set our sights high, thats probably a good thing.
Shepherd 12.

Benjamin Shepherd (Researcher in the Food Security Program of the Centre for International Security
Studies, Univ. of Sydney; Ph.D. Candidate @ Univ. of Sydney, 2011; Master of Intl Studies @ Univ. of
Sydney;). Thinking critically about food security, Security Dialogue 43:3 June 2012. Page 207 //dtac

A third possible criticism is that this might appear to be an

idealistic, utopian project. In response to similar indictments, Booth has argued that
laying out objectives to improve the world is no bad thing: societies
must have an idea of the ideal (Booth, 2007: 130; see also Booth, 2007: 253).
Idealism and utopian vision provide ideas of a world that we
collectively want to work towards in place of perpetuating an
unsatisfactory status quo. Notwithstanding such lofty goals, this reframing of
food security is intended to be practical. It provides a definition and
normative framing for action in response to the problem of hunger. It
does not require universal adoption, nor a widespread normative shift, for it
to show promise. Instead, it is conceivable that even a single actor
rethinking its commitment to food security in this light and adjusting
its behaviour, in its own field modifying the institutional
arrangements within its power has the ability to make a
measurable difference.

you securitize
Not all securitization is badits inevitable, but the alt
keeps elites from co-opting politics and empowers the
vulnerable.
Shepherd 12.

Benjamin Shepherd (Researcher in the Food Security Program of the Centre for International Security
Studies, Univ. of Sydney; Ph.D. Candidate @ Univ. of Sydney, 2011; Master of Intl Studies @ Univ. of
Sydney;). Thinking critically about food security, Security Dialogue 43:3 June 2012. Page 207 //dtac
Three potential criticisms that may be levelled at this framing of food security warrant addressing. First,
the choice of language of securing might be open to critique as counter to the emancipatory principles of
the Boothian project, as being able to be co-opted to legitimize paternalistic (and worse) behaviour by
empowered actors towards the weak. Certainly, governments use security language to justify repressive
behaviours. It is also true that there is always the possibility, even likelihood, that some actors will seek
ways to respond to challenges in ways that suit their own interests and disguise the real impacts of their
actions. However, it will be harder to justify and legitimize those actions when the framing of the problem,
as well as the normative position of other actors who have adopted that framing and who are holding the
other actors to account, is focused entirely on the vulnerable. Further, framing action in terms of security
does not imply that change will be dictated by the agents. Indeed, to be able to answer challenges to their
food-security actions, actors will need the engagement of the populations affected by their actions. All this
would be a significant shift from current empowered actors behaviour with respect to food security.

Food sovereignty
A model of food security that supports the global market
excludes peasants and undermines womens input in local
communities.
GRAIN 05 [GRAIN is a small international organization that supports the struggle of farmers and social

movements to strengthen community control over food systems based on biodiversity.] Food Sovereignty:
turning the global system upside down http://www.grain.org/fr/article/entries/491-food-sovereignty-turningthe-global-food-system-upside-down GRAIN April 2005
The villagers that hosted our meeting insisted on showing us their 'Community Seed Wealth Centre '. The
centre is stunning. A bewildering amount of clay pots and glass bottles contain the seeds of hundreds of

the women in charge of the seed

centre patiently explained that this is just the tip of the iceberg of
the seed network that they are part of. Hundreds of communities in
many different parts of the country use the seeds every season,
keep them safe in their homesteads, and a sophisticated exchange
and monitoring network of the villagers ensures that at any point in
time thousands of different seed varieties are being grown and kept
alive, somewhere. At some point in the discussions, someone asked the question what they
different varieties of dozens of different crops. But

understand by food sovereignty. One of the women pointed to the seed centre behind her, smiled, and
simply said: 'this'.

At the heart of food sovereignty is local autonomy. The UBINIG

women feel strongly that the loss of seed from the household also
means the loss of the women's power. Dependence on the outside
market for seeds makes them redundant and powerless, and
displaces them from the control of the heart of the agricultural
system. What is true for the survival of women as farmers, is also true for the survival of peasant
agriculture as a whole. The neo-liberal globalisation agenda pushes for an
agriculture in which the billions of today's peasant farmers have no
place, and in which the global corporations - with the active support
of government elites North and South - control the food chain all the
way from agricultural inputs and the growing of the crops, to the
distribution, processing and selling of food across the world. This is the
very vision of agriculture that the concept of food sovereignty challenges.

Food sovereignty makes up for the distribution flaws of

food security by making food production take place on the
local level.
Food sovereignty has its roots in life and struggle of peasant farmers, fishermen and indigenous peoples.

food
sovereignty springs from the peasant struggles as a need to create a
strong, radical and inclusive discourse about local realities and
needs that can be heard and understood globally.
In a way, the concept was developed as a reaction to the increasing
(mis)use of 'food security '. The mainstream definition of food
security, endorsed at Food Summits and other high level conferences, talks about
everybody having enough good food to eat each day. But it doesn 't
talk about where the food comes from, who produces it, how under
which conditions it has been grown. This allows the food exporters ,
Different from many other terms invented by intellectuals, policy makers and bureaucrats,

to argue that the best way for poor countries to achieve

food security is to import cheap food from them, rather then trying
to produce it themselves. This, as already is becoming painfully evident everywhere,
make those countries more dependent on the international market,
forces peasant farmers that can 't compete with the subsidised
imports off their lands, and leaves them looking in the cities for jobs
that don 't exist. Food security, understood this way, just contributes
to more poverty, marginalisation and hunger.
The thinking behind food sovereignty contrasts this neo-liberal
approach that believes that international trade will solve the world's
food problem, with a focus on local autonomy, local markets and
community action. Perhaps, then, the first issue to stress is that food sovereignty is a process of
North and South,

peoples ' resistance and its conceptualisation can not be carried out outside the dynamics of the social
movements that are central in these struggles.
The local space first

The first space in which peasants identified the transformative

power of food sovereignty was, of course, the local space. This is
where the farmers have their roots, and where the seeds that they
sow grow their roots. It is here where food sovereignty acquires its
most central dimension. It is also at this level that strategies and actions are formulated and
developed; from the fight against pesticides by the women in Paraguay, to the seed networks in France,
Spain and Italy and from the peasant cooperatives ' initiatives in Uganda, to the rescuing of traditional

It is in the spaces where local

communities are creating autonomy based on their own needs,
beliefs and timelines that food sovereignty acquires real meaning. It
also acquires a common understanding that allows peasant
communities from different parts of the world to appreciate - and
identify themselves with - each others struggles.
medicine by the indigenous peoples of Chiapas.

Therefore, when farmers of MOCASE put themselves in between the bulldozers and their fields to stop
large landowners from taking their land in order to plant soybean monocultures, they know that they are
not only defending their livelihoods, but also that they are resisting a development model in which peasant
farmers have no place what so ever.

Reject the 1AC and embrace local food production as a

way to protect cultural norms and
Food sovereignty is a solid alternative to the current mainstream
thinking on food production. The struggle for food sovereignty
incorporates such wide ranging issues as land reform, territorial
control, local markets, biodiversity, autonomy, cooperation, debt,
health, and many other issues that are of central importance to be
able to produce food locally.
Land reform in particular is an important component of food
sovereignty; a radical redistribution of land, particularly amongst the poorest and those without

access to land. The Brazilian 'Movimiento de los Sin Tierra ' (Brazilian Landless Movement) is a good
example of how food sovereignty is intrinsically linked with the social struggle of the millions of rural
people that have been thrown off their lands and urban poor that have never had access to land and who

One of the major

bottlenecks of local food production is the unequal distribution of
land. In many countries of the world 20% of the landowners control
80% of the land - and such land is often used to produce export
commodities rather than locally available food. Similarly, the
now search for the path to recuperate their identity by claiming back land.

enforcement of the rights of indigenous peoples to their territories

is an indispensable requisite to move towards food sovereignty.
Food sovereignty also brings together peasants and farmers from
the North and South, an artificial distinction promoted by many. For
example, the farmers ' seed networks in France are as much about
food sovereignty as the struggle of the women led seed wealth
centres in Bangladesh. Or in the words of Jose Bov, a peasant farmer leader from France: "For
the people in the South, food sovereignty means the right to protect themselves against imports. For us, it
means fighting against export aid and against intensive farming. There is no contradiction there at all".

food sovereignty allows different movements

that traditionally too often have been played out against each other,
to come together in their struggles. The peasants, the landless, the
fisherfolk, the pastoralist, indigenous peoples. are increasingly
coming together and are developing a common understanding of
common aims and actions.
Food sovereignty has also come to the millions of city dwellers that
are fighting for survival in the big cities Production of food in family
or community gardens not only brings wholesome food, that
industrial agriculture is often unable to deliver, but also a level of
dignity, cooperation and independence.
Perhaps even more importantly,

All of these people are fighting for something more than Jacques Chirac's interpretation of food sovereignty

food sovereignty implies that the global food

system should be turned upside down. It has been peasants,
fisherfolk, pastoralists and indigenous peoples that have fed the
world since millennia - to achieve a world without hunger a world
where all have access to nutritious locally produced food, they need
to take centre stage again.
in Senegal. Unlike for Chirac,